Test System:

• P225 at 75Mhz bus
• 80M EDO RAM
• Matrox Millenium
• TM gear

One of the most highly anticipated sequels in flight simulation has finally arrived. The original Red Baron was a game that developed a strong reputation in the hearts of gamers everywhere. Very realistic for its time, playable, and entertaining were the three traits that characterized the game the most.

Red Baron 2 has gone through a long gestation, and now reaches to go much further in scope than the original. In an season where 3d accelerated sims with extremely fancy graphics is the norm, the older Red Baron 2 looks just a little dated right from the start. Underneath the basic trappings, though, lies some great gameplay for those willing to look a little deeper into the game.

The Games The Thing

The gameplay in Red Baron 2 is definitely the game's strongest card. This is the most important aspect of the entire game, since fun gameplay - accessible to novices and rewarding to experts - is what built up the strong reputation for the original Red Baron. The experience of flying and fighting in great, swooping battles is incredibly immersive. Rickety planes zip all over the sky in grand romantic duels.

This atmosphere of the "glorious romantic battle" and the flashing "sky knights" seems to exist more here than in previous WWI-era sims. It's something of an intangible which seems to result from the spirit of the game's creation, kind of a Red Baron version of "Farfehrgnugen", if you will.

Gunnery is tricky, and a very satisfying challenge. You have to put considerable lead on your targets. There are no oversized hit bubbles here. You really have to work for your kills and can easily waste lots of ammo with difficult shots or by simply misjudging bullet drop. There are thankfully no "magically accurate" crosshairs, either. You aim using the time-honored tradition of TLAR (ie That Looks About Right).

Also worth noting, you can load incendiary or conventional bullets depending on the type of target you will be flying against, and if you're flying a craft with two guns, you can even fly with a mixed ammunition load. Gun hits are very satisfying, and dirt gets kicked up nicely in strafing runs.

Ground fire is really severe. While the flak seems pretty ineffective, machine gun fire is absolutely lethal. AAA guns seem to be more related to ZSU-23s than the "Vickers on a strick" that they really are. Merely flying over enemy positions at cruising altitudes can end up losing flight members, and it frequently does. Luckily, and in a very unusual move, the accuracy of the enemy gunners can be edited by altering a few values in a text file. Just as easy as changing ".ini" file settings. Hopefully we'll see more of this kind of easy customizability in future sims.

Artificial intelligence is very respectable in general. While enemy craft don't always pull the maximum edge of the flight envelope - making even aces not very hard to kill, they do manuever aggressively, unafraid to fight extensively in the vertical. This frequently creates some memorable battles chasing enemy craft all over the sky. One of the better aspects of the AI is that - unlike most other sims - computer pilots aren't unfathomably good at taking high-deflection shots. Where in many other games getting anywhere in front of a computer controlled enemy means you are guaranteed to take damage, computer pilots in RB2 rarely fire if you present a poor shot opportunity, and when they do, it often misses.

This makes them feel more human and less mechanical - something usually overlooked in AI programming. Perhaps the biggest drawback to enemy AI is that the enemy units do not seem to manage their throttle settings at all. If you ever end up in a scissors fight, just chop the throttle and watch your opponent sail out in front. It seems like the only way to prevent this from being an unfair advantage in your favor is to likewise set your throttle at max and not touch it during dogfights.

Comms and Damage Modelling

One aspect of the game that may cause a little debate is the communications with your wingmen. In essence, you really don't have any. You can send two commands - "Engage" and "Join Formation". Even with these two commands, there doesn't seem to be any feedback to let you know if the message got through - and since your wingmen will engage and form up by themselves anyhow it can be a lost cause to figure out whether you are exercising any real command at all. The limited communications make sense since there just wasn't any radio available and communication was limited to primitive hand signals.

Still, some pilots might want the option of having a little more control than that. It would be nice to be able to request another attack run on a ground target, for example - since your flight seems to be intent on making a single hit-and-run strike normally. This may just be a concession to the reality of an underdeveloped hand signal system, but it would be nice to at least be able to select between "authentic" and "enhanced" communications.

