Just as an aside, I have IL2, and there are a few things it does better than AHII in terms of realism OR gameplay, and alot it does worse.
The engine management "tricks" that the best IL2 pilots have discovered often do not relate to what you might read, in say, the P-51D manual.
The lack of g meters and stall buzzers I do not consider a step forward in realism. If you were in a real plane, you would have a butt in the seat and a hand on the stick. Something must be done in a simulation to make up for this lack of physical touch relationship with the aircraft. Airplanes are so much harder to trim properly in computer sims than in RL that I don't consider combat trim a major blow to realism, either.
The snap-view system is alot worse than AHII, though not as bad as CFSIII. I mean, imagine you want to check your six. Okay, you can't look directly back, fair enough, I couldn't turn my head completely backwards strapped into a cockpit. So you look back left and right at 45 degrees or so, which sorta covers yours six...EXCEPT....it is about 4 seconds for you "head" to swivel. Mouse views actually allow you to see your six better. Presumbably, the designers think you should be playing with TrackIR.
What will really get you though is the near impotence of 50 cals in IL2. A HurriIs .303s are actually as destructive, maybe even slightly more so, in IL2 than 6 .50s.
