So much for "to each his own"... ouch! For what it's worth, I base my knowledge of WWII aircraft on years of (admittedly casual) study of various sources, including talking in person with WWII fighter pilots (would that be an accurate source?), and my knowledge of aircraft performance on over 200 hrs. flying real aircraft, including some aerobatics. A world away from flying WWII fighters, I know, but the same basic rules apply- the numbers are different, that's all. And as long as we're splitting hairs, the white smoke thing refers to oil coming in contact with the hot engine; I only mentioned it because I noticed in PF if the oil res. is punctured or whatever, the plane starts streaming black smoke. Haven't really noticed the excessive gun smoke (my bad on that misread), but I don't doubt it- ubisoft definitely goes for the drama in the exterior views. I'll check on the symmetrical damage thing, too- that's stupid.
I was a little annoyed at first by the tendency of most of the IL2/PF planes to stall when least expected to, but I've learned to deal with it. I'm pretty convinced that CFS3 is more forgiving in this regard because they made it easier. But one of the things I like about PF2 is that there's plenty of audible and visual warning (shaking and slipstream noise) of an impending stall, so my last few flights have been much better... given enough altitude, even if I do lose it for a second, they seem to recover in a realistic fashion (I don't know for sure, having never flown anything quite like these planes, but dump nose/opposite rudder usual yields the same result in PF as it has in my own experience in real aircraft). Anyway, we could go on and on like this- what's needed to really answer the questions about realism is to put matching fighters from each sim through identical flight tests, then compare the results for both aircraft to some accepted historical description of performance, i.e. the manufacturer's manual, or perhaps their production test results. I'd rather be dogfighting, but maybe I'll try it.
Both of these sims have their good and bad points, but the bottom line, for me at least, is that IL2/PF gives a more realistic experience, primarily in having a workable view and being forced to work within the aircrafts' limitations. Those two factors are what drove me away from CFS3.
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