Damage modeling is extremely well done. It appears that you damage exactly what you hit. No more engine hits when you nail the wingtip. It does seem that the rudder and stabilizer are virtually damage-proof, though - and it would certainly be a bonus if the fuselage would show bullet holes or get oil-spattered from engine damage.

Damage the wings enough or incapacitate the pilot and the plane will go into a spin or uncontrolled dive that turns into a death spiral as the speed of its fall tears the wings apart. Hit the engine hard enough and the plane will lose altitude and speed as the pilot struggles for control. Usually the craft will eventually enter a fatal dive. Sometimes it will go into the familar death throes of "pull up-stall-dive-pull up-stall... " and finally wipeout. Sometimes the pilot will actually manage a safe emergency landing - and then you can learn the twisted joys of strafing helpless grounded aircraft.

Then there are the times where you hit a fuel line and set the engine on fire. Few things are as shocking and morbidly entertaining as hearing poor enemy pilots scream as they jump out of their burning biplanes, their flaming bodies tumbling through the sky. Without parachutes they are doing little more than altering the method of their death -jumping rather than suffer being burned alive.

Now the romance is over. Dying isn't heroic. The thought of being shot down becomes much less palatable - even though it's only a computer game - and you'll find yourself going to extremes to avoid a similar miserable fate. But it really makes it all the more satisfying when you narrowly escape the jaws of death and manage to plant your opponent into the ground instead.

Perhaps the worst part about damage modeling is getting wounded. It seems that you can't get just slightly wounded, and so hope to have enough time to disengage and go home safely. Once wounded, you have a couple minutes of time until you pass out, and that amount of time appears to be rigidly fixed.

Even if you land, things can get very frustrating. The game asks you if you want to refly, abort, end or quit. If you accept your fate, the game may say that you have died or ended up in the hospital. If you are in the hospital you still have one more chance to refly or accept your fate. If you go ahead, the game may say you are out of action a few months and put you back into the war, or say that you are permanently disabled - which for gaming purposes is the same as being dead.

However, if the turnout was too severe for your tastes you may be in trouble. Sometimes the option to decline what fate has presented you with a "refly" button is not available and your entire war career comes to a sudden halt. Sometimes you do get access to the refly button, but the button wasn't working at all on the test system. This makes getting wounded almost as bad as getting killed outright, since odds are you'll end up with an ended career. Hopefully the refly button will always be available and made to work consistently in a future patch, because now it seems to make more sense to restart the mission the moment you hear the groan from the pilot from getting hit.

Finally, the ratio of "permanent disability" wounds to mere lengthy hospital stays is pretty severe. Is this a realistic portrayal of the state of medical technology at the time, merely an unbalanced ratio, or just a quirk of the random numbers while testing the game?

Graphics, Detail and Frame Rate

The graphics in Red Baron 2 have their definite ups and downs. Planes are textured and shaped with good detail, objects look reasonably good, and terrain is reasonably good, sometimes with repeating textures, sometimes not. The aircraft detail is arguably the finest ever put into a WWI simulation. From the spinning props, to the shaping of the fuselage, finally to the obnoxious vertical exhaust pipes on the Halberstadt, identifying craft visually seems easier than ever before.

On one hand, the framerate is really amazing for a non-accelerated game. Sometimes you can actually forget that there's no 3d card involved. You certainly get a good sense of speed zipping along just above the ground as well. However, despite how fast the engine is, it has some real drawbacks. You can't see very far at all, and the distance to which the ground is nicely textured is very limited even at the highest detail settings.

The colors for the ground terrain are frequently too strong, making spotting enemy aircraft against the ground extremely difficult, even when they are fairly close. Since many games make it too easy to spot enemy planes, it's hard to decide whether this is really unrealistic or not, but one can certainly make an argument that the strange pallette of colors they are using makes spotting strange and perhaps unrealistically hard for both air and ground units. Perhaps it comes from all the dithering.

About those colors. As many veterans of EF2000 know, that game seemed a bit strange in how everything was in dull shades of gray and green. While Norway can be understood to be a little less brighter than say, Holland, the game developed something of a reputation for having overdone it. In a similar fashion, Red Baron 2 seems to have gone the same way with a set of strong pastel colors. It gives the whole game a very odd look to it. Most likely this is a result of reducing the pallette size to allow for 256 color operation. You can grow accustomed to it, but it always makes things look a little more "story-book" than necessary.

