homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation IL-2: Cliffs of Dover Tell me about the state of Cliffs of Dover

The game got pretty bad reviews at Gamespot when it was released but that was a while ago and there must have been patches since then.

I'm getting ready to build a new PC. Cliffs will be definitely on my shopping list as long as I'm confident the most glaring problems have been ironed out...

I'm keeping my hopes alive. Falcon 4.0 started out as a broken product too...

The patches are helping but progress is slow, so if you set expectations accordingly and you're 'in to' the genre then there is some fun to be had.

Also, use this rather than the Gamespot review :

http://www.simhq.com/_air13/air_500a.html

Much improved compared to the state that it was released in, but still has ways to go before one can call it a complete product. However, it is fixed enough that one can enjoy some virtual flying.

Lets not forget a lot depends on how beefy your system is.

You definitely need a very good system to avoid the problems most people are having. I've never had a problem with the game with my system other than game bugs, and unfinished features. The good news is they are still working on the sim, but you can't expect the sim to be totally fixed in a few months, when it has taken years to get to this point. That said there is still enough working features to make the sim very entertaining as is, and it will only get better, if its supported by devs and community.

Chivas, I notice you still have your MSFFB2 in your sig.
Can you get the software to work on Win7(64bit), together with CoD?

p.s. not entirey OT, I'm also trying to figure out whether I should return to the series.

The MSFF2 works well with COD, but the MSFF2 software doesn't work with Win 7 64bit so you have to use COD's control software to assign keys for the joystick. I can't assign Macros to my joystick, but I have enough buttons and rotaries on my Cougar throttle to assign most Macros etc that I need for COD.

As far as COD goes buy it now, even in this beta state, if you'd like to see it have a chance to expand like the original IL-2 series. Its a cheap investment. considering the countless hours of entertainment most of us enjoyed from the original series.

I have the boxed version right here in my desk, but waiting to install until AT LEAST after the next patch.
Rise of Flight will do just fine until CLoD is a bit more refined.

It runs pretty well on my 3 year old lower-middle range PC. Except when there are tons of planes over land, or London. It's ok for flying quick missions or one-off user made missions. Can't talk about multiplayer because I've never tried it.

My opinion is there's not enough immersion and not enough "game" elements to keep me interested in it. What I mean by that is there's no career mode with kill tracking, promotions, medals etc. The campaigns are complete crap too. There's no feeling at all of being part of the Battle of Britain.

If you just want to fly around England and the channel with BoB era planes, then it works perfectly fine for doing that. Just don't expect much and you'll be ok.

Your enjoyment will totally depend on what you want out of the game. I don't personally get much from it, but other people here really do.

Binned.. and has been for weeks, until the next patch arrives, if it doesn't sort it in a major way, then iy will get binned again until the next one, and so on.
As already stated, there is no feeling whatsoever about being involved in the battle that it is supposed to represent.. which is sad as I love this period in history.

Thx for your reply.

I know there used to be a method to get the software working on XP, allthough it never worked in my case...so for this, Win7/64b is a no-go alltogether, ok.
But I read about upcoming performance-improvements in the next patch, so I'll wait and see what happens.
Hardware shoudldn't be a problem, I have a brandnew high-end PC.

Any rumours/plans for an Ostfront-expansion?
Neither the Brittish, nor the German planes attrackt me that much :P
Back in the IL2-days, I used to fly Sturmoviks, for the 61ShAP.

+1

If you fly mainly online, it might worth having a go at it. You can get it for ~20 bucks, so not a terrible waste if you hate it.

Offline gameplay value is zero to nil tho, as the AI is badly broken - and apparently the prospects for an improvement in the short term are poor, if the "updates" so far are an indication.

my 2 cents

You aren't flying online, i assume.

Yesterday 2 squadmembers and me visited the Server from III./JG27 which has a working mission system.

As a destroyer-squad we did choose Abbeville where the Erprobungsgruppe 210 is stationed, took a Bf110C-7 each and joined the battle.

With Tab and 4 we could look up if there is a mission in progress, there was none so we generated a mission with the press of a button.

"Fly a fighter sweep in sector AO17 to clear the sky for our bombers which will come from AY18 in 18 minutes."

Ok, we left the planes and switched the loadout from JaBo to fighter with 60% fuel.

