[el0375]

1. from what i played in my times of day ( i live in italy) usually evening. the are less players than my older experiences with Il-2 over hyperlobby. however i see often servers such as ATAGS axis vs allies having most of the time over 25 players. over these servers i think i have seen many times more than 40-50. perhaps ATAG can give much more detailed info about the server. there is also Repka that is quite populated , duels however is password protected.neverthess also some of repka i have seen them with many players. there also another pair of servers with a decent amount in order to have continues dogfights in small maps. So it will be much more towards dogfight, however i see coop servers etc, however password protected.

something really positive i have noted is that most of servers run on almost full realism. CEM being really a nice and common example. Servers such as ATAG and REPKA run on full realism ( apart i think antropomorphic control). So in terms of realism its already on a nice advanced stage , personally i would prefer having the outside view of my plane as to be honest i am not confortable moving my camera (also with the mouse) while i have control of joystick( with mine changes too much the angle so i cant really follow a plane). + i am not a good pilot yet. my situational awareness while flying in closed cokpit is really bad ( cant keep track of the target with all the manouvering)
What i have noted is that such realism option really push the game towards cooperation as knowing position of things its a bit harder to know. Consequently its much better if you head over teamspeak , i feel the need to,but i am not admin on my pc and my mic is almsot broke, and the camera mic is useless with the ingame sound.

2. personally flying here and there i have not yet seen a really objective driven play. there are offcourse the objectives however i havent seem many try to accomplish them ( offcourse it is from my point of view)
3. With the visibility there is a problem discussed over a specific thread. In short you can see dots at distance however they dissapear at medium distance and reappear when already on close range.

i dont know in particular what to expect about your rig, my wild guess is pretty decent fps.
I have an i7 2600K stock 3.4 Ghz ( i know nothing about OC), ati 6750 stock, 16Gb ram and for me runs very well, only little problem is during take off with the dust and the mirrors( that dont work and are buggy). for me its matter of engine code optimisation and with the forthcoming patch i hope things get improved.
5. dont know really, weeks ago was on sale with steam. personally i expect it around the 30 $/Euros range or something like that.
P.S for the GPU here around the forums its been told the more Vram you have the better. especially if you move from one Gb to 2 or 3

hope it provides some info.
Anyways, if you buy it i welcome you on COD and hope to see you inflight!