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Best WW2 Flight Simulator ever made!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My review of this product may be slightly skewed by the fact that I remember Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, and played WW2 Fighters for a long time. Except for some counter-intuitive options, The Sturmovik series of games are exceptional and offer hours of enjoyment.

Good flight sim

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This flight sim is fun to play.
I have had mine for a couple years and find it relaxing,until the Me-109's or Fw-190's show up to party,then it can get squirrelly up there.
It takes some practice,I just wish the game had the stage the demo has in it.
I also recomend Sturmovik Forgotten Battles,there are some interesting aircraft in it.

Ubi soft not user friendly

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 5
Date: June 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Bought it installed it ,no worky ,error msg ,replaced rts dll. as told still no worky. Tech support is just automated email response.I have heard this is common problem with a lot of there products ,I know the Pacifc Fighter starts out with a error msg. And no I never had both products installed at same time.Cheap stuff stay away.

Difficult but enjoyable

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: April 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought this sim. I find it to be the best one yet! Yes it is difficult, but I play it often. You might want to adjust it to suit you. I added external views and automatic engine controls.
I'm running a campaign now and its really addicting. My system is a ecs L7s7a2 mainboard, 2 different sticks of 256meg DDR ram a amd xp2100 processor and a chaintech nvidia fx5200 128 meg agp video card. The controler is a logitech usb wingman flight stick. It stutters once in a while, but I have several background apps running. I only get about 5 victories in 20 missions. I love the challenge. I have ms combat flight sims, but haven't bothered to put them on this system.

worth it for the updates

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: March 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Now that the IL-2: FB Ace Expansion Pack is out -- an expansion, not a stand-alone -- the original IL-2 FB continues to be worth getting. I've been able to get FB to work well on a late-model Pentium, with an ordinary Logitech Wingman joystick, combined with CH Pedals. The pedals simulate real-life rudder pedals and make the controls more responsive -- and as a trained pilot I can appreciate the sim better. This sim is very realistic, and more flyable than, say, MiG Alley.

The FB scenery is gorgeous, with very great detail around Stalingrad and Leningrad. Indeed, a low flight over Leningrad will be a virtual tour of what is now the St. Petersburg skyline. Only the German lines are almost in sight of the city.

As for the complaints about difficulty, it helps if you toggle off the complicated engine management when you create a pilot in a campaign, and your gunnery will be helped if you slow the time-speed to the minimum (1/4) and tighten the view. If this sim seems difficult, remember that many Soviet pilots went into combat with all of 10 hours' flight training, total. You have the Quick Missions to train on your favorite aircraft and even those of the enemy, which is more than the original pilots did.

I strongly recommend FB for sim aficionados. The Ace Expansion Pack will complement your FB copy nicely, and even the AEP exotica aircraft (Spitfire V, YP-80, Me163, etc.) will possibly save you the cost of the recent Normandy flight sims. However, I keep returning to the Soviet and Finnish sectors, in a time when the flying was desperate and the enemy was at the door.

Overrated

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: March 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is 90% hype and 10% graphics. Highly overrated and very demanding of system resources. Be prepared to tweak your system to suit this game, and if it adversely affects other games - too bad. The sound is the worst I've ever heard even at that. CFS3 is FAR superior in that area. And, you will need to turn your sound hardware acceleration down just to avoid bugs. There is no "runway" selection for free flights. You can only start in the air. So you can't test various planes. Graphics are unmatched, though. Lots of eye candy if you have the hardware for it and you tweak your system properly.
Rich

The Best

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: February 14, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game (or simulation or whatever) is the very best of the genre. The graphics are not only amazing, they are carefully researched to be completely accurate in their representation of WWII planes.

Although it takes a fairly muscular system to run this game with all the graphics turned up, it is so good that it alone is a reason to dump your old system and buy a new one.

My rating would have been five stars but for one minor irritant. The latest upgrade patch is gigantic (over 80 MB), and yet I can find no evidence that UBI Soft will provide a CD ROM disk for this patch. This is a real problem for those of us who live where a high-speed internet connection is unavailable or unaffordable. I would gladly pay a nominal fee for a CD ROM patch if they would just offer one.

But make no mistake. My game ran flawlessly out of the box and was worth twice what I paid for it at full retail, which is more than I can say for many other high-end simulations I have purchased.

Climb into the sky!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 31, 2003
Author: Amazon User

A must have game for all flight simulator enthusiasts. It is as close to reality as you can get without spending millions on buying your own Bf-109 or Hurricane. But probably it is "too real" for anyone who does not have at least some basic knowledge of theory of flight. Of course, the game has big range of settings which can switch off most physics effects and turn it into an arcade style shooting, but it's a shame to use the game this way.
I do not agree with complains about "godlike" AI flying and gunnery. If you do not get you perception of aerial combat from the "Pearl Harbor" movie, you will be all right in the realm of "Sturmovik". I have my own complain however. I flew numerous missions on both sides, and it looks like game logic favors Russians - even in early stages of war missions playing a Luftwaffe pilot was more difficult for me. Russian planes, even outdated models, seem to have superior performance, fire power and survivability, and all their pilots are very hard to outfly and shot down. Which, given historical data about losses and victories on both sides, seems inaccurate.

FB: Understand what you're buying...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 16
Date: October 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I made a serious effort with the original (i.e., IL-2) when it was released; since my system is kept current in terms of memory and video there were no problems running the sim and the interface and graphic's were the best ever produced at the time.
I gave up due to the overly complicated joystick tuning routine (I use a Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital 3-D) and the constant patches released by the manufacturer.

I purchased FB realizing it was a standalone sim - not an expansion of IL-2. FB has the same interface and the default joystick routines are the same but now I have no problems with flight and obviously UBI have responded to feedback from consumers on this issue.

The AI has been critically reviewed by many; I agree that it is extremely tough but the designers goal is to create a simulation - not a game.

This is not a product for the casual gamer. If you are looking for a serious, detailed simulation of air combat on the Eastern Front than FB is the ideal platform. To be blunt, if you're not willing to invest the time required to overcome the learning curve then you will be extremely frustrated. The rewards for your investment will be rich as the sim provides the most detailed atmosphere for air combat ever produced.

You will need a 'current' system to run the sim at full detail levels. FB gets 4 stars instead of 5 because I agree with other reviewer's that the dynamic campaign interface is 'cold'; there hasn't been a good atmospheric campaign interface since Micropose's EAW.

System: OS: XP Home. Intel Pent. 4 2.80 GHz. 15" XGA TFT with Radeon IGP 345M Video Card. 40 GB 2 Hard Drive. 512 MB DDR SDRAM.

Fantastic sim, attention to detail...some flaws persistant

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: September 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

If you're looking for a realistic WW2 flight simulator - look no further, this is it. Every other sim is inferior (except niche products like dedicated online simulators - and this only because this sim is not a dedicated online one).

Many planes flyable, even more flown by AI. Fantastic attention to detail, flight models getting refined in subsequent patches. More planes are expected as add-ons, while user made skins (vast resurce of both historical and fictional are available) make the sim even better.

there are few negatives though. Somehow certain planes seem to be favored and given a somewhat unrealistic advantages. Others suffer from non-realistic disadvantages. This in no way spoils the big picture, but sometimes makes a hard core sim fanatic angry.

Special mention should go to the Fw 190 forward view. It is rather limiting, to say the least. A thorough study about this has been brought up with real Fw 190 from museum, but developers simply don't care. With Fw 190 being one of the two mainstay German fighters throughout the war, this flaw gets even more pronounced.

Still, the best WW2 flight sim out there. 4 stars only because of Fw 190 forward view.

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