Well I am back in the game! Stock single player RB3D except for dgvoodoo the Promise land Control Panel and Garps flame out patch which I can't live without. I know it's working because the very first trial run in Fly Now I got a flame out kill!

I am not sure if I am using the latest or best Glide wrapper. It's dgvoodoo 1.50 and the author says it is still in beta. Seems to be working fairly well but I notice some tearing especially when I pan the camera in cockpit view, there will be tearing in the sky and airplane wings.

Thanks to Skid and the sticky install guide, it got me up and running in a snap.

Okay I used the FCJ Control Panel and bumped up the resolution to 1080x1024. That cleared everything right up, no more tearing and the game looks great.

I joined the British 46 Squadron flying Sopwith Camels in 1918. That is the Squadron Yeates was part of and that his novel Winged Victory is about. Our first mission is attacking an aerodrome and I have yet to complete it alive. I was home free this last time but I got greedy and went after a German balloon. The ground fire that erupted as I drew in for the kill took me out and I crashed into the balloon. I busted my prop, cracked my struts, and fell to the ground in one piece. I saw the balloon go down in flames too.

What a great combat flight sim! There is nothing else remotely like it. My patrol and I got in a tussle with some German 2 seaters after the attack and I took one of them out. But I lost a lot of altitude chasing him down for the confirmed kill and I was never able to regroup with my squad so I had to head home alone. I saw that balloon off in the distance as I was crossing No Man's Land and thought that's German, so I went after it. But just like Yeate's novel says, Hun land is full of machineguns and they did me in.

I too have just reinstalled with ROTJ. This game sucks me in like no other

Talk about historically accurate, I finished reading Winged Victory a novel based on the authors experience flying with the 46 Squadron so I thought I would join it. The game not only has the Squadron but the actual Camels they flew! That shows Dynamix did some research for this game, no?

Now go track down Goshawk Squadron by Derek Robinson

Yea Amazon has some good reviews about Goshawk I have been meaning to check that one out. I also read a couple of technical books about WW1 air combat by Leon Bennett, Three Wings for the Red Baron and Gunning for the Red Baron.

Another MUST have book is No Parachute by Arther Gould Lee. He was also with 46 Squadron. http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/england/lee.php

Also check out this thread http://www.simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2241962&fpart=1

Remaining stock, I would suggest to install Hell's Angels Gold II to improve game graphics and sound:

http://www.hellsangels.firstflare.com/patch/hag.rar

From same site download and install the OTE/PL combo to improve terrain and ground objects:

http://www.hellsangels.firstflare.com/scenery/3dpatchOTE.zip

then you can update flight and damage model by:

http://vonoben.free.fr/download.php?file=144

At this point you must only take care to avoid Stendhal syndrome...

Have fun!
GB

I have HA on a disk same with FCJ. I have always had serious frame rate issues by playing modded RB3D. Even the simple early mods that improved the planes and terrain would cost me in frame rates. I dunno what it is because many seem to do fine with them.

So I generally play the stock game in Glide. I can get anywhere from over 100 flying in f1 view looking at a blank sky to the low 30's if there are a handful of planes on screen, but very rarely will they drop into the teens and never single digits. I have to have smooth action flying this sim and the only way I seem to get that in a consistent fashion is playing stock.

I have probably upgraded my PC 6 times or more since I first flew this sim and each time I thought, this card will run the game no problem, or this extra ram will make all the difference. But every time my computer has struggled when there is a lot of action on screen.

Finally now with a dual core 4200 processor 2 gigs of ram and an ATI 1900XT I can run the game like I dreamed it should, but only if I play stock. Even now if I mod RB3D the game will chug when things get hot and heavy. Even the stock game slows down, but it is bearable.

Holy Cow! I tried another install of RB3D using a different Glide wrapper and the game runs twice as fast. It's the one on Von Helton's ROTJ webe site, Gabi's Glide 256. This wrapper is so efficient it makes the stock game run too fast, the planes move like they are equipped with powerful high compression 12 cylinder powerplants or jet engines! Also all the colors display deeper and richer looking than dgvoodoo, which is nice. I will have to mod this version of the game to slow things down. Fraps is showing over 200 FPS in places.

If you try dgVoodoo then make sure to use DeGe's latest dgVoodoo 1.50 Beta2 to be found on his website. This is a huge improvement over the previous versions and has special RB3D treatment programmed in. I have 70 FPS with 1600x1200 resolution, 16x Anisotropic Filtering and 16x Anti-Aliasing with dgVoodoo 1.50 Beta2. Even with mods like FCJ, HASP or WFP2 + terrain loaded. Also take a look at these dgVoodoo setup tips provided by Gabi Laser.

Cheers


Gremlin

I'm using ROTJ3R11 with PL2/PL combo terrain/effects. Amazing terrain colors! OTE/PL combo or PL2/PL combo updates ALL graphics files in the game.
ROTJ you can fly some 2 seater missions and even fire the front guns as long as you have Gabi's RELOAD program installed, no date switching as in WFP.

Thanks for the heads up on this Toadvine. Jus getting back into RB after a couple of years, and this wrapper makes a huge difference, way better than any others on my machine.

Many thanks to Gabi .

Evening, Chaps.

I tried the latest wrapper from Dege's VooDoo site, but all was not all that fast: about 25 fps and jerking around. But now I have downloaded the one from von Helton's site (as mentioned in Toadvine's note above), which is as smooth as silk, as he describes.

However it is all too fast though. The sound has sped up, the planes are about 15 - 30% too fast too.

I have set the glide.ini so that the screen refresh rate equals that of my LCD (60Hz), which slowed things down a lot.

But, is there another way of slowing things down WITHOUT using Turbo (which came with the old xp repair pack). That just seems so arbitrary to me - gunghing up the CPU until everything "looks right", rather than linking performance with something in the real world.

The reason I ask this is because all of this Glidos/DegeeVoodoo/D3D stuff eludes me, and apparently having an ATI card ASUS EAH4870 is very different from nVidia cards. This I believe given how everyone has good luck with the degee voodoo wrappers, and I didn't: not until Gabi's Glide256 came along.

Unfortunately, Gabi's help page doesn't seem to be working any more.

Regards,
George.

GlidOS (256 & "09rc9") uses OpenGL to interpret GLIDE calls and dGvoodoo uses DirectX.
For this reason the "Glid2x.dll" that comes with each are not interchangeable.
Make sure you're using the Glid2x.dll that came with the wrapper. If you change wrappers you must also change the Glid2x.dll.
In addition the "First Aid Kit" may resolve overspeed issues.
dGvoodoo 1.50beta2 should be the preferred wrapper. The recommended settings are just that, "recommended", as there may be settings you can tweak to make it right for your system.
A lot of folks miss using the Right mouse click menu on the dGvoodoo settings page (which is not visible)which is very important.

Thank-you for the information, Skid. Nice and clear if I read it s l o w l y , which is what I need.

I will download dgVoodoo 1.50beta2 AND check I have its .dll installed AND use the Right Click, which I am pretty sure I haven't done before!

Salute,
George.