First, let me start by saying that I am a rather enthusiastic Rise of Flight fan. However, the singleplayer in Rise of Flight has alot to be desired. Even with the upcoming patch, I can't help but compare the Career mode to the grandaddy of career modes: Red Baron 3d.

I have never played either of the Red Baron titles, as they seem to be before my time. Naturally, I have a few questions regarding the game in its VANILLA state. I would rather not start with modding if I don't have too. So, without further ado, here are some basic questions regarding Red Baron 3d.

1. How realistic is the game itself? Am I going to have to watch the RPM's and make sure my engine doesn't stall? Will I be manually controlling fuel mixture and the radiator to get the best performance out of my plane? Or is it more arcadey?

2. Ive heard nothing but good things about the Campaign mode. One thing that worries me, would be the planes. Are they accurate representations of the time period? I.e. does the Fokker Dr. 1 have the 'lift' and turning capabilities it is famous for? Does the Se5a, or Spad maintain their high speeds?

3. When you progress through the ranks and years, are you allowed to keep your favorite plane? I.e lets say my squadron just got some new Camel's and I would like to stick with my Pup. Is this possible?

4. Is the Red Baron really worthy of the name in game? :)

Basically Im wondering how REALISTIC the game is, with Rise of Flight as my reference. I'm mostly interested in the Dynamic Campaign mode, as multiplayer holds little interest to me.

I will do my best to answer as I can, mainly for RB3D. I have only flown ROF in the Demo mode, so that means an Albatros and a Nieuport.

1. How realistic is the game itself? Am I going to have to watch the RPM's and make sure my engine doesn't stall? Will I be manually controlling fuel mixture and the radiator to get the best performance out of my plane? Or is it more arcadey?

In stock vanilla RB3D, engine management is just by use of the throttle. Engines do sputter and gasp when inverted and at other extreme angles.

There is a mod that is used for starting RB3D called Reload by GabiLaser (Laser who created the Dogfight Generator for RoF). Reload allows many functions for RB3D. It gives you a bullet counter, allows you to fly two seaters for mods that have them, gives a constant wind. It also allows you to have engine management, in that you select the engine type your plane has, and you can also set a percentage of a chance for engine failure (chance of engine catching fire in flight).



2. Ive heard nothing but good things about the Campaign mode. One thing that worries me, would be the planes. Are they accurate representations of the time period? I.e. does the Fokker Dr. 1 have the 'lift' and turning capabilities it is famous for? Does the Se5a, or Spad maintain their high speeds?

For stock, the Dr1 has a better lift and tighter turning whereas the Se5a and Especially the SPAD 13 are good boom and zoom fighters. How close it is to reality I could not say, but there are differences amongst the planes.

There are modded FMs where (I think Wolfgang's is considered the best) which have tweaked and enhanced the planes characteristics.

3. When you progress through the ranks and years, are you allowed to keep your favorite plane? I.e lets say my squadron just got some new Camel's and I would like to stick with my Pup. Is this possible?

Basic answer is no. Your squad will have anywhere from 3 to one plane model assigned to it. Though in most cases it is two or one plane only in the squadron. If you prefer flying the Alb d# over the Halb D2, the only way you can choose that plane is you are the squadron commander (where you can edit any mission assigned to your squad) or you are the mission flight leader and the plane you want to fly has already been assigned to someone in your flight, or is sitting in reserve. I always play as full commander, even when I consider myself of the lowest rank, allows me to make minor tweaks to everything.

So far, when I have started at a low rank, I have only been promoted one in all that time. So i play as squadron commander and decide when I should be promoted.

4. Is the Red Baron really worthy of the name in game? :)

I have never flown against MvR in the game as I always fly German. But I do know when I come across known/named aces in the game for they are always better then the other pilots.

RB3D has two ways of working the AI. One in preferences there is a slider to decide the AI's intelligence, and with certain utilities (like Full Covered Jacket Control Panel) you can increase it beyond the stock levels. But in RB3D there are also 5 levels the game use randomly (except for named aces) which you can choose in Fly Now Preferences or when creating a mission, there is Novice, Junior, Veteran, Ace, and Elite. So the pilots range from easy to target to very hard to survive against, at least in my opinion.

