Oh and just correct an injustice in my original post, my daughter had an interest in my computer work as well, and was impressed with the IL-2 / UQMG stuff, and thought it was cool her old man did something with video games, but she is definitely more into music.
But for all, it is always a pleasure being a part of this happy dysfunctional IL-2 family.
CzechTexan, I remember you from the beginning of course. Didn't we discuss at some point the fairly large Czech community from Texas? Especially in the town of West? Man it has been years but even though my wife is gluten intolerant, she will take gluten-digestion pills just to have kolaches from West...
Forager, your compliment is appreciated, but I did fairly little for the community. The stuff that QTim, the original AAA crew did, and now SAS is much more significant.
enry711, it is always awesome to have people grow in this community. I have a nephew who has developed a liking to history, and am hoping to be able to bond with him... I mean, I have an insane-stupid number of military history books, most of them on military aviation...
vpmedia… at the time it was a badge of honor... then it faded... but having your kids care about it, priceless.
BalDaddy, I hope you installed the community Single mission addon (
https://www.sas1946.com/main/index.php/topic,62119.0.html), which amongst countless content, contains the missions I released from the original Demos, so you can play them in BAT. I still love playing those missions... every now and then I manage to come back in one piece in that P-39... I mean brutal weather, and you know, it made sense to be cautious of the Germans... those Ju-88 gunners were very, very, mean!
Mike, I know how you feel. When CFS3 came out, an obvious attempt to compete with IL-2 with the "Tactical Air Combat from the Leader in Flight Sims!" motto, I was in the USA, specifically in Mississippi. It was very hyped... I installed in excitement because, the more the merrier. I remember the complete sense of underwhelming feelings. I gave it another whirl buying the Aircraft Powerpack… but it went directly to the shelf. I have not really looked at it for years. Don't know why I still have the boxes... Something that to me was a lot more promising was the Strike Fighters series, including Project I, Wings Over Vietnam and Wings Over Europe. I spent some time with it, not anything that compares with IL-2, but I thought it was a good project. I tried Falcon series, and although Lock On and other DCS stuff was cool... I would rather fly a MiG-29 or a Viper in IL-2 to tell you the truth.
In summary, IL-2 was the only thing that gave me the type of satisfaction that the original Janes' WWII Fighters, as well as the very original pixel Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe sim gave me. Janes' was never able to capture that kind of quality for WW2 stuff again. The sad attempt at a SWOTL sequel was just that. Sad.
But to come back to AAA... that is a whole new post... Let me take a drink...