I have a PIII700 256Mb RAM, GF2 MX, and ADSL. I put the game at 1024x768 16bit color. Detail is high for most everything except landscape, and I do this for purposes of spotting aircraft. Otherwise, I'd have landscape up at Medium to High, since my system can handle it fine. Online play is pretty smooth now (BETA-Ver.4 here) with very very little lag, if any. I haven't played with more than 4 people, but we were playing with at least 10-20 AI aircraft too, and some ships. The game has progressed quite nicely from the initial beta versions to this latest. Oh, and I put it in OpenGL mode, rather than DirectX. I am extremely impressed with this game. Though it's not MMG material, it does set itself apart as its own class of game when you combine all that il2 offers.
I'm pretty certain this game will be out by late November in the west.
Boroda:
Are you sure about the delayed publishing in Russia? UbiSoft have no distribution rights there, it's all 1C's. There could be a whole another agenda wrt the Russian release...