fantastic news, oleg is again involved with the new project !!
looks like the 40$ payment for the basic version of the game is a really good deal, you'd get the full game in 12 months and all of the planes of the original release are included (compared to the 90$ of the RoF-BS project and their pay to win sales strategy for a much less ). DCs has been known over the years to provide really good deals on the prepaid beta participation, they have a proven track record on releasing games on time, and it is MUCH cheaper then buying it later at release time !
i am joining the funding with 100$, and i see that as paying 50$ for the game and giving them 50$ in good-will money to help the project along and make it more likely to succeed. many of us here (il2 series fans) previously said we'd be willing to pay extra to get full printed aircraft manuals and game documentation, which is what the 70 and 80$ options give you. well worth it for those that want a deluxe version of the new simulator and all the hard copy manuals
folks, what luthier says in that clip is probably right (sadly),
this is our last best chance to ever get a software developer to launch into creating such an ambitious fully featured and ultra realistic military grade ww2 simulation project. and with the new EDGE grafix engine near finished already, luthier is basically building the ww2 era "world" for it, not creating a new game and gfx engine from scratch (DCS already has a campaign engine etc). so
if you ever want that level of ww2 era flight simulator to succeed, and dont want to wait for 10 years and have DCS add one piece at a time in slow motion to their ww2 era project, this is the time to put some money into it and help it accelerate and become a reality in just 12 months time
with the financial mismanagement that happened with the SoW-CoD project, many software houses would be triple shy before they ever consider launching into anything as ambitious as that again (or they choose to create a money making dumbded down arcade project instead), and having luthier be able to team up with DCS to keep building our dream sim is a god sent golden opportunity that is not to be missed, no-one will ever attempt this if it doesnt succeed in raising the funds they need
tell your friends, borrow money from your dad, sell your cats and dogs if you need to, but
this is the time to act or shutup forever !! whatever joy and pleasure you have had from the il2 series over the years, this is the time to give something back and dig deep and
help our hobby to continue for many more years, its now or never