OK I have good and bad news. Good news is, wooden block planes are gone. I uninstalled and deleted the files, then redownloaded from Steam (since I activated through the gamersgate download, its still activated on my steam account, wewt!). The redownload seems to have fixed the major graphical errors, and it now runs ok on medium. However there are still major graphical problems, such as things in one area looking great, and then a few millimeters to the right, some piece of window frame looks like its from Half Life 1. Loading seems faster, and the lag is LESS, but it is still enough to make it unplayable. It took multiple passes while flying a Me110 to knock down 6 wellington bombers, while on invulnerable and not trying at all to evade, just to fly through and knock them down. normally, this should take two or so passes, however I found it impossible to draw a bead. As I closed in and commenced firing, the lag would spike, and I'd find all my tracers flying into empty air.
Sound is still utter crap, and the controls are still not working right. Things don't open the way they should, the mouse still just shows up as a cursor, and I can't get the turret guns to work with the mouse. They either seem to work with arrow keys on the keyboard that require either fervent tapping for slow movement, or holding it down for a slight jump, followed by finding yourself pointing the opposite direction in an instant; OR with the joystick, which is next to impossible to aim with, and which still seems to require you to use the mouse to fire, meaning you have to use your other hand to do the joystick, making it even MORE difficult.
Other controls just don't seem to function. The "O" key is mapped to open the canopy. And it does. But then it doesn't close the canopy. What I found was that "crtl C" was to "open the turret". Ok, so I press that. It snaps me back to the pilots chair.... I press it again, it snaps me back to the gunners seat, and closes the canopy. I press O whilst flying the me110. it opens the pilots canopy. This time, I do the crtl C. It snaps to the rear gunner. I press it again, it snaps to the pilot, BUT only closes the side canopy. The top part that fold up and over the back of the plane is still wide open, and no key stroke I could find could close it.
All in all, I give it a 2 out of 5 currently. This game is in need of MAJOR overhaul. In its current state, it is unplayable, unless you wanna be jumping all over the screen, have constant graphical glitches, and find out that half your key binds don't do anything, and the other half don't work at all.
Oh, and remember the nice map in IL-2, the one that was made to look like a good pilots map, that automatically opened to where your plane was, and that zoomed with just a few click? Yeah, now its a windows 95 window that doesn't snap to your plane, doesn't move with your plane, and zooming is through tedious mouse wheel scrolling.
Edit: Just ran through the first training flight, just a basic fly in a square kinda thing. Laggy like mad, but it IS possible to fly, just no maneuvers. however, at the end, the co-pilot trainer guy says "Ok, I'll take over and land." He proceeded to dive quickly, come into a field, crash land, and end up looking like this.
It would have been worse, were it not for me having every realism setting except clouds switched off....
Oh, and yes, that is what the ground looks like....