Red Baron 4 (kind of) announced

See there for the original story: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/damon-slye-to-build-new-red-baron

Alexander

Very good. I love options.

Well I've got to ask, and why not be the first too, so I'll get the jump and ask when is this new Red Baron product finally going to get its comparison to OFF?

And if it's really built, will reviewers have the balls to compare it to OFF anyway, and if they don't, why not!

Is it just going to be some new game, with pretty graphics and flying, or will it tell me I've got a hang-nail on my left big toe, like I would have known if I was flying a truely immersive WWI campaign?

Cool, but until Damon makes mention about the type of game he intends to make, there's not much to discuss.

Well FlyRetired, you could run out to the local big box and buy 'Red Baron Arcade' now. It is real pretty. lol

Well this is really sad, because it's been over 45 minutes and no one from Mad Otter has come here to answer these questions. Do they care about their customers? It makes you wonder.

I'm afraid the Fokker Dr.I's FM will be porked, and will they ever address the online fire bug! I had hoped for this Red Baraon Phase III, in fact I've said I hope it succeeds, but I give it six months, and if they haven't changed the online fire bug, it'll be dead on arrival.

New flight sims where ever you look. Who would have thought?

New flight sim anouncements where ever you look. Who would have thought?

That's some article that seems to believe it newsworthy that a 19 year old IP was picked up by its originator and some musings about a "maybe" product. Yet, yet, Eurogamer has not one an article on the current modern WWI combat flight simulator called "Rise of Flight: The First Great Air War". Perhaps you've heard of it?

So, my considered opinion toward the article and Eurogamer is that they can suck it.

The only way for this new RB thing to take wings is to have Mad Otter breed with an Old Brown Dog, and get some Gnarly Mad Red thing.

edit for grammar

You are all kidding, right?

What is the big deal? Like we can have TOO many WWI flight sims???? Unbelievable....

Gimme a break. Both OFF and ROF could use a little healthy competition.

No, I don't know what will come of RB at this point. Neither does anyone else.

This is going to more fun than I thought.

Well, we're concerned about the mafia connection more than anything else.

Who knows though, maybe MAD OTTER will be good competition with the Russian oligarchs, and that's free enterprise and therefore competition at its BEST!

Oh man Fly'!

You not only hit the proverbial nail on the head with these recent posts - you obliterated it!

edit: don't forget that this RB4 must run on a 386/40 with an S3 virge card too!

So much for a meaningful discussion.

The fanbois have this one locked up.

See ya.

ah...so anyone that you cannot convince is now labeled a fanboi?

Toodles!

...don't let the door smack ya on the way out.

I'm lost... what's to discuss? It's a "maybe there'll be a RB4 game at some point" type of news report.

If it ever materialises, I'll be more than willing to buy and play it, see if it's any good. If it's better than RoF is at that point, it might even be the flight sim I play most often and I'll certainly compare and contrast the two.


...but right now it doesn't even exist as a real project, so what's to discuss?

Brain, that is so true!

As many of us fans still enjoy playing SP games on a 386/40, this new Red Baron sim better have options to play it on earlier systems too. I'm thinking Windows 3.0 compliance should be a no-brainer.

Hell, knew I shouldn't've junked my 486SX

Why can't we discuss OFF without everytime having someone shut down the discussion. That is so typical on this forum!

Is it because this new RB sim has something to hide?

lol...

Agreed Fly.

...and furthermore...

It must have a built in self-auto-configuration utility so that all the super-IT-computer genius' who play this genre don't have to struggle with setting up their SB 16 cards or 2400 baud modems correctly!

Hell yeah, having to manually enter your IRQ, stereo setup and prefered MIDI device is a pain in the arse. Neoqb definitely should have made sure that wasn't necessary with RoF

I'll have to take your word on all this IT stuff guys, because I'm still trying to free up enough RAM with my config file, btw, can I delete my floppy drive on startup, help, advice?

No Fly' - you are doing everything 100% correctly!

Someone will be by shortly to let you know it's all RB4's fault.

Thanks Brian.

Now how do I get this Glide wrapper to work anyway?

What is OFF?

An add-on to Combat Flight Simulator 3 for WWI aircraft. More like a complete transformation.


http://www.overflandersfields.com/info.htm

Does it fit in extended memory and question two is there an optional RAM pack

Glide wrapper

Orchid Righteous 3D. Hardware accelerated heaven.

