I hate to say it; this sim is as crappy and ugly as the soviet plane that bears its name. NOT customizable to any degree. I have flown every sim on the market, and this one ranks DEAD LAST behind "luftwaffe commander". total waste of time and money. Do NOT believe the hype. I think the soviet mafia paid off some people. I've never seen a more BAREBONES and clunky piece of rubbish.

Well, its not my fault you have absolutely no talent at this flight sim or a crappy computer. This game totaly PWNS in my opinion.

Sim Fan, you are so wrong. I have played on almost every military flight sim since "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe", and my honest opinion is that IL2 and "Forgotten Battles" are the best sims of historic aircraft that you can buy (by a long chalk).

BushFA

Honestly, go check out a review.

The game is a prize, even now in 2006.

Gamespot rating 9.2 . Yeehaaw!!

I don't know about u but i liked the game so much, and I usually play aviation simulators, that is insane to say something like what honest sim attested.

It all about being realistic...realistic landings and takeoffs, turbulences, u can even see how ur pilot puts the oxygen mask above 3000 meters of altitude, so they worked even on the details. Not to mention the realism of the hits and how the plane comports after taking several of them. Bullets are affected by gravity, and u can do some pretty realistic acrobatics with the plane, and control every part of it.

And the plain indeed aren't fully customizable, but this thing is also realistic, in WW2 u pilots weren't flying with what they wanted but with what they get, it wasn't really up to u. But beside that u can even put ur picture on ur plane because the resources of the game are made so that they let u to do that.

And the missions where u have to take off and land on a carrier, wow they are insane. It's so hard that took me 3 days to properly land on a carrier, u have to use every last knowledge about flight...how to use ur flaps, air brakes, and even if u land with ur canopy open can effect ur landing because it implements more drag.

I don't really understand what can u want more from a flight simulator. And yeah the engine management is pretty complex , and they even pay attention at the ranks, the higher ur ranks are the more planes u have in ur command and also a high rank allows u to chose ur own weapons.

I think u didn't played it enough and judge it too quickly, because at the beginning it takes quite some time only to make a decent take off.