CaptSopwith

Yeah, for its age the game play actually isn't terribly bad. The major issue is the incredibly antiquated control system. If I had 15 year old controls with serial port rudders, I'd have it made (for what that would be worth). As it stands the throttle and rudder control is done on the keyboard while the rest of the flying is done on the joystick. Which means in a dogfight, if you need to yaw the plane left or right to get a good firing position, you have to reach forward, press and hold the rudder control on your keyboard for the right amount of time, and continue firing while flying with the stick. It's a juggling act of joystick, mouse, and keyboard commands that more than keeps you busy. Graphically, its blurry, pixelated goo that is difficult to distinguish. That said, for a 15 year old game, Wings of Glory had movable control surfaces, wired planes (something the original RBII did not have), and an early padlocking system. And for 1995 standards, the gameplay is actually pretty good and the AI isn't bad either. They managed to down me a few times. That said, wow, have we come a long way. A quick back story on why I wanted to see if I could get this thing working in the first place. In the summer of 1995 I picked up a copy of PC Gamer that had the then ubiquitous demo CD included, and sure enough, there was a one mission demo of Wings of Glory included. I got the demo running and for some reason, I became completely obsessed with WWI aviation. From that one mission, which I flew some 600 times, I started reading books on the topic, watching TV programs, and learning the odd names WWI planes had. Flash forward three years later (seems much longer than that) and I picked up Red Baron II. Six months after that, I became CaptSopwith on the old Flight Sim Forum and the rest is history. In short, I'm a professional historian and a flight sim fanatic all because of this one demo mission on one CD from one game. It's nice to finally play the sim that started this long strange trip, even if it took nearly half of my lifetime thus far to get it working! Ironically, I should point out that Red Baron 3D still refuses to run properly on my system. The First Aid kit actually got it working, sort of. The dgvoodoo setup included makes the game choppy but stable. Swap out dgvoodoo with Glidos and you get much better in game performance, but the game will CTD upon quitting a mission every single time. Go figure... thank goodness there's OFF!

Couldn't have said it better myself. It does add to the immersion. Otherwise you're looking at empty rudder pedals and wondering where your feet went.

Olham, I haven't checked the map in a while. I'm amazed at how many pilots have been added! OFF has quite the following!

Congrats Creaghorn! That's fantastic news! :drinks:

I'll join in as well. I downloaded the new tracer mod as well as the updated DM mod from HerrPropwasche and I'm very impressed. Air combat just became a lot more difficult! Cheers!

Without getting too far off track: Band of Brothers is, IMHO, the best war series ever made. And yes, that is Winters, or at least Damian Lewis playing Winters, in my avatar picture. They actually recreated a photo of the real Dick Winters while they were on set shooting the series. That's where the avatar comes from. And I agree, I would want him in charge. He's an excellent role model.

I knew there was a reason I called myself CaptSopwith!

I also remember this series debuting within a few days of the attacks. I think the first episode debuted a few days before, and the second came a few days after. Regardless, I remember watching the start of the show, hearing the music, and crying. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIrmplcf5-I&feature=related

I was being a bum of a 19 year old kid. I was living at home with my parents, I wasn't in school, I wasn't working, and I had spent my summer goofing off with friends, playing a lot of tennis, staying up late, and sleeping in. 9/11 started when my mother woke me up, said something was going on at the World Trade Center and said I needed to see it. So I turned on the television and saw the first tower burning. About five minutes later I saw the second plane hit and I remember all of us gasping. I'd never felt so sick in my life. My phone rang, and it was my high school pal calling to see if I was seeing what he was seeing - perhaps to justify to himself that what we were witnessing was actually real. Me, my mother, and my father all stood around the television for the rest of the day. I still remember standing in their bedroom, watching their television with them, when the first tower collapsed. Feeling completely helpless, I remember checking in with the old Flight Sim Forum on Delphi. I'd send you a link, but the forum was deleted and the record of that day was lost. I remember all of us checking in. I suddenly realized that while I thought I didn't know anyone affected by the attacks, I actually did. We started worrying when certain members weren't showing up. Then came the various comments: "so and so lives in Manhattan, didn't he say he worked at the WTC?" "My God, doesn't so and so work near the Pentagon?" What was already a horrific morning became even more frightening. I still remember watching Aaron Brown on CNN (one of the last real anchors they had) giving the latest updates when the second tower fell behind him, just over his shoulder in the distance. As he turned around, all he could say was "My Lord.... there are no words..." The world as I knew it, ended right then and there. I spent the next two or three days unable to do anything but watch the news footage and read the forums to see if everyone was okay. I don't know why, but to this day, 9/11 marks the end of my "youth" and my formal introduction to adulthood. It changed my view of the world from a carefree place to a dangerous one. I get tense when I fly, I hear certain songs and remember 2001 vividly, and every year, though I promise myself not to let the day bother me, I wind up remembering anyway. I can't seem to stop it. I entered college not long after the attacks, and I've never stopped working towards my life's goal ever since. My life is marked by two eras, before and after 9/11. I can't explain it, and I feel a bit weird for saying it when I lost no one I knew in the attacks, but the day still changed me. Being an historian is about keeping memories alive and helping others understand the lessons of the past. I teach because I feel the lessons of the First World War will be lost forever without people like me. I also teach because I realize now, as I get older, that my future students will not have been alive on September 11, 2001, and it's up to people like me to make sure they don't forget the lessons they weren't alive to learn. I work hard now because I know that your life, and your dreams can be snatched away from you in the blink of an eye - even on a beautiful September morning.