Engines started, during warm up setting of the gyro, the heading indicator, the autopilot direction, the fuel-tank indicator, the flaps to 20� and the ReVi illumination on.

Taxiing to the runway, number 2 is too eager and his wingtip and number ones collide, damn, new planes and same procedure, as the time is running number three starts alone, scouting.

Number one and two are starting close thereafter, turn on course, trim for climbing and set autopilot.

After a leisurely 20 min. flight, during which the ground-control called out enemy airplanes in the target sector at "Kirchturm 1" 100m alt.,

Number three, at 5000m, calls out the "Pelikane" as a little convoy of seven medium tankers in the target area, Number one and two are 20 km away at 4000m.

Number two the calls out: 9 unknown contacts (Fragezeichen) at our 2 o'clock high, three v's. course toward target area.

Our conclusion (one and two's): Must be the bombers, enemy target should be at 100 m and are probably climbing toward the Bombers, so lets get down, with energy advantage, and get em.

Three is still shadowing the convoi in about 5000m, one dives toward the convoy and two covers one's back.

Two calls out: The "Fragezeichen"(unknown contacts) are diving now, Rear gunner calls out: enemy airplanes on our six! Tracers all around!

The nine "Bombers" are really nine Spitfires, which are really interested in my 110, like moths to the light, every time i look back i see two or three firing at me.

Small fuel leak, large fuel leak, hydraulik line broken, fuel fire in engine 1, cylinderhead burning engine one, canopy away, hanging under the chute in 200m.

During my f(l)ight the Stukas scored some hits and where escorted uneventful home by two and three.

Mission accomplished, though not the way i had imagined.

Remark to myself: Assumptions might be deadly!

To the Quoted, i couldn't imagine to get much more immersion aka "the feeling of being there" !

I've been playing the original IL2 series from the start.. I loved the online scene, did all of the wars and was part of a huge online squad.. There was always the feeling of 'being there' and part of something much bigger than the game.
I also loved the offline missions and campaigns that were lovingly crafted and put together by talented individuals, and made many offline missions myself.
In the direct successor to that series I feel non of the above, not a jot.. We all know on here, all of us, why that is, and I'm not going to go over all the masses of faults this game has as its been done to death already..
I'm a massive fan of oleg and crew and always have been.. but they dropped the ball on this one, and I'm sorry, but thats a fact. I won't bury my head in the sand and pretend otherwise.
I still have faith that eventualy the team will sort this shambles out, but when I see update after update dealing with everything but the core problems that surround the game, I just despair at times..
I'm hanging on as a fan, but they have such a long way to go with this yet to get the kind of fanbase they used to have with the original.

Online has saved the game for me.I never played il2 online and didnot need too but CLOD does not have enough going for it in offline mode right now.As it has been said the campaigns are a joke and you will get bored doing the stock missions,the fmb will keep you going for a while but that also got boring for me in the end.That being said online has me hooked,fighting against other humanbeings is so much fun(your heart races when you get in a dogfight,completely emersed).The folks online like this forum are really helpfull most are the same people.So if you are going to stay offline know the limtations of CLOD,online can keep the fun going until they hopefully fix it.


Neil

I've had a lot of fun with it in the limited time i have played. I've been pretty busy and traveling a lot over the last few months. I'm an online player, so not much single player for me, except to test my settings. I still don't have the beta patch either, and I hear it makes it even better. At this point, I'll just wait for steam to update when it's officially released. looking forward to this winter when work normally slows down, and I'll have a chance to really play. I do have a fairly hi-end system (950@4gHz and 2X6870's), so the game has always been playable, and run pretty well for me, at least it has from the time i bought in, which was the North American release.

So overall, especially looking back at other some other games i have had (including the original il2 from before day 1) , I'd say the state of the game is about normal and getting better. I also look at the history of this series, and have high hopes that in the next few years, this will be the one of the best flight sim games out there.(and probably the only decent ww2 sim)

There's still a lot of work to be done but you can get it playable. It's worth taking for a spin to see the potential.

Yeah, but welcome to par for the course with IL2.
We've always relied on user made content.

Has multicore support improved? I get by with a middling system flying RoF at good/above middle settings precisely because multicore support is excellent.

I simply do not have the means to upgrade at this time, but CoD could be a nice B-day gift from my wife