How it appears has a lot to do with what you are used to and expect.

BTW, is it still 2012? I got my original IL-2 in late 2001 just after it came out. Did I fall asleep for a couple years and not notice?

G: MOD managers can work but I have experienced problems when the game would not start after I de-mod. Example, I love HSFX, but when I went from HSFX mod to clean 4.11 the game would not launch. I'm sure folks here can tell you the details why it happens but for me, I feel more comfortable with separate folders for each.

the original IL-2 had these crappy 512*512 all green detail and bump map less ground textures...the stock game still has these...

nowdays modders mainly use 1024*1024 photrealistic bump mapped ground textures, difference is huge!

another example: orginal 109 cockpits were around 5 MB (the stock game still has these), the one I'm currently using in DBW is 80Mb, detail increase is dramatic!

so right now DBW 1.71 is the best option to play this game
http://www.sas1946.com/main/index.ph...c,21514.0.html
its for 4.10...
imo 4.11 version is pretty far away

max detail for nvida, edit conf.ini in the game folder:

For 4.11, HSFX 6 is around the corner, for me that will be the new best......

As an addendum to the above, you can also set Effects=2 for a little bit better cannon hit effect, flak bursts, stuff like that. I think it makes a serious difference. Will show a shot or two of what I mean.

First mission flown after getting my conf file squared away, I had never seen IL2 look like this on MY screen!
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1335015407
In pit view, notice the white 20mm shell explosions. They are much more transparent and smoke like with Effects=2. Hard to see in a still screen.
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1335015454
Same view, but from the victims POV......lol
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1335015454
Just a shot to show what IL2 can still do. Immersion is key right? Well, these shots show what immersion means to me.
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1335015661
This was an epic dogfight! You might notice, we're in a rolling scissors about 70 meters or so in the air. Thank god all those Fulmars have for armament is .303s, otherwise my goose would have been cooked!!!
http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/attachm...1&d=1335015661

Just for comparisons sake for anyone looking at the thread, my setup is as follows:
AMD Athlon 7550 Dual-Core @2.5Ghz
3GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia 8400GS w/512MB DDR2 RAM DX10 capable
320GB SATA Hard Drive
Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick
X52 FCS throttle unit (connection to stick crapped out, found I liked mixing the two better then either one by themselves!)

As you can see, this is a power house gaming rig! :rolleyes: LoL Seriously, the weakest part is my graphics card as it's not built so much for gaming as it is for video decoding and editing, but it will work for any 3D task, just not as well as say an 8800GT. Even taking this into consideration, I am able to run IL2 maxed out in 1366x768 with only a slight slowdown from time to time.

One other thing, I use Water=3 to keep the frames up flying over water, which I do a LOT. Water=4 looks great and runs well enough, but the improvement over 3 doesn't justify the performance hit, and 3 looks just fine to my eyes used to integrated graphics cards (never again!)

The original ran on my 1Gz Athlon with 1G RAM and a Voodoo3 card. The latest requires about twice the hardware to get less than medium level graphics. A lot of us don't have anything like the latest hardware to get up on and sneer from.

The shots look great. Especially the second last one.
So what mod are you using for this level of detail?

The shots below are from 4.11.1....unmodded.

Aviar

IL2 UP3RC4 no touch ups

and 3 more