My own first thoughts

[FodderMonkey]

The thing I notice most on my first few playthroughs is how amazingly fast everything loads.  Launching the game is a mere fraction of IL2 BoX, and going from the pre-mission map to in-game is almost instantaneous.  I also have to agree with reviews I've watched on how small the game is compared to expectations.  You've really crammed this thing into the smallest possible footprint on my hard drive.  

The amount of overlap with IL2 BoX key bindings is also GREATLY appreciated!  I would suggest for the full-game release doing some kind of primer which covers, "if you're coming from BoX, here's what's the same from a control/key binding perspective, and here's what's changed".  Even just a scrollable page showing old vs new bindings would help speed acclimatization.

One negative I've found, however, is that I'm really struggling with the HUD aiming reticles.  I can't see them against clouds, etc.  They're too faint.  Maybe there's a way to adjust this and I'm missing it, but if not, the ability to change color and brightness would be much appreciated.  I get that this goes against authenticity, etc., but I'd just like to see where I'm aiming before I fire the guns.

Another complaint is that Alienware Command Center doesn't recognize the game for optimization because of the web-launch .exe setup.  I get that that's a "me" issue, and there's really nothing you can do about it (probably?), but it's frustrating.

The rest of my negative feedback has to do with flight handling and performance, but I'm 99% certain it's really just, "you're twice as high up and these are jets, so you can't fly them like BoX".  I also need to dial in my graphics performance before I can give a fair evaluation, so I'm just going to keep all that to myself.

Looking forward to the full game!