Overview
The latest release in the popular IL-2 Sturmovik franchise, Cliffs of Dover (Originally called Storm of War) was supposed to be released in 2006 using the original IL-2 engine, however 1C decided to start from scratch and develop a brand new engine for the game which has improved visuals and flight models.
Recreating the Battle of britain fought between the British RAF and the German Luftwaffe and Italian Air Force (apparently) in the summer of 1940, the game will feature over a dozen flyable aircraft rendered in astonishing detail.
Unlike previous titles, Cliffs of Dover will feature a fully linear campaign as opposed to randomly generated campaigns in other titles. Cliffs of Dover will also feature DirectX 11 support and players can now slug it out over the skies of Europe in massive 128 player battles.
Anti-Epilepsy Filter Issue
Just before Cliffs of Dover's release, Ubisoft had 1C install a filter that would prevent people from having seizures while playing the game. But this had an adverse effect on the graphics, causing the game to have a very low frame rate, removing much of the visuals (Prop blurs, debris and muzzle flashes) as well as removing SLI support. There is no option to turn off the filter, and this caused an outrage within the sim community.
In response to this, 1C released a patch several days after the release of Cliffs Of Dover enabling players to switch the filter on and off.
Aircraft
Royal Air Force
- Supermarine Spitfire (Mk. I and Mk. II variants)
- Hawker Hurricane Mk. I
- Bristol Blenheim Mk. V
- DH-82 Tiger Moth
- Avro Anson*
- Bristol Blenheim Mk. I*
- Bristol Beaufighter*
- Boulton-Paul Defiant*
- Gloster Gladiator*
- Vickers Wellington*
- Short Sunderland*
Luftwaffe
- Messerschmitt BF-109E-3
- Messerschmitt BF-110C
- Heinkel He-111
- Junkers Ju-87B
- Junkers Ju-88
- Bf-108*
- Dornier Do-17*
- Dornier Do-215*
- He-115*
- FW-200C*
Reggia Aeronautica (Italian Air Force)
- Fiat G.50
- Fiat BR.20
- Fiat CR.42*
*AI-Only.
System Requirements
- OS: Windows 7 / Vista SP2 / Windows XP SP3
- Processor: Pentium Dual-Core 2.0GHz or Athlon X2 3800 (Intel Core i5 2.66GHz or AMD Phenom II X4 2.6GHz recommended)
- RAM: 2GB (4GB recommended)
- Graphics: DirectX 9.0c compliant, 512Mb Video Card (1GB DirectX 10 recommended)
- DirectX: DirectX 9.0c or DirectX® 10
- Hard Drive: 10GB
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
- Online: Broadband connection with 128 kbps upstream or faster
*Supported Video Cards at time of release:
- ATI 4850/4870/5830/5850/5770/5870/6870/6950/6970
- NVidia: 8800/9800/250/260/275/285/460/465/470/480
Post Launch Community Development
IL-2 Cliffs of Dover's post launch development by 1C Company was officially ceased sometime around September of 2012, Cliffs of Dover launched with a plethora of issues that made fans of the series livid. 1C promised that they had plans to fix the game with regular updates, but as time progressed the updates were eventually halted and a promise was made that Cliffs of Dover would receive a variety of upgrades and fixes once development on the sequel was inevitably finished, unfortunately 1C instead decided to abandon IL-2: Cliffs of Dover entirely and move on to a new project with Rise of Flight developer 777 Studios called IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad which would use Rise of Flight's game engine and make any fixes and updates that could be brought from the new title to Cliffs of Dover, an impossibility.
However thanks to a group of community modders, IL-2 Cliffs of Dover is better off now than it ever was before. "Team Fusion" has since picked up the game's code and made significant visual, mechanical and optimization fixes and improvements such as adding contrails to aircraft flying at high altitude, different visual looks to aircraft that adhere more closely to reality, significant improvements in performance, visual detection of aircraft at range, flight model fixes and much more.
Team Fusion and the TF Mod for IL-2 Cliffs of Dover can be found on The Air Tactical Assault Group's website.
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