Help Needed: FCJ Control Panel, CM11, First Aid Kit and Reload

Hi All

I'm returning to RB3D after a long absence, and I'm a bit confused as to what utility programs to use. After reading the 2 FAQs in this forum, the Wings Of Honor pages, Gump's page, Wings of Valor and the SWW1SA forum, I gather I need some or all of the utilities in the post title for the following functions:
(a) Fixing WinXP problems.
(b) Patch and addon management.
(c) Graphics management, especially increasing resolution past the default of 1024x768.
(d) Performance improvements. Not sure if these utilities offer that.
(e) Gameplay enhancements, like front gunners in 2-seaters, flyable 2-seaters, date-based campaign changes, etc. Item (e) is less important to me, as I need to get the hang of the game again before I worry about stuff like that.

My concerns are the possible problems arising from the interaction of all these utilities, and hence I have some questions. For all the following, I'm going to be using dgVoodoo 1.5beta2 and Hells Angels Gold (and eventually, HASP):

1) Do I need all 4 of these utilities? According to Gump's site, ReLoad and FCJCP provide the same functionality as the First Aid Kit. Is this true? Do any of the others duplicate functionality?

2) Wings of Honor says CM11 and ReLoad's date functions are incompatible. Do I need ReLoad as well as CM11? Does ReLoad offer any functionality not offered by CM11 (or FCJCP), other than TrackIR use and some physics tweaks?

3) Does FCJ CP still have problems with RB3D installs not located in c:\Sierra\RedBaron3D? Or is that fixed in version 2.2?

4) Are there any other compatibility issues with these utilities?

5) Is there any prticular order in which I should install or run them (along with dgVoodoo and HAG)?

6) Any other essential addons I need for playing in Single Player mode (aside from the official 1078 patch)?

Thanks,

Errr ... anybody?

Hi, SKY!
1) I use 3 of these utilities in all 7 of my RB3D installs, all except F.A.K.
2) All these 3 are compatible and contain functions the others do not have, some have some of the same functions (like XP sound fix and DATE based operations).
3) Not a problem especially if your copied install is out of the SIERRA folder. All my installs are in C:\RB3D. You will run into some self installers that you must point to the folder you need since they are likely defaulted to install stuff to C:\SIERRA\
RedBaron3d. I don't even have a SIERRA folder on my machine. That stops things from going to the wrong place, hee hee!
4) CM11 and ReLoad both allow DATE functions using different methods, do not use DATE functions with both at the same time. You can still use ReLoad with CM11 DATE functions by unchecking ReLoad's "check date dir". Or you can use ReLoad's DATE functions and still use CM11 for managing minor patches, gunnery, start War early, etc. CM11's DATE folder goes in the CM11 folder, ReLoad's DATE folder goes in the RB main folder. CM11 allows any number of DATE folders installed by applying them as PATCHES. For example one DATE folder may manage planes, another DATE folder for terrain modifications, another DATE folder for skies, etc. Yea, amazing!
You can only use one DATE folder with ReLoad.
5) Not really, I use the install order of CM11 then FCJCP then ReLoad.
6) That's a matter of personal taste, there are hundreds of addons but the 3 utilities mentioned above plus Glide wrapper are most useful and what I consider essential to manipulate all the settings arrangements and UOP possibilities you may need.

Hey Skiddmark

Thanks again for your info (I also read your response to my duplicate posting on the SWWWISA forum). I'm glad to see the RB3D community is still as helpful as I remembered from the old days.

S!