The military simulation game is getting a new playable nation

Gaijin Entertainment announces “Fire and Ice”, the next major content update for the military online action game War Thunder. It will bring Finnish ground and air force to the game, as well as a new map inspired by this Scandinavian country. Tech trees of other countries will also get new ground vehicles, naval vessels, aircraft and helicopters, including those equipped with a weapon type completely new to War Thunder. The “Fire and Ice” update will become available to the players in the coming weeks.

Check out the trailer HERE.

The Finnish Armed Forces has quite an experience in military conflicts as it took part in the Winter War against the USSR, in World War II and a number of joint peacekeeping missions with NATO. The country typically used imported equipment from various manufacturers (including captured vehicles), adapting it for its own needs. For example, the British-produced Vickers Mk.E light tanks have not been adopted by the UK military, but were widely used by foreign operators, including Finland. Another unique example is the BT-42, a strange but very interesting conversion of captured Soviet BT-7s, recreated into assault guns with a British 4.5-inch howitzer and a turret of local Finnish design. After WW2, Finland purchased equipment from both the USSR and Western countries, so a user playing for Finland will have access to the strangest combinations of vehicles, i.e. the British-produced Vampire FB 52A fighter jet and the Soviet-produced T-72M tank (export version of the T-72A, appearing in the game for the very first time).

Finland land and air research lines will be a part of the Swedish tech tree (similar to how the South African vehicle line is a part of the UK tech tree) in War Thunder. This approach will greatly expand the tactical options for players who are already using Swedish vehicles and would like to experiment with their vehicle setup.

Information about other new features of the Fire and Ice update will be published on the official War Thunder website in the coming weeks.

Today, 1C Game Studios released the Churchill update for their WWII tank simulator IL-2 Sturmovik: Tank Crew – Clash of Prokhorovka, which is just one part of the Great Battles series for IL-2 Sturmovik. The Churchill update includes the release of the Churchill Mark IV battle tank which was used in WWII and a lot more which you can read about here.

In IL-2 Sturmovik: Tank Crew, players operate some of WWII’s greatest battle tanks in close quarters ground combat missions during the Battle of Kursk. The game can be enjoyed as either a stand-alone product or integrated with other Great Battles titles such as Battle of Stalingrad, Battle of Moscow, Battle of Kuban and Battle of Bodenplatte to create a massive WWII air and ground combat simulation.

IL-2 Sturmovik: Tank Crew allows players to command a tank crew in single and multiplayer environments and battle enemies in highly-detailed intense missions with grueling combat where maneuverability and exposing tank vulnerabilities is vital to surviving and winning.

The Churchill Infantry Tank

One of the heaviest Allied tanks of the war, the Churchill entered the war during the Dieppe Raid in France in August 1942. It saw action in North Africa, Italy, and on the Eastern Front. The versatile chassis design was used as the basis for many specialized vehicles throughout the war.

The Churchill Mark IV was the most numerous of the series, with 1,622 produced. Virtually identical to the Churchill Mark III, the main difference being a cheaper and better-protected cast turret. A Bedford 12-cylinder gasoline engine powered the tank and capable of 350 horsepower. The tank’s top speed was around 24 km/h (15 mph), but Soviet tests claimed that a Churchill Mark III reached 28 km/h (17 mph). The main armament of the Churchill Mark IV was the Ordnance Quick-Firing (QF) 6-pounder gun of 57mm caliber. The secondary armament consisted of one coaxial 7.92 mm Besa machine gun mounted in the turret, second Besa machine gun fitted in the hull and 2-inch mortar in the turret roof. The model featured in the sim is produced by the Leyland factory and has Mk.V gun with a 50-caliber long barrel.

In the game, the Churchill Mark IV represents tanks used in the battle of Kursk and can be used in both single and multiplayer scenarios but we recommend the Tank Crew Prokhorovka map since it’s designed for ground engagements and has higher landscape detail than the other maps designed for aerial battles.

For more information on the game, please visit IL-2 Sturmovik: Tank Crew’s Steam Page or via the game’s website.

NVIDIA has released its newest graphics card, the GeForce RTX 4090. We have assembled a number of reviews on the Founders Edition and cards from NVIDIA partners, posting the links below. Here is a bit of info from NVIDIA on this new monster graphics card:

Powered by the new ultra-efficient NVIDIA Ada Lovelace, 3rd generation RTX architecture, GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards are beyond fast, giving gamers and creators a quantum leap in performance, AI-powered graphics, more immersive gaming experiences, and the fastest content creation workflows.

Gaming performance in the latest titles rockets by up to 2X, and by harnessing DLSS 3 and new Ada innovations, developers can boost performance by up to 4X in fully ray-traced titles. In creative apps, GeForce RTX 40 Series graphics cards provide up to 2X the performance in 3D rendering, video export speed, and AI tools.