I've still got one in the shrink-wrapper. I might have said that before

We worship dark and mysterious Gods

Ming

"If SimX is to survive, it needs to generate revenue, and it is questionable that the revenue generated by purchases of the game plus add-ons will suffice if the game is perceived as either (a) too hardcore or (b) lacking in long term content."

Of course this means that evey new historical flight simulation effort should not be hard core, but just have lots of content.

Did I answer your question WF2?

These survival plans sound like a wonderful formula for easy success, and certainly might work for RB4, problem is Mad Otter is thinking about selling all this "long term content" on a new game engine, and ouch, that could be a big problem.

No, the SX? You were right to junk it with its narrower bus...Now, had it been the DX, it woulda' been a keeper.

<sigh>

A new Red Baron(1) and Red Baron 3D package at www.gog.com might attract quite a few purchaces by those that like that popular site .. the level of interest there might determine what will come next

Damon could:

Re-issue various levels of RB3D <subtitle> incorporating various community mods. Doable scenarios include 100+ aircraft SP including AI planes and 80+ MP .. all flyable

Rebuild and expand the size / features of RBII/3D with modern graphics .. he does have the RBII source code now .. that could mean 200+ plane "slots", though I doubt more than 80 types, flyable in SP and MP would be used .. flyable 2-seaters and bombers in SP and MP with AI gunners, maybe human gunners .. dunno for sure what might be possible

Build a new Red Baron title from scratch in a new or proven existing flight engine with good Multiplay.

Yes he could, and it's very cool he's thinking about the idea.

I'm waiting to see the first screenshots.

oh, I still have my old DX, theres still hope! :P

Heya Flybert,

Yeah, if they make it anew...

I vote to call it:

RED BARON 4life

I'll be hoping for a RED BARON 4in my life

Oh, man, I actually had an S3 card and had to replace it with a Voodoo Banshee when they chose Glide as the 3D acceleration for RBII!

Personally I think SimHQ should start a whole forum dedicated to the new Red Baron (even though we already have one) so that we can then fill it up with "it's never coming out" and "it's vaporware" threads!

A new Red Baron could be interesting.

It might even have a way to set joystick sensitivity and play dogfight servers like most other 21st century sims. Or is that 20th century sims?

Red Baron 4D ???

Isn't the 4th dimension supposed to be time?

Hopefully they will finally include time travel.
As we all know, Richthofen was never killed, he simply traveled to another time. And the possibility for us to experience this is finally here!
Just imagine the adventures that could be had by the Red Baron time traveling in his modified DR1!!!

But the questions are:
Is 88mph still the required speed to time travel?
What if it's terminator style and you end up naked for some reason?

I thought the other guys were trying their best to be funny, but this one takes first prize

In all seriousness, if they intend to make a simulator and not a WWI-airplane themed game, it will take some time. Heck, i don't even know if they even intend to make something along the lines of what they did in the past, but it's an encouraging first snippet without reading too much into it. It would be interesting if they licensed Oleg's new engine to build a new Red Baron campaign based on that though, plus it would save a lot of coding time.

That's the best course of action for everyone involved, especially the people who seem eager to start drawing parallels between a title that's been out for almost six months and another one that's not even in development yet, as it will lend some credence to the validity of bringing up said comparisons. Trying to bump up one's horse by making comparisons to thin air makes for a good laugh whether you see it from a tongue in cheek point of view or a serious one, but is hardly encouraging for one's case after all.
To be fair it's more of a case of immitating community reaction, it's just that it's aimed at thin air. Which could make people think that either the reaction is overdone, or that the previous receiver of such reaction also belongs to the realm of ether. Highly misunderstandable and prone to double edged interpretations, don't you think? I'm not going to spell it out any further, each one should be free to read what they want into it. Let's just sit back and proclaim "the lady doth protest too much" when the usual suspects start calling it by name, the minefield has been laid

I saw make a new engine. We don't really need two WWI sims with the Il-2 code (Rise of Flight). That game pisses me off enough.

Keep in mine that a few of the old "aces" games were being remade then canceled. We will see how far this one goes with delight.

ROF management may be interested in selling their engine to a new Red Baron developer. I bet they could use the $.

Hello,

i thought the NeoQb company bought the game engine (Digital Nature game engine) from someone else ?
http://cloud.prohosting.com/dignat/index.html
I mean every developer could look around the market, and search for an "engine" that suits him, or the planned sim.

