A ROF mission will not even load, much less be playable with 100 A/C in the air.
And those videos with 1000+ planes were made on a personal PC, (meaning the FM, AI, Physics, and the actual drawing of the planes are all done on the same PC) Trust me it brought that user's pc to it's knee's. But the point is, it still ran.
Using a dedi server should take off the majority of the client load as the only thing they'll have to do is draw them as another object.
The point Phillp_ed is trying to convey is the game engine supports, well, anything your hardware can handle. In ROF your hardware only matters to a point, a very small one at that (object/AI-wise) at which the mission won't load or game will just crash. This is why the trenches (NML) in ROF are completely empty. A mission won't even load if the only objects you put in a ROF mission were the same # of AAA historically there in the trenches. No other objects added (no airfields, no anything) besides a single player plane, mission won't load. When (not if) IL2COD is fully up to speed, you'll have the biggest online, or offline for that matter (depending on your hardware) battles/scenarios ever seen in a flight sim.
And this is comparing (I don't know why people still do it) to a flight sim that has been released for 2 years, and has had numerous updates and patches. Stupid comparison IMO. But if you want to compare it, 2 years after ROF's release, to the new born IL2COD, the ROF engine is one of the worst limited engines I've ever seen. But then again, I come from IL2 where it's expected to be able to recreate the war (on the ground or in the air) of the theater you are flying in. I guess I'm spoiled in that regards. Even though it's not properly working (IL2COD as a whole) there is no netcode out there that even holds a candle to IL2 (both new and old)let alone the game engine. The people crying about lack of content have no idea just how much can be done or recreated for that matter. But if you think you are going to be able to host massive battles off a PC that was good in 2008, you're seriously kidding yourself.
