With regard to numbers of aircraft needed to be seen in a COD mission emulating raids of the Battle of Britain time frame, I should think that no more than a couple of hundred would suffice. If the Luftwaffe flew a maximum of 1500 "sorties" on some 'maximum effort' days across the breadth of southeast England against geographically separated targets, and over a duration of several hours, clearly no more than a few hundred would be at any specific location-in-space and time.
The USAAF attacks on Germany in 44 and 45 did number in excess of 1000 bombers, and perhaps an equal or larger number of fighters, but that stream of bombers and escorting fighters would likewise have been spread out in time-and-space. Thus, again, even an emulation of an air battle over Germany in '45 would not require more than a few hundred aircraft to be 'spawned' in a COD game/flightsim at any one point in time.
Therefore, I think that the investigation into 'smoothness' of the simulation in handling 1600+ simultaneous aircraft is interesting only in theoreticals. Of course, if it can be shown (tweaked) that such a massive number of aircraft can be generated smoothly, that bodes very well for extremely smooth, non-stuttering air battles of a realistic 300 aircraft or so.
imho
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