[Eexhaton]

Its more of a movie program but it can be used to make games, but I think it can only save a project as a .blend file.

Save only as a .blend file is correct, but you can import/export blender files to a wide arrange of known supported 3D formats. Including 3ds (3D studio max).
That Blender3D is only a movie program however is not completely correct. It is used mostly to make 3D rendered movies, but it does not stop there, since it's a fully supported 3D package for game rendering, stills rendering, 3D movies, modelling and sculpting.

I'm using Blender3D for a while now and it's a whole new world for someone like me who works with 3Dmax since version 5.
I would personally use 3Dmax over Blender to make content for IL2, but that is a personal choice.

For anyone interested, here a few links for use with Blender3D
Wikibook "Noob to Pro": http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
A full tutorial on character modelling from the 1st modelling steps to regging, animating and rendering:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tu...tion/Intro

And a quite useful excerpt from the Wikibook "Noob to pro", called "Every material known to man":
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:...own_to_Man