I'm a huge fan of flight sims, going back to the days of F-15 Strike Eagle on the Commodore 64, and have played most of them up through the early 2000s. There are two kinds of flight sims, the survey sim and the study sim. Study sims are pretty rare these days, and consist of one airframe with maybe some different versions for replay value (think the two version of the AH-64 in Jane's Longbow) and they tend to be as detailed as possible given the technology available at the time. Survey sims are those with many different types of aircraft to choose from, but aren't typically as in depth as the Study sim since there are more aircraft to code. IL-2 is one of the most detailed WWII Survey sims on the market, only it's two sequels (Cliffs of Dover and Stalingrad) surpass this game in the shear amount of detail offered. When IL-2 was first released, it offered only a few flyable airframes with variants: IL-2, MiG-3, Yak-1 through -9, Bf-109, FW-190, and I believe the Ju-87. Basically, the major aircraft of the Eastern Front during WWII. After years of patches and add-ons, the number of planes and variants has jumped to around 300 or so flyable aircraft, with maps that cover most of the major theaters of the war, The complexities of flight and air combat are there, and this sim requires much from flight sim pilots to learn how to fly and flight in these planes. I don't know what patch version the GOG release of IL-2 is up to, but there are 3rd party patches that have added new features, updated AI, new planes, and new maps. Current version is 4.13.
