I've been flying WW2 flight off and on for like 10 years going back to IL-2 1946 and much more seriously for the last three ever since I joined SCG. I used to participate in the massive SEOW multiplayer campaigns in 1946 and those missions were some of the very best PvP gaming experiences of my entire life. I very much liked how you only got one life and one sortie per mission which made the flying experience much closer to that of a real life WWII pilot compared to your typical "quake air war" you see on regular servers. The scenarios were also historical reproductions which also added much more meaningful play. I'm a hardcore realism junkie!
I was disheartened to learn that the IL-2 BoX did not have something similar for me....except for the campaigns hosted by ACG. However, ACG had a strict requirement that you had to be exclusive squad member of ACG which made my participation practically impossible. (I've known of pilots who moonlighted with two different IL-2 accounts solely for the purpose of participating in ACG campaign events.) I became very excited when I heard about the rift in ACG and the formation of FTC from Bayern, and thanks to him, I'm being given the opportunity to fly with you guys here on a trial basis which I dearly hope works out well for the both of us. Only Tactical Air War (TAW), which we love dearly in SCG, offers the type of historical realism I crave which FTC campaigns will provide.
I'm also in the process of developing an IL-2 BoX training server, "SCG Ground Attack Training Server," which has much more functionality via programming scripts than your typical training servers. It will have the ability to change any environmental variable on the fly including temperature, winds, clouds, air pressure, etc. It will also have the ability for the pilot to request different maps and training scenarios on the fly. No other server has anything remotely close to this functionality and once I complete development (within the month) then I'll be happy to also open it up to FTC members too if anybody here is interested. Me and my squad mates like HvB take ground attack quite seriously and we need a test bed like this to hone in our deadly precision.
Welcome Limbo!