The graphics system offers a couple of nice features that you don't see every day. In addition to the normal options, you also have access to windowed play. Not only does this allow you to surf the net or keep an eye on another program in the meantime, it also can be switched back and forth on the fly with only a couple clicks of the mouse. While windowed support isn't universally acclaimed by players, it's a nice option to have in today's heavily multi-tasking computing environments - and makes a nice diversion while you wait for a web download to finish.

The other useful option is "Combat Detail". This automatically reduces the detail settings to nearly the minimum once you fire your guns, and holds it until it determines that you are no longer engaged. Unfortunately, the routines that determine when to switch back don't always work, so you may find yourself firing off your ammo a few times just to change the detail level. The biggest problem with Combat Detail is that it turns off the ground textures, but doesn't put any features on the ground (unlike A-10 Cuba or most other flat-shaded polygon sims) so it's nearly impossible to judge your altitude when you're just above the deck.

There are still serious framerate issues, however. The worst of it seems to be due not to the actual graphics engine, but the calculations going on behind the scenes: AI, collision detection, and so on. When you have an epic battle taking place, the frame rate drops much too low to be practical. You need to be able to line up your target very precisely, and in a big fight, odds are you can't waste too much time doing it, or else you'll end up having someone else getting a clear shot at you.

Unfortunately, you just don't have the smoothness and response time to fight effectively in the really big battles. 3d accelerator support might not cure this, but it certainly should relieve some of the load on the processor to allow you to fight more effectively when the next mission up is a big one. Hopefully the team can find a way to streamline these routines more.

The issue about 3d accelerator support continues to be up in the air. First, it's not going to be supported, then it is, then more rumors about it being dropped, and so forth. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, Sierra officials could not be contacted for comment on what will be the final word.

Sound, Views and Padlocks

The game does a really remarkable job with sound effects - definitely deserving special notice. Looped engine sounds are very authentic and don't seem to have any irritating editing points in them. The coughing and sputtering sounds from an engine start, engine damage, or carb fouling from vertical manuevering are all extremely convincing. You can just imagine each of the cylinders laboring and just barely managing to fire. The sound of the engine starting while warm and in mid-air is even different that the cold startup sound.

Cutting your engine results in a nice "rushing wind" sound (Although that sound does indeed seem to loop too easily). The pilot will groan under high G loads, grunt when shot, and cut loose with a bloodcurdling scream when jumping from the plane. Spars creak and tension wires sing to warn of overstressing the airframe. Bullets smacking into wood have a remarkably delicious *crack* to them. Fluttering sounds can be heard as the cloth on the wingtips breaks loose and tears free of the wings. Loud explosion sounds greet many fallen planes (although it seems that the planes explode more often than they really should on impact).

The most atmospheric sounds come from the ground, however. Machine guns, flak, and artillery can be heard bursting and chattering in the distance, of course. The real icing comes from the aerodromes and churches. Fly over any church where opposing planes are present, and you can hear the echoing of it's bell tower wafting up to you as a warning. It not only gets louder and clearer as you approach, but it has an incredibly authentic "doppler shift" in pitch as you go by. Do the same over an aerodrome or city and you hear the wailing of the air-raid siren. You may even hear the ringing bell of an ambulance. It's really difficult to do justice in words to just how well these sounds have been implemented and how far they go in setting the proper atmosphere. Red Baron 2 has really done well in the audio department.

View options cover the basics well, but could have gone even further. In any of the views, you can instantly padlock to an enemy, friendly, flight member, landmark, ground unit, or enemy threat. This makes focusing on your fight much easier, although some would make strong arguments that it makes spotting too easy, since it is pretty common to be padlocked to an enemy aircraft that you can't see until you're virtually on top of it - due to disappearing among the ground clutter. Having an option to padlock whatever target is closest to being in front would be helpful.

