[Tempest123]

Good post, these are some of the things that have always confused me about IL2. It's very realistic in certain areas, but not in others. The airfields are a perfect example, with obstacles around the runway, and the thin runways (but that is not always the case on certain maps, or with custom runways). The new Solomons map has great, historically accurate airfields, and I understand its not really feasible to redo all the other maps.
Takeoff needs to be corrected, but spawning from static plane positions should solve this for custom missions. I'm not sure why by default the aircraft would be set up line astern down the runway for takeoff, if you're the leader you're starting your takeoff from 1/4 of the way down the runway, that's bogus, esp. if your carrying bombs.
Flight planning needs work, and this was one thing I noticed immediately back in 2001 when I got Il2, and it has seen a little improvement but not much. There is no altitude shown for waypoints, and that's basic. No time for different legs, no fuel consideration (its a guessing game for the player), no speed listed either, or type of formation and no wind information. It leaves a lot for the player to include in the briefing, and unless you write it down, its missing from the in-flight map anyways. This forces the player to hit auto pilot on missions with no nav-aids because there isn't enough info.
The funny thing is that these are all factors that can be set in the FMB (ex. wind can now be set in great detail), so it's not like IL2 is lacking in realism, they just are hidden on the briefing map.


And the air-ground comms are so bad (expect maybe the vectors, these are okay). Why does the tower yell at aircraft in panic telling them to go around, and why does the tower sound angry when I ask for landing clearance? Sounds like someone left the janitor to run the airfield. I would gladly volunteer my voice to fix some of these things.