• HOT HARDWARE – (Founders Edition)
• PC PERSPECTIVE – (Founders Edition)
• TOM’S HARDWARE – (Founders Edition)
• TECHPOWERUP! – (ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 STRIX OC)
• TECHPOWERUP! – (MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim X)
• GURU3D – (Colorful GeForce iGame RTX 4090 Vulcan OC-V)
• GURU3D – (Gainward GeForce RTX 4090 Phantom GS)
• GURU3D – (MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X)
• TECHPOWERUP! – (Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC)
• TECHPOWERUP! – (Palit GeForce RTX 4090 GameRock OC)
• TECHPOWERUP! – (Zotac GeForce RTX 4090 Amp Extreme Airo)

Source: TechPowerUp!

NVIDIA just released the GeForce 522.25 WHQL Game Ready drivers. These are the first official drivers with support for the new GeForce RTX 4090 “Ada” graphics card, and the CUDA 11.8 compute language. The drivers also fix a handful of issues. Lower performance observed in “Teardown” when MSI Afterburner overlay is used; this has been fixed. Texture corruption noticed in “Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands” after extended gameplay, has been fixed. Unreal Engine 5.1 crashing when enabling path-tracing in some drivers has been fixed. Game optimizations were added for Gotham Knights, Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection, and Dakar Desert Rally.

Besides RTX 4090, these drivers officially introduce support for DLSS 3, which works only on RTX 40-series (or later) GPUs, as it needs the Optical Flow Accelerator hardware component. Day-zero support is added for a number of titles, including A Plague Tale: Requiem, Justice, Loopmancer, F1 22, Bright Memory: Infinite, SUPER PEOPLE, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered. NVIDIA is also said to have improved the performance of DirectX 12 applications across the board on RTX 30-series “Ampere” graphics cards.

You can download the GeForce 522.25 WHQL drivers via GeForce.com.

Source: Blue’s News

IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Normandy is now available for Windows on Steam, offering the latest installment in this combat flight simulator from 1C Game Studios. Air combat is not the typical focus when recreating World War II’s pivotal invasion of Normandy, and the battle involved none of the game’s titular Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik aircraft, but the game is focused on realism nonetheless. This can be seen in the launch trailer and the description:

IL-2 Sturmovik: The Battle of Normandy contains eight famous aircraft you can take into virtual combat alone or with friends and comes with a map of the Normandy theater that includes a portion of southern England and northwest France. Taken from satellite data, the accurately reproduced topography reflects the battleground as it was in mid-1944 both pre and post invasion.

Complete with new mission types and airfield types – bringing the total amount to 100 airfields with historically accurate layouts. The Battle of Normandy offers franchise new ships, ground vehicles, buildings, coastal defenses, V-1 buzzbombs and their launch positions, plus dozens of new aircraft paint schemes, and much more.

The seventh chapter of the Axis Operations series begins to loom

Matrix Games has announced Panzer Corps 2: Axis Operations – 1944, the latest DLC for Panzer Corps 2. The Axis Operations – 1944 DLC Campaign is the first DLC that offers two entire campaigns that are completely separate and independent from one another.

In the historical campaign, prepare to face the brutal realities of the decline of the German Wehrmacht as it struggles to survive the Allied onslaught battering it from all directions.

In the ahistorical campaign, continue your success that has secured the Caucasus region for Germany as you defend your extensive conquests from familiar and totally new challenges.

To properly explore the historical battles and ahistorical events in the 1944 DLC, Axis Operations 1944 has grown to provide the largest amount of content a DLC has yet to have.

The vast 20 scenarios count offers the best glimpse at exploring the historical realities of devastating battles fought on the Eastern Front during 1944, especially during Operation Bagration.

The ahistorical campaign is a fully fleshed out and realized campaign with well-researched potential successes, and setbacks, the mighty German Wehrmacht may have faced even after it emerged as the victor from the Battle of Kursk.

New features:

• Two playable campaigns
• New 20 huge scenarios
• A new set of objectives, classified as Elite Objective
• Import your core forces completed the previous Axis Operations1943 East campaign
• Field Marshal Erwin Rommel returns!

More information is available at the official Panzer Corps 2: Axis Operations – 1944 webpage.

By Blood Alone Add-On Includes Plane Designer and New Alternate Histories

Paradox Interactive’s best-selling grand strategy wargame Hearts of Iron IV gets even grander and more strategic today with the release of By Blood Alone, a new expansion pack that adds new ways to explore the limits of your military genius and long-term planning.

The centerpieces of By Blood Alone include the much requested aircraft designer, allowing you to build the fighters and bombers of your imagination, and three new national focus trees, carving out room for an even wider range of diverging alternate histories, whether you successfully repel European conquest as Ethiopia or foment a communist revolution in wartime Italy.

