Several questions before purchasing

[jermin]

Have been playing IL2 online since 2004. Seeing the online community of IL2 is about to die out, I'm considering switching to CoD.

Questions:

1. How active is the online play of CoD? What's the max and average number of contemporary global online player in a particular day?

2. What's the most preferred game type among online community? Are most players still playing air quakes in open cockpit with external views?

3. How does CoD deal with dot visibility? Is it difficult to spot distant aircrafts? Can one still use extremely low screen resolution to get bigger dots as in IL2?

4. How many FPS can I expect from my rig in a 40-player dogfight server (with moderate graphics settings)?

i7 920 @4.0G
3G DDR3 @ 1528MHz
GTX 295 stock

5. The cheapest source for the purchase?

Best regards,

[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!

[ATAG_MajorBorris]

Hi jermin,

Well it sounds like your about to buy a new car and not a $30 sim All kidding aside, if you love ww2 aviation and flight sims its a no brainer, seriously.

As far as the ATAG Axis&Allies server goes the server admins have spent thousands of hours setting up a stable, objective based mission thats alot of fun when your on coms and both sides are fighting for that last objective dueling back and forth for the victory.

Performance varies based on graphic preference but I think you should be fine but getting a 64bit operating system and min 4gb sys ram should be first(biggest bang for the buck), then optimize your game settings to see if a faster GPU with more vram is what you want or need.

When you do pull the trigger come over to the ATAG forums and get teamspeak3(its free) as we can help you in a tenth of the time it took us and coms greatly enhances enjoyment (teamwork, comradery, wingmen, etc)

See ya in the air!

[janpitor]

You may need to lower your resolution with 1GB card. Other option is to reduce textures quality considerably

[ATAG_Snapper]

Hi jermin,

I have little to add to el0375's excellent response above. You are welcome to visit us at ATAG over at http://theairtacticalassaultgroup.com/forum/forum.php to further your research. The ATAG Server is full switch, full realism and mission driven with clear objectives for both Red (Allies) and Blue (Axis) bombers and fighters alike. That said, anyone is free to fly the experience he wants ie. if you just want to fly a quick sortie looking for a dogfight - great. If you want to hook up with some other pilots to fly the specific missions -- great. If you have a squadron and want to enter as a group -- great.

ATAG also runs a Teamspeak server that any and all are welcome to use. The is no password for the server, there is no charge. Basically the only "rule" we have is that everyone show respect for the other with obviously no swearing or abuse over the chat window. This is a full war server - there are no rules re vulching, shoulder shooting, wheels down no-shooting, etc etc. If you find you're being repeatedly ground strafed, respawn at an inland airfield.

Not sure how well your system will run with a 40-plane scenario (not common in the ATAG server, but possible). Best results are gained with Win 7 64-bit and 6+ Gigs of RAM. Although CoD is a 32-bit system, things will get backed up a bit with CoD using up to 3 Gigs of RAM with the myriad of background processes that Windows 7 runs. Players that run XP do run CoD, but frequently suffer performance problems.

Your GTX 295 card is a good one, unfortunately CoD is not optimized for SLI (yet). I was able to run CoD quite well on a 285 card at medium-low settings; my 560 Ti card made a huge difference in performance. CoD does have a memory leak resulting in a crash to desktop with annoying frequency. A workaround is to delete the cache folder prior to each session - with varying results for each person who does this.

Don't know the cheapest location to buy CoD -- prices seem to vary tremendously.

Good luck and hope to welcome you to the ATAG server.

[Troll2k]

Steam,Getgamesgo,Justflight have had sales at different time.I have seen as much as 60% off.At the moment though,it appears they are at list price.($49.99)

In my opinion get the digital download.From what I understand the DVD is nothing more than a Steam installer.You do not gain anything from a boxed copy as the game is not on the disk.Unfortunately the Collector's Edition is not available in North America.

[pupo162]

1. How active is the online play of CoD? What's the max and average number of contemporary global online player in a particular day?

- not awfully bad, but i think its not enough. about 1/4 of il2 1946 nowadays. 2 full servers if you are lucky. if you want to play anytime you will be able too, but it will be the same 2 servers, with the same kind of gameplay.

2. What's the most preferred game type among online community? Are most players still playing air quakes in open cockpit with external views?

-mostly airquakes on full real/ icons on, and 1 full real server who hosts a mid channel dogfight. the first is a funny thing, the second as issues due to 3.

3. How does CoD deal with dot visibility? Is it difficult to spot distant aircrafts? Can one still use extremely low screen resolution to get bigger dots as in IL2?

- ATM there is a bug with dot visibility where planes disappear at mid range, that makes dot sighting and following next to impossible at some distances. there is a work around, but for me it renders the game even more unplayable. other than that, i believe doughts seem to be far more interesting, tough not perfect. there was a thread explaining how to improve this back in a while, i hope it was took in in consideration.

4. How many FPS can I expect from my rig in a 40-player dogfight server (with moderate graphics settings)?

i7 920 @4.0G
3G DDR3 @ 1528MHz
GTX 295 stock

-Be prepared for stuttring, every single system stutters every now and then. and memory leaks seem to cause a crash very commonly. hopefully this issues should be gone next patch.

5. The cheapest source for the purchase?
- dont know, probably steam.

[SlipBall]

Originally Posted by jermin

Have been playing IL2 online since 2004. Seeing the online community of IL2 is about to die out, I'm considering switching to CoD.

5. The cheapest source for the purchase?

Best regards,

What's 10 or 20 bucks in today's world

You will never fly 1946 again...its really awesome, the new sounds are incredible. I hope that you enjoy!

[5./JG27.Farber]

Just take the plunge, bugs and all its better than 1946 fb...

[Chivas]

COD is unfinished and buggy. The developers are still working hard every day optimizing and making improvements, and will add further patches when ready. There aren't many flying COD on line yet, but this will change when the sim is better optimized to allow players a more stable platform.

That said, I've flown IL-2 since the beta test days and find COD even with its warts, a more enjoyable experience especially with CEM enabled. BUT you will need a highly optimized gaming system to run COD with high settings until its optimized. COD needs your investment now not later, and buying it for 9.95 won't help them. Maybe buying it from STEAM will give the development the most benefit. The sim was released unfinished so it will take time to finish, but hopefully you will invest soon to give it a chance to possibly be the next benchmark in combat flight simming.