Also, using the ground-unit padlock seems to be difficult to do right. The virtual cockpit padlock helps line up your target better when you're not quite pointing in the right direction, but on the other hand, your field of view is very narrow, so much of the time in a dogfight - especially an energy fight - you have absolutely no point of reference to understand your aircraft's orientation. This could have been mostly alleviated by including a "wide angle view", so that some part of the aircraft is always visible "out of the corner of your eye" (unless you are looking directly upward).

In addition, those favoring sophisticated cardinal views will be disappointed at first, as only views at 90 degree increments have been included. However, the latest patch is said to correct that, and make cardinal view combat more practical. The "45 degree up" view in front is of course, very useful in a dogfight, although allowing it to be selected by toggling the F1 key could make accessing it easier for the programmable-joystick impaired.

Flight Modelling

The flight model has a good basic feel to it. Roll inertia and control authority seem to be modeled reasonably well. Some roll induced yaw seems to be present. Torque effects tend to require a bit of left trim to fly level. Right turns are very sharp, left turns are slower and tend to climb. Torque is most noticeable is you emulate "blip-throttle" flying. (Some WWI aircraft didn't actually have a throttle per se, but an on/off throttle). Vertical flying can lead to engine sputtering, complete with smoke, from the carbs being unable to feed properly.

The taildragger layout that the biplanes use is understandably difficult to land - especially because landing gear at the time had no suspension to speak of, and you're landing in a dirt field. Don't be surprised if landings are the deadliest part of the mission at first. You can always use the autopilot or turn off collisions, but the game would benefit from a mid-level "easy landings" setting. Perhaps even some feedback would be in order to let you know if the landing you did was easy enough to be safe for realistic settings.

While the flight model feels good in general, it seems to be somewhat rule-based, as opposed to the "airflow modeling" systems in sims like Flight Unlimited or A-10 Cuba. It's when you go outside the flight model that things seem not quite right. RB2 lacks the serious penalities of spins and doesn't always seem to model uneven stalls properly. Furthermore, the planes seem overpowered and - strangely enough - don't seem to have any option to turn on or off the "engine boost" like most other WWI sims. That tends to make the realistic mode seem a bit simplified.

The flight model also has been the topic of considerable debate and even more rumors, many of a colorful variety. The current talk is that there will be a more-realistic flight model eventually made available for download, although it is not quite clear why this model couldn't make it into the initial release. Once again, Sierra representatives could not be reached for comment or clarification.

The manual is a real piece of work. While a spiral-bound manual would have been preferable, the existing manual is a little over 200 pages long, with a considerable section devoted to the historical aspects of the air war - complete with a heavy sprinkling of actual WWI-era photographs. The section that describes the planes seems short on statistics, but is at least descriptive, and each plane has a beautiful full-color rendering, some of the best illustrations ever put into a WWI game. The actual information available on gameplay could have been a little more thorough, but is definitely enough to get you in business.

Interface and Mission Planner

A Zoom shot from the Planner. Click for larger image...

The interface definitely has some serious ups and downs. The main screen interface is a classic display of wasted space. Why should a player have to go several screens deep to find information and yet not use up anywhere near the entire screen? While one can understand Sierra's desire to maintain consistency with their earlier sims, the interface design is due for an overhaul. Also, working with waypoints seems to require several more clicks than necessary and cannot be said to be intuitive by any stretch of the imagination.

On the other hand, some interface choices are very nice to see. You have a nicely animated "kneeboard" where you can turn pages to review formation settings, target areas, and the map. It really fits in with maintaining suspension of disbelief. You can choose from *three* different types of instrument clusters, ranging from modern day instruments (for those who spent too many nights with the civil aviation sims) all the way to a realistic set of primitive WWI instruments. Many options can be quickly and easily adjusted in flight by merely right-clicking on the mouse - although it does seem that the mouse pointer itself appears on the screen as a distraction more often than it should. Your progression of control over your squadron in very interesting, since as you become squad leader, you can control pilot assignments, waypoints, formations, and eventually weapons loadouts and even go on totally custom missions. Eventually you even get to decide the colors for the entire fighter group.

