IL-2 (series)

Understanding the difference between the three engines

• TLDR: There are three engines:

  • the original engine (usually referred to as “IL-2 1946” as that’s the last DLC made for that engine),

  • the v2 engine by the original dev (referred to as the CLoD engine for “Cliffs of Dover” as that was the initial release under that engine),

  • the Rise of Flight engine, which was adapted by the Rise of Flight dev to continue the IL-2 series after the original dev left and tried deleting all the source code (this engine is referred to as “Great Battles”, “GB”, or “BoX” for “Battle of X”).

  • It seems the consensus is that the CLoD engine is on track to be the best one (most realistic), followed by IL-2 1946, and then the GB engine last.

• IL-2 CLoD Interview - This Flight Sim Is Not Giving Up

  • Summary of the story of the series:

    1. I had always found this game confusing because there were so many releases and I didn’t understand which one people were actually playing and raving about.

    2. 2001 - A solo developer named Oleg Maddox (who the lead team member in the interview calls a genius) created the first game, IL-2 Sturmovik, then shopped it around until he found publishers 1C and Ubisoft. The game was a huge success.

    3. 2002-2009 - They release various expansions: Forgotton Battles (2003), Pacific Fighters (2004), 1946 (2006).

    4. 2009(?)-2011 - Oleg then worked with 1C to fund an ambitious second iteration of the engine: IL-2 Cliffs of Dover (CLoD), but after a few years 1C got nervous about the cost of development with no end in sight, there was some kind of major disagreement, and Oleg seems to have tried to sabotage the project by deleting all the code he could find and abandoning the project.

    5. 1C tried bringing in another team to finish the project but it was a disaster on launch in 2011. They don’t go into detail but I guess it was buggy.

    6. 2013-2020 - 1C then got another developer, Jason Williams to adapt his flight sim engine that he’d created for Rise of Flight (a WW1 combat flight sim) to create another sub-series in the IL-2 series: IL-2: Great Battles (kind of like how CMx1 and CMx2 are engine-specific sub-series in the Combat Mission series). They released IL-2: Battle of Stalingrad (2013), Battle for Moscow (2016), Battle of Kuban (2018), Battle of Bodenplatte (2019), Battle of Normandy (2022), Flying Circus (2019, this is a WW1 game), Tank Crew (2020). All of these games were using the Rise-of-Flight engine, not the original IL-2 engine.

    7. Modders continued trying to fix up CLoD and reaching out to 1C, and they eventually negotiated a deal where they could access the source code to work unpaid in exchange for royalties on the back-end of DLCs to be released.

    8. The code they got was not the latest version and was missing tooling (like the map creation tool), making it sound like Oleg tried to delete all the code before he left. It was ~1.6 million lines of code. They had to figure out how everything worked, develop the tooling etc.

    9. Now they’re planning to release a new series of DLCs using this engine, which Enigma says is a superior engine to the Rise-of-Flight engine for modeling WW2 combat (which makes sense). He says the damage model is better and it can handle lots of AI units (which DCS apparently struggles with).

• Steam review comparing the CLoD engine to the Great Battles engine:

  • As someone who loves BoX, I find CLoD just does a lot of things better that I really enjoy:

  • The beautifully modelled cockpits, which are clickable and interactable are amazing to fly in,

  • The damage model is great and feels a lot more detailed, with actual individual systems damage modelled depending on what gets hit (not just a generic 'engine damaged'), and bullet holes actually appear where you get shot, with incredible damage detailing (I had a great moment today where the wing of my Spitfire got hit by a cannon shell and I could see my Hispano cannon and all the inner parts of that section of the wing exposed).

  • The engine system is also incredible, you actually monitor things like oil and coolant temps instead of just trying to stick to the fantasy engine killing timers in BoX, and can run your engine to it's absolute limits as long as you manage it right.

  • The flight model just feels better in my opinion too, I can almost physically feel the weight and handling of each different plane.

  • Sounds are incredible too, the sounds of a dogfight swirling around you, the sounds of rounds whipping past you and the chatter of machine guns and thumps of cannon fire interspersing it are awesome, every different gun has such a distinctive sound you can recognize. I also love the creaks and groans of the airframe when it's under high stress in hard maneuvers, and the flutter of wind from unsealed cockpits (like the sound you get when you're driving a car and one window is open, that gets more intense the faster you go).

  • The game can also handle huge amounts of aircraft in the air at once without breaking a sweat (up to 100 in multiplayer), so you can have huge aerial battles with literally dozens of planes in the air at once (there's a default quick mission with probably around four dozen planes in it at once, with the option to have even more).

  • If you're into Singleplayer, the AI is miles better than the mindless turn zombies of BoX. It almost feels like you're fighting a real human player with all the erratic bobbing and weaving and maneuvering, and they actually take snapshots, deflection shots and potshots at you. And the AI somehow seem to make random mistakes at times, like manuevering into the ground when you're dogfighting at super low alts, which just adds to the random 'human' element that makes the AI feel more real. I've never been challenged by BoX AI, but I actually get challenged and have tons of fun fighting CLoD AI. The AI actually fly in formations, chatter on the radio to let you know whats happening or what they're doing and don't just disappear, and radio commands actually work well, and your wingman actually sticks with you and helps out.

  • The GUI is probably the weakest point of the sim, and definitely feels dated, but I don't care as I spend more time flying than looking at the menu, so I can overlook something as shallow as that. Some people complain about the control set ups and GUI, but I have honestly never had any issue setting up all my controls and joystick curves

  • There are some minor things that can show the age of the engine, like the explosion animations of a plane crashing into the ground

  • TLDR: Tobruk/CLoD has tons of details that make it feel alive, compared to the almost clinical "game" feel of BoX. You can feel the passion and thought that went into it.