It is just that exactly this engine is what costs some real money. The sim "that may not be named here" decided to use the back-then best modeling engine of Micro$oft's "Combat Flight Simulator 3", another WW1 sim uses the engine of the "Screamin' demons" Flight sim. But it is not until the engine's source code is open/hacked, that one can really change and adapt it to the intended simulation. CFS3's source code is now open for change, but their may be basic restrictions - don't really know.

RoF's Digital nature is the most advanced and recent, when it comes to modeling air flows/streams, but it does not mean there could not be be better ones sooner or later. Even older ones may well provide what a WW1 sim is looking for, if it can be thoroughly changed (there are also tools like "air wrench" coming to my mind, which is certainly "primitive" compared to real adapted programming).

Something like a unversal "digital wind tunnel" would be a good idea for testing the precision of all those engines lol.

Greetings,
Catfish

Could someone ask Damon Slye if they are doing a version for the Amiga 500 too? I remember those heady days I passed hours of time when I was stationed in Korea in 91
playing RB, the steady green light as the floppy drive constantly accessed the floppy disk, the 4-5 frames per second action. But I still loved it. Anyway I will drag the amiga out of the shed and dust it off, and the old 1084S monitor. Hope they still work after 18 years.

RoF isn't based on IL-2 code. It's not got even a line of the IL-2 engine in it.

Early days yet, but I'll be eagerly awaiting screenshots as well. The impression I've gotten from Damon and the folks at Mad Otters is that the intent is for a serious sim rather than an arcade game. Here's hoping they pull it off! Lets face it... for a lot of us old simmers (that's SIMMERS, not SINNERS, Ming...) a modernized and updated Red Baron has been the holy grail of WWI flight simming.

Cheers m8!

WvB

If they plan on making a realistic detailed flight sim with a new gfx engine and dynamic campaign then its going to take some time, lots of time in fact.

I wouldn't be happy with less than ROF's physics and aircraft modelling, for WW1 aircraft Neoqb have set the bar for those aspects now.

And this is what I believe makes Russian developers the kings of flight sim development. JMO, but at this point, if the sim isn't being developed by a Russian development house, I wouldn't waste any time wondering what it's going to be like. I don't think the development cycle required for a (good) flight sim is possible anywhere else.

Eighty flyable aircraft types would take some time to model, and then there's the question if these planes would have 3D cockpits with them also. This to me is just one of those threshold questions, and just has me wondering what a sim of this ambitious intent could actually produce?

Perhaps something like a WWI IL-2:Birds Of Prey development, but utilizing old RB code, with either a modern graphics engine, or by licensing a complete (modern) game engine altogether, just sounds like a lot of backwards engineering involved.

Not gonna risk holding my breath, here. So many good ideas have fallen by the wayside. When I hear it's approaching beta I'll start following it's progress.

You know looking back now, and how the Gennadich Team (the original design house behind Knights Of The Sky/ROF) arrived at doing a WWI sim, was certainly influenced by the fact that WWI hadn't been done on the IL-2 engine yet. As it was, the IL-2 engine idea was dropped, and the KOTS/ROF team decided to design its own flight sim engine, which after a few years exhausted the Gennadich support, and the team/project had to find a new sponsor, or cease development.

In retrospect, and in my opinion, if not for the fact that the IL-2 series had never ventured back to simulate WWI, I truely believe that the team behind ROF would never had chosen to build a WWI era sim.

This is my belief as well. This is another reason why I tread very carefully when I find things about this sim that I don't like. I love the hobby too much and as far as I'm concerned, RoF is our Alamo.

IMO you all should just come back to flying FS-WWI...



A Red Baron 4 would be super sweet though, if done in the same spirit as Red Baron 2/3d... Maybe they can license the OpenPlane engine?!?! Wishful thinking there...

RoF is our Alamo

It's my Gettysburg in which I play Abraham Lincoln most of the time but not all of the time

Ming

LOL Jason!

Would almost be like going to some bird sanctuary in comparison.

Gustang, I'm inclined to think that the Digital Nature engine and thereby Neoqb are lke the Alamo, but I respect your observation in direct reference to ROF. I doubt Neoqb is going to make money on ROF, but if they can pay the bills and stay in business, then the ND engine and the company's development opportunities might continue. With more retrospective contemplation, and as much as I love WWI, it's not a period that anyone designing a sim-grade game should contemplate as a first choice by far. I just hope Neoqb survives, and can maintain some standing in the sim world for it to be able to go forward from here.

