Installation 4:4

   I installed both games painlessly on two different systems, several times. Uninstalling and reinstalling was quite easy. Updates were also relatively easy to install. Both games require DirectX 5 - using a later version may improve performance somewhat. Like most games, try to shut down all other programs running on your computer before starting the games, or you may encounter performance problems.

   After installing Flying Corps Gold or any updates to the game, be sure to reboot the computer before playing the first time, or the game may be sluggish and not run correctly until rebooted.

   If running Flying Corps Gold without 3D acceleration, restart your computer in DOS mode and run the game from there (fly.exe) - without 3D acceleration, the Windows version (winfly.exe) is slow and difficult to control even on a fast computer.

   One can uninstall and reinstall Flying Corps Gold simply by inserting the CD and clicking on that option. If one reinstalls to the same directory as a previous install, all saved games and preferences will remain as they were, assuming one chose not to erase them when uninstalling.

   Flying Corps Gold install options:

The Flying Corps Gold 111y free upgrade (http://www.cix.co.uk/~rowan/) is a three-megabyte download.

   Flying Corps Gold

An SE5a smokes an Albatros D.III.

   Red Baron II requires at least 125 MB of free hard disk space. For a Minimum Installation 45 MB are used, however 80 MB must be free for memory swapping in order for the game to run smoothly. A Medium installation uses 130 MB and a Large installation 215 MB, plus the 80 MB free needed to run the game. The readme.txt file includes instructions for insuring that Windows 95 is allowing at least 80 MB of virtual hard disk memory. The Red Baron 3D upgrade (http://www.redbaron3d.com/downloads.html) is an eight-megabyte download. My current Medium Red Baron 3D installation is 142 megabytes.

Documentation 4:4

   The manuals for both games are complete and very well done, including not only program instructions but also introductions to flying, formations, tactics, and history, and good comparative descriptions of the planes.

   The Red Baron II manual (as of this writing, Red Baron 3D wasn’t yet for sale - it’s a free upgrade for Red Baron II) is 228 pages long with many black & white period photos, as well as screenshots and other illustrations. Much of the text is well-presented history and other background information, including a good treatment of historical tactics, and summaries of the comparative abilities of the major planes. Some more information about the planes and other game objects can be found in the game program itself. A separate manual describes multiplayer play. By now the manual is missing several new features, most of which are explained in the readme files that come with the latest patches.

   Flying Corps Gold comes with eleven nice color maps on six separate sheets (five are double-sided) which one can use for navigation… it may help to notice that the scale erroneously shows miles smaller than kilometers. The original Flying Corps (before the Gold edition - upgrades are free) came with a duplicate of a period flight manual. The Flying Corps Gold manual provides essential information on the game’s many configuration options and good suggestions for how to set them. It also presents good background information on the nature of World War One air fighting, the history surrounding each of the four original campaigns (the fifth campaign appeared after the manual was printed), the quirks and abilities of each of the planes and tips on how to use them. One omission however is a good quick reference card outside of the manual. Players can slice up their manual, make their own or print out the one designed by other players available at http://wwwusers.imaginet.fr/~bbmagic/flycorps/addon.htm.

Flying Corps Gold

The manual doesn’t say not to be a daredevil!

   Both games earn high marks for documentation, although these also illustrate the limits of the games’ realism. Red Baron 3D’s planes have never quite matched the simple but accurate descriptions in its manual. Meanwhile Flying Corps Gold’s manual documents in detail how difficult it was historically to hit other planes, although in both games the computer-controlled pilots are often incredibly accurate.

Graphics 4:4

   Both simulations offer excellent graphics on computers with 3D accelerator cards. Without 3D acceleration, both games lose a lot in appearance, speed, and the ability to spot and identify distant planes against the landscape.

   Unaccelerated Red Baron 3D is prettier than unaccelerated Flying Corps Gold overall, although the landscape is often rather fake-looking and night missions with clouds are a deadly joke (you can hardly see anything, but the computer pilots can see you just fine). If you must play Flying Corps Gold unaccelerated, be sure to play from DOS, because even on a fast computer in will run sluggishly in Windows.

   With 3Dfx, Flying Corps Gold’s landscapes from period photographs become quite beautiful and realistic, with only a very few blemishes. The skies and airplanes are well done, and some of the effects are very good, such as the debris that falls from broken airplanes and exploding buildings, which seem to fly away with authentic flight dynamics of their own. Clouds can be found either in the background or in reachable layers - flying close to the undulating top of a cloud layer is a nice effect.

   Less well-done are some of Flying Corps Gold’s effects that remain unaccelerated and low-res, such as the thinner variety of smoke trails, bullet-hits, and moving-propeller effects, including an odd bug where an SE5 propeller’s axis started precessing around a wide circle sort of like a baton trick. Certain cockpit views are nice while others look a bit odd. I also recommend “short horizon distance” over “long,” as the latter makes the landscape appear odd at the horizon. Sometimes the background clouds don’t rotate at the same rate as the landscape. Mainly the graphics are very good and the frame rate is excellent except for occasional hiccups, most of which are removed by using a Large install.

   Red Baron 3D also benefits greatly from 3D acceleration. As in Red Baron II, the landscapes are still based on square grids of repetitive landscape tiles, but the effect comes off better with 3Dfx’s help, with occasional little glitches. The 3D upgrade finally offers some reachable clouds to fly around and through, which are well done. Red Baron 3D’s airplanes are detailed and attractive, with somewhat better and more varied paint jobs than Flying Corps Gold offers. On the other hand, Flying Corps Gold allows one to specify a different paint scheme for every pilot in your squadron, while Red Baron 3D only allows one player and one wingman paint scheme for each type of plane in your squadron. Red Baron 3D has other very nice effects for moving propellers, aircraft damage, rockets and bombs, sun glare, fires and smoke. 3Dfx cures the “ugly low-res cockpit” in padlock mode and offers some new effects, such as a transparent airplane option. Night missions now offer reasonable visibility with 3Dfx.

   Some of Red Baron 3D’s effects are not so good, such as a moon that is often darker than the background sky and that, in partial moon phases, rotates with the screen rather than with the universe. The game’s “French” landscape and architecture look more like rural USA. The new ground crash explosions are fancy but odd, featuring a dark blast circle on the ground, a small fireball explosion in the air above it, and as before the indestructible fuselage element often spinning along the ground rather like a top. Clear days in Red Baron 3D also seem to feature an unreachable ring of clouds on the horizon. On the whole the graphics are very well done, however.

   So Flying Corps Gold offers much better landscapes and faster frame rates, particularly in large dogfights - ground crash effects are also a bit better. Red Baron 3D has more plane types to look at, some superior special effects, and in general has a more polished look, except for the landscape. The graphic styles are a bit different: Flying Corps Gold’s planes and landscapes use darker, deeper colors (although some screen shots came out darker than they are in the game). Light direction has a greater effect on surface brightness and in close-ups the “lens” used exaggerates the proportions of closer objects.

   Red Baron 3D offers the ability to edit and import paint schemes using your favourite paint package, which is time-consuming but good food for the appetite of the obsessed player. In fact, one particularly obsessed player has also made a utility (free for download) to allow this with Flying Corps Gold as well.

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