Why I Love IL2 (and hate WOE)

I have 4 contempory flight simulations installed on my PC:

• Falcon 4: Allied Force
• Lomac
• Wings over Europe
• Il-2 (1946)

I fly F4AF almost every week now. This was the sim that got me started again in flight simming after 5 years. Currently I am flying and logging missions for an upcoming series of stories.

I bought LOMAC out of curiousity. My rig is not fully capable of running this sim and besides with already one study sim (F4AF) under my belt I have little intention to study additional jets. LOMAC is interesting because of its movie capabilities. I swear I'll release another film one day (I have already an unfinished tape, but I really need to clean it up in Vegas).

IL-2 raised my attention when I was a bit tired of flying the viper. Initially I was not interested but once I discovered the enormous amount of user made campaigns and easy to use methods to tell stories based on the sim, I started flying and never looked back.

I bought Wings over Europe because its the fourth major sim in the market and I wanted to see whats the fuss was all about. Indeed the sim is really modular (the linux among flight sims) and the learning curve is not steep (certainly if you compare it with F4AF).

Both WOE and Il-2 allow adding skins and campaigns. WOE offers most freedom, allowing modders to add aircraft and campaigns. Il-2 is more rigid but within the confines of the game, modders can still achieve unique feats.

However my biggest gripe against WOE has not necessarily to do with the game, but is against the modding community. IL-2 campaign makers tend to deliver both the data for the campaign as the skins for the different aircraft. So in one-two-three a player can upload a campaign, copy the skins and off he goes. Yet such user-friendliness seems to be unknown to the WOE/WOV/SF1 community. If you download a campaign, you get the message from the modder that "you need skins for aircraft X, search website Y for those skins".

How on earth do they want regular users to play their campaigns? I know these modders love to tinker with files and code, but for the average user a zip file with all skins along with the campaign would be very helpfull. I fear such "search it yourself" attitude drives potential players away and the simming community has already a reputation of being reserved for those snobbish players who have an aviation degree.

(One remark concerning Yankee Station, I don't have WOV so I don't know how their upload system works, but I hope they include all their files and skins in a easy to use install package).

Next week I'll discuss the difference between storytelling in F4AF and Il-2.

Meanwhile you can read the next chapter in Mosquito Ace at SimHQ or on the blog-novel.

Happy Reading