The paint kit is back, available once you reach ace status or a certain rank. It too, represents a step forward as well as a step back. On one hand, you can import bitmap files from any paint program or trade over the internet. This kind of flexibility is always welcome. On the downside, however, the included paint schemes available are limited to only the existing schemes of fellow squadrons and aces, without any decorative choices or even flat colors available. Hopefully Sierra will release a small collection of custom paint schemes to give a little more variety to those who aren't feeling up to scratch with painting on the computer.

Campaigns and Gameplay

The campaign itself is relatively unconventional. The team decided to go the "historical route" and give the player little or no ability to effect the progress of the war. Instead, the war mostly progresses according to historical precedent, but the missions themselves are not "canned" in the strictest sense of the word. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that the campaign falls somewhere between a pseudo-dynamic campaign (as in JSF or EF2000) and a random-mission generator. While the status of the various groups can be affected during time, and aces can be made or killed according to what happens in the game (rather than strict historical precedent), that is really the extent of how the player can participate in the war. Your ultimate goal really isn't about winning the war, it's about surviving with the highest kill-count possible. You could argue that that is more realistic, since pilots are thinking more about that than how to conquer the big picture, but it also tends to make you question your purpose in the game.

Time skip seems to be an important area for improvement. You have the options of using time compression from 2x to 16x. A good option to have, but the problem is that frequently the frame rate drops so low under compression that the sound becomes choppy and the 8x and 16x speed update so slow that 4x is sometimes faster. 16x is rarely faster then 8x on the test system. The limited scenery visibility means that you can't really entertain yourself by looking at the terrain go by, so the waiting time between waypoints can get pretty long. The game would also benefit from a "skip straight to action" feature, since non-hardcore players will have limited tolerance for cruising for extended periods without any contact at all.

"Autopilot" features are very well done for the genre. The autopilot has three basic modes to simplify flight. One is a conventional autopilot which hits the various waypoints in turn, and also manages takeoff and landing. Another is a "hold steady and level" autopilot that merely flies straight (good for keeping things under control when you are time-compressing). The last isn't something you see everyday, and is called the "combat autopilot". This makes your plane basically an AI plane. It does everything - and is very good for helping you see how to make certain attacks more effectively. Also, if you accidentally leave the time compression on too long, the fact that it will fight enemy planes gives you a sporting chance until you can manually wrest control back from the computer.

Red Baron 2 represents an unusual balance of pro and con. On the one hand, slow framerates (in large battles), long waits between battles, dated graphics, imperfect AI, and a very restrictive campaign all can be a downer for those looking for the perfect WWI sim. On the other hand, satisfying gameplay, good weapons modeling, superb sound, and a well-done sense of atmosphere also make it a very entertaining one for gamers who can be more forgiving. If you have a very fast machine and can play a game without nitpicking at it, then you should find Red Baron 2 to provide many hours of entertainment - and a pretty good sequel to one of the most fondly remembered simulations ever made.

Ed. Note: Sierra has released a 3 meg patch for the flight model for Red Baron II. The 'Realistic' flight mode is now the 'Easy' model and the new model is realistic and difficult. Several views have been added. Multiplayer stability is increased and paint schemes are now allowed. Flights no longer circle endlessly above the starting aerodrome and Direct-draw has been enabled again. Tracers may now be seen against dark backgrounds, and time compression turns off when you spot an enemy. 3 meg download.

A Taste of the Action...

Attention to detail often translates into atmosphere, and with period photographs, 16 mm film style briefings, period maps and excellent sound, RB2 has atmosphere in spades!

Hauptmann Sottlemyer's Flight Plan..

I got into a furball on my third foray in the sim and barely managed to hold my own. Mind you, I'm not sure what type of aircraft I was up against, having let Flying Corps sit on the shelf a bit too long... I took some hits but took out my man and then went on to strafe his airfield. I almost fell out of the airplane when I heard the air raid siren! Geez, what next? When I took a hit from ground fire my view got increasingly red and the groans and labored breathing of my virtual pilot increased until I was ready to call my wife at work and ask for advice (she's an RN...)

In a similar mission later I flew as escort for a bomber group targetting an allied supply dump. I let the AI do the flying til we got near to the dump and then took over. I was just scanning the sky for air cover when I was jumped by a pair of Nieuports just past the dump so my wingman and I kept them busy while the bombers did their dirty work. My wingman (in a Fokker DVII) proved to be a good shot and took out one Nieuport promptly. The other one (I later learned) had landed with engine problems...

