A question about the Red Baron pack

[Willi Von Klugerman]

Do I really have to upload the patched variant of RB3D or is it optional? How much MB will be taken if I load up the RB3D (1999) from the RBP?

[Zif]

I suggest you to run that patch and possible the awesome Western Front and such.

[castiglione]

I recently downloaded the pack.

Red Baron (the original) works just fine and I've been having fun playing with it.

Red Baron 3D also works fine. However, when I tried to install Full Canvas Jacket, things went haywire (it didn't work). I imagine I could fiddle around with it and get it to work but I haven't had time yet. FYI, I'm running off of Vista, which may be part of the reason why trying to install Full Canvas Jacket doesn't work.

I didn't read anywhere that a patch needs to be downloaded for RB3D when it comes with the Red Baron pack. Is this really true?

Originally Posted by castiglione

I didn't read anywhere that a patch needs to be downloaded for RB3D when it comes with the Red Baron pack. Is this really true?

A quick historical review may be in order (*clears throat*):

The word "patch" is confusing when it comes to the Red Baron 2 and its progeny. IIRC, RB2 was released by Sierra a few scant months before true 3D hardware acceleration was widely available. Therefore, the original product relied purely on software acceleration, which was more burdonsome on system resources and less pleasing to the eye.

So Sierra scrambled to release the first "patch", which became RB3D. It took advantage of OpenGL (which was widely used for flight sims at the time) rather than Microsoft's Direct3D. This was akin to the Beta vs. VHS wars; software developers at that time had to take a gamble as to which one to use, although some managed to release games compatable with both.

Unfortunately, Sierra once again misstepped by not choosing Direct 3D (never a good idea to bet against Microsoft) as it became the industry standard. Hence the OpenGL wrapper, another patch to help owners of non-Open GL video cards experience RB3D in 3D. (As an aside, it never truly worked with the Win98 computer I had at the time; artifacts intruded willy-nilly and the game tended to crash, so I stuck with 2D).

Those were the manufacturer patches. But a dedicated fanbased kept producing them, the most highly regarded being the "Western Front" patch and the "Full Canvas Jacket" superpatch which was an amalgamation of a number of smaller patches. My understanding of how these work is limited -- they came along after I had moved on from RB3D -- but both, I believe, update the flight and combat engines, update aircraft/terrain graphics, add scads of historical aircraft skins, and add more historical content. Not sure if they are compatable with each other, though. Also unsure of how much of a footprint they'll leave on your hard drive.

Very cool that "Full Canvas Jacket" is being included as part of this "new" release as it was originally only available for purchase from the creator. I hope he was suitably compensated as it appeared to be an amazing effort.

And that's the story of the Red Baron patches as understood by me. I don't own the new download pack, however, so take that in account.

One more thing to be aware of when installing any non-manufacturer patches (i.e., anything other than the original RB3D update and OpenGL wrapper) is that Red Baron was not open-architecture; the patch creators had to crack the game's code, and their patches may cause game crashes and the like.

So, long story short, there is no NEED to install any patches as the game is complete out-of-the-box (so to speak), but doing so will result in a richer game experience.

Regards,
Chris

[castiglione]

To the best of my knowledge, Full Canvas Jacket is NOT included with the Red Baron Pack. The copy of Full Canvas Jacket that I have is something that I purchased a LONG time ago when I used to play RB3D a long time ago on my non-Vista PC (which got fried and had to be replaced a while back).

I just wanted to know whether the version of Red Baron 3D that came with the pack had all the official patches from Sierra before they ceased support on the game. Since the game looks the same regardless (since the official patches did not include wrappers, new models, etc.), it's kind of hard to tell. Otherwise, I'd either have to dig through all my old back-up CD's for the patches I have or else try to search on-line for them.

Originally Posted by castiglione

To the best of my knowledge, Full Canvas Jacket is NOT included with the Red Baron Pack. The copy of Full Canvas Jacket that I have is something that I purchased a LONG time ago when I used to play RB3D a long time ago on my non-Vista PC (which got fried and had to be replaced a while back).

Ah, I see. Misunderstood the question. Sorry I don't have the answer!

[Willi Von Klugerman]

I need to get the RBP,I miss the menu soundtracks

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by cvalk

A quick historical review may be in order (*clears throat*):

. . .

So Sierra scrambled to release the first "patch", which became RB3D. It took advantage of OpenGL (which was widely used for flight sims at the time) rather than Microsoft's Direct3D. This was akin to the Beta vs. VHS wars; software developers at that time had to take a gamble as to which one to use, although some managed to release games compatable with both.

Unfortunately, Sierra once again misstepped by not choosing Direct 3D (never a good idea to bet against Microsoft) as it became the industry standard. Hence the OpenGL wrapper, another patch to help owners of non-Open GL video cards experience RB3D in 3D. (As an aside, it never truly worked with the Win98 computer I had at the time; artifacts intruded willy-nilly and the game tended to crash, so I stuck with 2D).

. . .

Regards,
Chris

Not quite true Chris. Enabling 3D GPU acceleration in RB3D required a 3dfx Voodoo graphics card supporting the Glide API, not OpenGL. I ran a Voodoo 5500 for several years, mostly to support RB3D. Glide was proprietary to 3dfx; when they went belly-up, Glide died too since neither nVidia or ATI was interested in supporting it. Today you run a Glide wrapper on nVidia or ATI hardware that translates RB3D's Glide API commands into something the driver supports natively (I think the wrapper translates Glide to OpenGL, but I'm not sure about that).

Sierra/Dynamix would have done far better to build RB3D's 3D support around OpenGL, which is a mature open-standard API for graphics processing. It's supported natively by both nVidia and ATI in their driver sets, and is the default graphics API for many operating systems other than MS Windows (unlike DirectDraw and Direct3D which is proprietary to MS and supported only under Windows). The decision to use Glide tied RB3D's 3D support to a particular manufacturer's hardware, which is never a good idea. It's a testimony to the persistence of the Red Baron community that they kept the sim alive even after 3dfx and Glide went extinct.

Originally Posted by Patrick

Not quite true Chris. Enabling 3D GPU acceleration in RB3D required a 3dfx Voodoo graphics card supporting the Glide API, not OpenGL.

Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up.