That's probably a much better analogy, Ming. I don't mean to imply that I believe RoF is our last bastion of hope, yet doomed.


FR,

I hope they constructed the sim engine in such a way that will allow them to license it out to third parties. Sure seems like a lot of effort to not do so.

Gustang, if they have or can, I would imagine the instructions would read like Russian.

I'm not quite getting that one mate...

Minor correction for clarity's sake. RoF doesn't use IL2 code, they said they would when they initially announced the project but decided to use a new engine later.

Similarly, when i referred to Oleg's new engine i meant the one that is going to be used in Storm of War:Battle of Britain, his next line of flight sims. According to him, the game was 80% complete as of his last simHQ interview (during the summer or spring i think?) and what they have left is to model the ships and various other secondary things. So, if this is true the SoW engine is complete and maybe it would be possible for another developer to license it for use in a sim of his own.

Anyway, it would be awesome to have a new Red Baron title running on an up to date engine.

I also like the idea proposed by Catfish about a "wind tunnel" utility and i've been advocating it from time to time on Oleg's official forums.
Every FM out there is an approximation of the real thing, because our PCs are simply not powerful enough to run everything at 100% realism. I bet we could simulate true to life dynamics, but not with the graphics, sound and other things happening around you that we are used to seeing in a flight sim. Maybe if we relegated the horizon to a single line and our flyable to a cross-shaped vector graphic it would work, but it would be 21st century flight dynamics modelling with 1980s graphics. So, there need to be some shortcuts taken.

Now, let's imagine we have a new plane creation software suite. First, the 3D modellers design a new flyable whichever way they want (3D studio and so on). Then, the FM guys import it into this software suite, run the wind tunnel tool and let it crunch numbers for a few hours or even days. Heck, if it can run in network mode and use 10 PCs instead of just one then it would be even better (think distributed computing a la Seti@home for flight sims).

This utility would be as close as it gets to real aerodynamic modelling, basing it's computations on the shape, size, wheight, wheight distribution and horsepower for a given airframe, based on the imported 3D model and maybe even other properties of the materials used. For example, you could have a materials toolset, a database of properties for materials commonly used in aircraft construction, from wood and linen to aluminum and steel. This could be used to calculate the DM as well as wheight and wheight distribution for the FM. Marking different areas and objects in the 3D model with different flags, you could assign those preset properties to them and tell your software that for example, these spars on your Hurricane are made of metal, but the covering is fabric and so on, letting it calculate the important bits.

So, after a week of having a dozen i7 based PCs working on an network crunching numbers, we would now have an almost true to life virtual copy of the airframe in question. One that we can't use in any flight sim because it will grind everything to a halt that is. This is the really nifty bit, our little software suite would come equiped with one more final function, one to approximate and extract the final simulated FM and DM from the real one. Then, you could import those parameters into the sim and have an aircraft that flies as close as possible to the real thing, limited only by the engine's capabilities.

It would be a lot of work to code something like this and i guess we won't see this for years to come, but with the longevity that comes from modding flight sims, some developers have started talking about such prospects in the future. Instead of doing manual calculations, approximations and coding the FM/DM, they would have to code such a tool once and let it do the dirty work. From that point on, people could create a flyable plane per week if they knew the materials used in its construction, engine rated power and had an accurate 3D model of it. Well, we can dream, can't we?

Anyone else's heart sink? In software the first 90% of any project takes 50% of the time, and the last 10% takes 50% of the time. Always. If he's only at 80% we've got a good few years to wait yet.

Yep, that's right!

And that's the engines, not the stuff that plugs into it.

When we look at Rise of Flight, we see an engine that's 100% done, from netcode to FM/DM/AI.

Indeed, what's missing is probably 3% of the sim - Settings/user interface, campaign improvements, DF map capability, etc. It's also really the only part of the sim users really see.

I used to build statistical models that tracked trends and helped in making projections. I would spend almost as much time in the presentation of the data and conclusions as I would putting together the analysis itself! Not a single decision maker cared one whit about how the sausage was made (other than casually), only that they could understand and apply the end points within ten to twenty minutes, from slide to policy decision.

X-plane builds it's own flight model from the design of the plane. It has a plane maker utility and after you design the plane, it will determine the flight model from the design.

Does anyone else here have any experience with X-plane?