High Hun, I'm Home
If shooting albatrosses brings bad luck I'm in for a really lousy autumn.
This past week, in the gaps between work, blackberry picking, and bouncing about in the Rigs of Rods Tatra, I've been catching-up with a wonderful old friend - Red Baron 3D.
Thanks to Sierra's German wing, this evergreen Great War dogfight sim, justly famed for its immersive dynamic campaign and marvellous MP, is now totally free. Well, strictly speaking it's Red Baron II that's free. You'll need to apply the official superpatch to upgrade to RB3D. You'll also want a Glide wrapper, a WinXP sound fix, and a tolerance of Deutsch (the patch doesn't remove all traces of the Baron's native tongue). It's a bit of a dance, but follow the following step-by-step guide and you should be happily ambushing albatrosses inside half an hour.
RB3D GLEE IN THIRTY MINUTES
- 1. Download and install Red Baron II.
- 2. Grab the official superpatch (rb3d_spr.exe) and apply it.
- 3. Do the same with the MP patch (rb3d1078.exe).
- 4. There are various options when it comes to Glide wrappers, but I recommend using Gabi's modified example (OpenGlide_008_Max256MB.zip). Just extract the contents of the zip into your RB3D folder.
- 5. Right, now you're ready for a test flight. Fire-up the sim (The 'no CD' message can be exterminated by clicking the iron cross in the top-right corner of the message box half-a-dozen times), go into options (Einstellingen) and select Glide and 1024x768. Turn off sun glare. Click 'Schnellflug' (Fly Now).
- 6. If your joystick isn't automatically detected you might need to quit the sim and check it's selected as 'controller to use with older products'.
- 7. The second time you run RB3D you're probably going to encounter the 'no sound' bug. To get round this put the Full Canvas Jacket Control Panel utility in your RB3D folder, and, after ticking the "Activate Intro For USB Joystick Windows XP Sound Fix" box, use it to launch the game. (The FCJCP can also be used for pushing game res up to 1600x1200).
- 8. Lastly, you might to want to glance over the keycard and manual (documents section) and augment your new toy with a couple of choice mods. I recommend PL2PL.zip for terrain, and the Hell's Angels Super Patch for everything else.
- 9. Chocks away!