Several months back, some players found a way to edit the game files to bypass the presets and turn the SSAO off. And at the lowest setting, the render distance is cut in half and the textures are so blurry that the game looks like it belongs on the PS2.

Again, you cannot use ANYTHING BUT THE LOWEST SETTING and have the SSAO be off. Anything above THE LOWEST SETTING forces SSAO to be on, which SEVERELY cuts down the framerate, especially for big resolutions, and introduces ugly jittery artifacts and almost no visual improvement, since the entire landscape is a flat plane with no corners and the cockpit is usually pretty dark. Even though this is a PC title, you cannot really customize the graphics. And at the lowest settings it looks worse than WT. This game? Lowest settings at 2560x1080 gives me 40-60 fps. I run War Thunder in 160fps on almost the highest settings at 3440x1440 and it looks beautiful. The worst part back then was, and still IS, that the game runs horribly on any decent system. So I waited some more, and now a lot of time has passed and the game just got another update. I played it for some time a couple of months later, but wasn't overly impressed. Back then, I waited to play it because I KNEW it would need a few months of fixing before it really could start to shine. I've had this game since the original release.

Il2 battle of stalingrad forum