Well gents, it looks like my flight time will be curtailed for the next 6-8 weeks. I was out cycling this evening and ran into or over something - I never figured out what, and wound up having a bloody horrendous crash, right over the handlebars. As it turns out, I managed to fracture my right wrist, which means my OFF time will likely be grounded until I'm healed. Even typing doesn't feel great but as a grad student trying to finish my MA degree on time, I might not have much of a say on that one. *Salute!* Guys! *winces...ow*

Thanks guys! The Evil Knievel video really made me fell better! ;) The wrist is feeling a bit better. Tried flying with the splint but not much luck. I'm using a Sidewinder 2 with the twist rudder... so turn fighting in a Camel is a painful proposition. Racing in rFactor proved slightly better lol. I can already hear the call for rudder pedals now. Donations can be made via PM.

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. I'd type more but... you know. ;)

Excellent history lesson BH! Greatly enjoyed it. PS: Is it wrong that Preussens Gloria makes me feel like I'm back playing the Hell's Angels mod for Red Baron? I believe Otto included this march on some of the editions of his mod (or UOP if you really want to be old school about it). Gads, seriously need to stop typing for one night...

I was just about to ask the same thing. Does the PW DM make the planes harder to shoot down or does it do something else?

What third party mods would you recommend?

Whatever happened to Homeboy? I remember using some of his recommended graphics settings and getting a noticeable improvement back when P3 first came out.

Congratulations on getting back in one piece! Scramble missions are the worst of a bad lot of choices. My stomach usually drops to the floor when I see we're being attacked. As a German pilot, you usually have a fighting chance. But flying these fragile, one gun, British and French kites makes for an unnerving experience. These missions inevitably end with the player landing a completely shot up wreck of a plane - if he even lands at all.

Nice skin Olham! I'll have to download that immediately.

I look forward to the next installment Lou. It looks like Paul had quite a close call last time! And the skies are only going to get more dangerous from here! Viel Glück!

I remember how much of an improvement it was over the original! The stock terrain was a blurry, nearly unrecognizable globby mess. I think this picture illustrates that pretty well. I would like to get an old gaming rig up and running at some point. I have all of the parts, just no working IDE hard drive. You're right though, RB died when the available technology simply past it by. I occasionally look in on the old forms and there's still a dedicated group working on modding the old gal. Truthfully, even I would wonder what could be left to do by now.

Awesome work guys! Your SIA Series of PDF files now make up a readme library in my OFF folder. Great stuff!

Wow! Awesome page Lou. I've bookmarked it for further reading. Cheers!

I remember that cow patch! I was reading this thread thinking about how far we've come. From LGM (Little Green Men) to an environment that is nearly alive. Quite an improvement in what, ten, twelve years? EDIT: Any Red Baron players remember the Green Truck and Green Tent? Talk about an immersive environment. Balloon Attack missions in RB3D had a bonus target, which consisted of a truck (or lorrie for you brits out there ;)) and a green tent located right below the offending balloon. I remember getting bonus points for shooting those targets up. Doing so, of course, required you avoided the two machine gun nests and four artillery pieces located near by. How far we've come indeed. PS: Completely agree, and I'm glad to see Winder smiling. Civilian targets, erm, I mean, options in the game would definitely add even more to the environment. Cheers!

Beautiful prints! I remember that first print quite well. Back in the old RBII days, someone made a patch for CM1.1 (the ancient file manager for date based patches in Red Baron) that changed the stock black and white photos into gorgeous color paintings. I believe I set that print to be the main screen. Thanks for the quick trip back to the late 1990's! I enjoyed it!

I checked the forum and didn't see any previous post about this. Forgive me if I missed it. For OFF pilots in the US who have not seen the film The Red Baron, it has been released (finally) on DVD. Amazon has it available for ordering. http://www.amazon.com/Red-Baron-Matthias-Schweighofer/dp/B0039USJBA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1275535102&sr=8-1 I've never seen it, but it looked promising.