Cliffs of Dover Second Patch v1.00.14072

April 15th saw the release of the second patch for IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover. Another large step has been taken to address the inadequacies of the original release. Again download is automatic via the Steam platform.

Notable improvements in this release are in the graphics department again with frame rate being targeted and significantly improved for, quad core and above machines will see the most benefit here.

A texture quality slider has been added to enable those with lower specified machines to sacrifice visual quality if necessary to achieve better gameplay results.

Aircraft have also had an overhaul, in particular with the damage module where amendments will speed up gameplay whilst the aircraft is sustaining heavy fire. Many components of individual aircraft have also had individual graphical errors / omissions corrected.

Check out the Cliffs of Dover blog for a complete list of changes.

Cliffs of Dover First Patch v1.00.13954

Now that the dust has settled on the initial release of IL-2 Sturmovik: Cliffs of Dover in Europe it has to be said that the release didn’t go without it’s problems.

The main bone of contention has been the level of performance of the game. We all know that airplane simulator games can be very intensive on a systems resources, but even with a recommended spec PC the low frame rates and freezes in performance of the game have had many a forum member up in arms.

Graphically and from a gameplay perspective Cliffs of Dover is a sure fire winner, that just needed to address it’s initial teething troubles. Especially with the North American release of the game only a week away for Steam pre-orders.

Well the developers have listened and acted very quickly with the release of the first patch for the game on the 8th of April.  Approximately 50Mb in size and downloads automatically via Steam

What does the update bring to the table?

1. Draconian DRM restrictions on the game installation have been lifted. The Solidshield protection that required two forms of authorisation has been scrapped in favour of a standard enter the registration details on first installation.
2. Graphics Improvements. This is the big one with building optimisation and vegetation changes made to increase rate and prevent freezing respectively. A wider choice of resolutions is also now selectable.
3. Aircraft. Many fixes have been applied to the airplane simulators aircraft. These changes fix bugs, improve graphical performance, modify the damage system and alter some of the initial aircraft.
4. Memory tweaking has been performed to aid gameplay on lower spec’d systems.
5. Multiplayer GUI and server selection issues have been addressed.

All together an excellent first patch that should go a long way to placate gamers initially a little upset by the simulators performance.

The developers are also at pains to stress that the modifications are an on-going process to continue to tweak the game until it reaches an optimum state. To this end they are already working on SLI and Crossfire support and better handling of multicore functionality. Extra multiplayer maps are also in the pipeline.

I look forward to seeing how the game develops with interest.