Not a bug, but a potential conflict for AMD hardware users re: [Render_OpenGL] TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=
Re-setting up Il-2 after many years of absence and following SAS~Storebror's detailed settings for peak graphics on AMD cards in the "Inside the CONF.INI" thread (here), Under the [Render_OpenGL] header I set the variable [Render_OpenGL] TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=0 as recommended.
This causes GE and the game to break, essentially. The escape key freezes or hangs the render process in flight (not quite a true pause) and doesn't open the menu, and the "Info Bar" (IAS, climb rate, heading in the lower left of the screen) and inflight messages (Throttle:90%, etc.) in the lower right don't render. In order to get out of the game at that point, the task manager and "end task" are required.
After a fresh re-install of GE and some deliberate line-by-line tweaking of conf.ini: [Render_OpenGL] TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1 completely fixes the issue. Game works as intended, GE works as intended. Change back to 0, broken. Back to 1, fixed. No uninstall reinstall required. No other tweaking required.
Given that the original SAS~Storebror post is 12 years old, a few things have changed with AMD hardware. Not least that we've gone from TerraScale to GCN to RDNA in terms of AMD graphics architecture. In my personal case with RDNA 2 (and I think in most or all cases on RDNA, at least, and probably GCN too) UseVertexArrays=0 or 1 does nothing to change the performance or graphics quality of the game without GE present. And clearly it's fundamental to GE. So adding TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1 to the short list of required settings under the [Render_OpenGL] along with HardwareShaders=1 and Water=0 will probably eliminate a lot of (or at least some) confused AMD users.
Again setting TexFlags.UseVertexArrays=1 or 0 has no effect on the function or quality of the game on AMD hardware without GE present.
I can post il2ge.log files for the broken and fixed states if you'd like them.
Thank you for this excellent work. What GE does is beautiful.