Features of Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone include:

• New Italian Focus Tree: Alternate histories of Fascist Italy, including a socialist revolution.
• New Ethiopian Focus Tree: Defy the odds to defeat the Italian invader or resist the conqueror from abroad using unique Government in Exile abilities.
• New Swiss Focus Tree: Surrounded by France, Germany and Italy, the mountain nation of Switzerland finds strength in its neutrality, balancing competing factions and overtures from the great powers.
• New Peace Conference Options: Demilitarize zones of the map or entire nations, bid on the capital ships of defeated powers, or claim control of enemy resources or factories as reparations.
• Aircraft Designer: Design and build your own planes, from nimble interceptors that prioritize speed to durable bombers crafted to unload tons of destruction from high above.
• Unit Medals: A log of each division’s accomplishments lets you track their performance, and even allow you to award medals to those that have performed well.
• Embargo Interaction: Embargo your enemies with a new diplomatic interaction, preventing them from trading with you if they have generated enough world tension.
• New Unit Models: More than 20 new pieces of unit art for Italian, Ethiopian and Swiss armies.
• New Plane Models: 67 new plane models.
• 12 New Music Tracks

As usual, the release of By Blood Alone will be accompanied by a major update to Hearts of Iron IV, available for free for everyone who owns the game.

Hearts of Iron IV: By Blood Alone is available now for a suggested retail price of $19.99/£15.49/€19.99.

For more game information please visit the official Hearts of Iron IV website.

In the highly realistic simulation you can now take up the fight with relentless enemy submarines and defend your vulnerable allied convoys on their way across the ocean

Today, publisher Daedalic Entertainment and developer Iron Wolf Studio announced that Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter is now available worldwide through Steam Early Access for PC. Whether you are a veteran sim expert or newcomer to the genre, the historically accurate WW2 simulation offers authentic and thrilling anti-submarine warfare during the infamous Battle of the Atlantic.

Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter is an innovative, cross-genre destroyer simulation which truthfully depicts the struggle of escort groups protecting allied convoys against German U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. Take full control of a Fletcher-class destroyer with all the crucial responsibilities of an anti-submarine destroyer attack team, using authentic instruments and attack procedures – or choose to automate certain tasks to focus more on the operational side of things. From identifying enemy vessels in the distance and plotting their projected inbound trajectories to positioning and commanding allied forces to intercept and attack enemy hostiles, players experience the full spectrum of anti-submarine warfare.

Check out the new gameplay tutorial video HERE.

Destroyer combines the thrill of commanding an anti-submarine warship with the tactical challenge of managing a whole escort group protecting convoys against relentless wolfpacks. The game goes to great lengths to appeal to fans of realism and immersion, at the same time offering a great experience for beginners in the genre as well. Whether a military sim veteran or a fledgling captain, immerse yourself in a cinematic naval warfare experience and feel the thrill of the hunt!

Destroyer: The U-Boat Hunter is now available on Windows PC via Steam Early Access. For more information, please visit the official Steam game page.

For the 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, Command Modern Operations is pleased to announce a new DLC that will bring you back to 1982. Command Falklands contains fifteen scenarios and two bonus missions that put you in charge of the most significant units during the war between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands off the coast of South America.

Watch the Command Falklands announcement trailer HERE.

Take command of the Argentine forces or the British task force assembled in 48 hours to fight the Argentine invasion, manage units previously taken out of service in bonus scenarios such as the HMS Ark Royal, Buccaneer and Phantom Fighters long-range attack planes, and the aircraft carrier CVA-01.

Features:

• 15 Scenarios plus 2 Bonus Scenarios including units not present or available during the war.
• Scenarios designed by a retired Royal Navy officer and Falklands veteran, who served on HMS Plymouth
• Management actual and previously taken out of service units
• Air, surface and underwater combat
• Guide your Forces to victory in a multi-sided campaign.

Are you ready to counter the invasion?

Find out more about Command: Modern Operations – Falklands at the games official webpage.

Check out these latest hardware announcements for today from around the web. Also included are some hardware news bits, and on some days, a few rumors tossed in for good measure. Click on the links below to read the official press release, visit the products web page, or to an independent news source.

• Intel 13th Gen Core “Raptor Lake” Desktop Processors Launched
• Introducing the EVGA Z790 DARK and CLASSIFIED Motherboards
• NZXT Announces the N7 Z790 ATX Motherboards
• Reign Supreme with ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 and ROG Strix Z790 Series
• MSI Z790 motherboards and 13th Gen Intel Core Processors Have Landed
• GIGABYTE Unveils Z790 AORUS Motherboards
• Intel Arc A770 Launched at USD $329, Available from October 12
• Antec Presents the Vortex AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
• ASUS Launches ROG Crosshair and ROG Strix Motherboards Based on AMD X670E and X670
• GIGABYTE Unveils AMD X670 Motherboards with Advancements in PC Experiences
• MSI Launches AMD X670-series Chipset Motherboards
• CORSAIR Has Everything PC Builders Need for AMD Ryzen 7000
• Team Group Announces New T-FORCE DELTA RGB DDR5-7200 Memory
• EK Quantum Vector² FE RTX 4090 Water Block Hitting the Shelves Soon
• BIOSTAR Releases the X670E Valkyrie Motherboard