Fine, I thought, I'll cruise around and see what targets of opportunity present themselves. I noticed a river and a bridge in the distance and took a peek at my lap map to see what might be nearby.

Ah ha! thought I, an Allied aerodrome! Going back to heads up my companion and I surged closer, with the sun off our rear quarter. Perfect! As we came within visual range I noticed a number of aircraft on the ground. Unfortunately, we were spotted and the alarm claxon began to sound. Suddenly ground fire erupted from two directions and as the fire increased my wingman took a hit and and I lost track of him. With black clouds of flak bursting around me I began to feel nervous...Everytime it was a bit too close my Fokker would shake about like a reed in the wind.

I began strafing as soon as possible and came in fast and low. I pulled up steep and into an uneven turn, the canvas complaining all the way. I was well past the Allied base when I felt my aircraft lurch sideways with a major impact. I still had control, however, and thought I could fly it home. However, my engine began to lose power and I realized something else was wrong... I could smell oil. Worse, my vision was beginning to dim...

I prepared to set down, now almost a mile from the base. My engine sputtered to a halt and the ringing from the air raid siren filled my ears, but a new sound began just as I rolled to a stop. I could hear a bell clanging from the direction of the base, and the sound began to grow in intensity. As I panned my view around I spotted a small truck coming my way, and as it drew nearer I realized it was a Red Cross vehicle, delight to the eye of a wounded Luftwaffe officer! Here is a shot of the truck just as it pulled up:

Good grief! Air raid sirens, Red Cross trucks.... My empty Fokker sat on the ground looking lonely. The pilot graphic was now missing! THIS is "attention to detail."

Some of the factors that really help with immersion is all sounds, like the bell of the truck, DO have a directional component, and if you glance left from the cockpit the sound stays oriented appropriately. The increasing intensity as the truck pulls up is also a factor. I can't recall now if I could hear the motor as it pulled up, but I do think this is also modelled. The second time I crashed near a base instead of landing and my Fokker was on fire. The Red Cross truck pulled up a couple of minutes later and a door opened and an animated figure stepped out and PUT OUT THE FIRE! I know what you are thinking, but this is NOT a joke!

The feel of flight is not unlike Flying Corps. The Spad I flew in two missions wasn't too difficult to stall and once stalled could be dangerous. Planes in Red Baron II will be individually modelled with their own flight characteristics. A Sopwith Camel will have a different center of gravity, roll rate, and lift qualities than a Fokker DR VII. Climbing ability, engine power and other differences will likewise be in place.

Sierra has also included Force feedback support in this release and I will gas up my CH stick in the next day or two to check it out. I'm not certain if all effects are in place but I'll report on the properties as they exist at present.

Mission Editor

The mission editor looks to be another highlight of RBII. Here is a view of the planning screen:

A Zoom shot from the Planner. Click for larger image...

You may edit a single mission, or you can create a new mission from scratch. You can also edit a mission in the campaign! I wasn't certain this would be possible at first, but if you click on View Flight Plan before you fly the mission you can indeed view and edit the waypoints! Not ONLY this, you can edit the other individual flights in your group for both ordnance and waypoints.

The map allows three levels of zoom which is quite adequate, and when you click on EDIT you can alter waypoints, altitude and formation and designate action per each waypoint. You may also choose how the map itself is configured, selecting and de-selecting from twelve options. Here is the list as it appears on the map screen:

Not only can you CREATE your own unique missions, you will be able to SHARE them with other pilots and FLY them with other pilots. I know, this is a real DROOL factor for many of you. Design your own squadron colors, put together some custom missions and challenge another squadron on the Net!

Sierra has released a 3 meg patch for the flight model for Red Baron II. The 'Realistic' flight mode is now the 'Easy' model and the new model is realistic and difficult. Several views have been added. Multiplayer stability is increased and paint schemes are now allowed. Flights no longer circle endlessly above the starting aerodrome and Direct-draw has been enabled again. Tracers may now be seen against dark backgrounds, and time compression turns off when you spot an enemy. 3 meg download.

Download RBII Patch