The SP Campaign generator is really pretty fantastic, I can see areas it could be improved on, but I have yet to come across a game even has anything close to it.

For MP, RB3D can be a lot of fun. I had one squadmate who used to call it a flying chatroom.

Just to add to what Wailwulf said the "Reload" mod isn't really a mod in the classic sense, a lot of is just adding some extra functionality like TrackIR, mouse view, a bullet counter. It doesn't change fighters or AI behavior or missions, etc ... and to get it just involves sticking the file in the Red Baron 3D folder - it's easy. I'm also a big fan of vanilla play (especially my first run through a game, after that I might look at mods) and I would say this is more of toolshed upgrade. Another point is to add a glide wrapper - dgvoodoo or zeckensack's were the two that worked best for me. This allows you to get the graphics back onto par (or better maybe) with what a voodoo card would've given you back in the day. So not so much a mod as a refurbishment. :) Here are some threads/posts that were useful for me: (, [url=http://www.gog.com/en/forum/red_baron_pack/q_lots_of_questions_on_red_baron_redux_and_glide_wrappers/post3]Glide Wrappers, Setspeed).

Enjoy!

Thanks for the excellent replies and links! That about answers all my questions! Thanks to you both!

It seems my worries where ill-founded. Its crazy that this older title still holds such an awesome parentage, and completeness over other, newer sims. So much so that I hear about it whenever I hear the word 'dynamic campaign'

Guess I'll have to find some time for another wwI sim. :)

*EDIT*

I made my batch file, but the Glide stuff is beyond me. I'm using google Chrome as my browser, and it wont open the GLIDE faq from the internet database. I put it in the Red Baron 3d folder, and set the Voodoo glide 1.4 up by running the file, but it never goes fullscreen when I use my batch file, do I have to edit something within the batchfile?

Batch file? Are you referring to this?

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
start /w Baron.exe
pause
start explorer.exe

Using such a batch file should not affect Glide wrappers or visa versa. To get the glide wrapper running simply put the dgvoodoosetup file and Glide2x.dll file in the Red Baron game folder and within Red Baron 3D in its graphical options menu you should see an option to use Glide lit up and you can check it off.

As for the batch file not allowing you to go fullscreen that seems like a separate problem. Try not using the batch file but Stanski's solution to avoid the psychadelic colors in Win7 by: "Right click on desktop, click Screen Resolution, now leave this window OPEN or minimize it, start game should be fine." Just open the game from the .exe icon.

I have four gldewrappers uploaded here:
http://cid-e196374a237958b4.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Public/GlideWrappers

The one I suggest to start with is the one I have named CJGlideWrapper. It was created by a friend of mine (or tweaked by) and it gives most people good results in graphics and FPS. It is very easy to use and you do not have to do any settings, everything is predefined and it is only one dll file.

Once the file is in the game folder (where baron.exe and barronmmp.exe file is located), start the game and go to preferences =>Graphic Settings => Graphic Options. Under graphics, select Glide and then select your resolution.

As to being in windowed mode , are you talking about while flying? or just the menus?

As to a batchfile, are you speaking of the one Crazy_Dave mentions? That batch file does not effect Glide mode, all it does is keeps the menus from corrupting graphically. The other method Crazy_Dave mentions also works.

If it is a different batch file, what is it suppose to do?

Sorry for my late reply. Ive been juggling WWI flight sims while dealing with a rather troublesome computer.

I find my self slipping back to RB3D simply because I would rather fly a GAME then a flight sim. While its fun to manage one's fuel mixture, radiator and RPM's, sometimes I just want to fly and feel like an actual WWI pilot, as opposed to a test pilot. :P

Also, thanks for the answers!

In response to Dave's question, I did indeed mean that batch file. Sorry if that caused some confusion. I may have been tired when typing up that post. Looking back, I'm a little confused as to what I was asking. The game runs fine fullscreen. The only issue are the black bars on the sides of the screen due to my resolution. Is there a known widescreen fix? My google fu is out of wack.

Glad to know they helped, even though late. :)

The only way to get RB3D widescreen is to stretch the image horizontally. So in my mind, letterboxxing is preferred. Full Covered Jacket Control Panel does allow you to go to higher resolutions, but a recent Windows update killed FCJCP for me, but widescreen was never one of the options.