Red Baron 3D: Full Canvas Jacket Page 6

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Final Opinions and Conclusions

If you have the money to spare (28 USD currently) and loved the first game then I think going to the FCJ web site here and ordering Full Canvas Jacket is a very good idea. The improvement in the graphics engine alone is worth the majority of the price of admission. When you compare the differences in terrain textures, aircraft renderings and ground objects with the original game you can’t help but be struck by the improvement. Add to it improved flight models, more accurate representations of the aces and units shown on the Western Front and all around you have a massive improvement to what was already a very good game.

I will throw a caveat in here though. If you think that FCJ will improve the game to the level of a true modern flight sim, then you might be a little disappointed. Many features commonly seen today can’t be placed in this title simply due to the age of the code. Likewise graphically the game, while pretty decent, is not up to the fidelity of LOMAC or IL2:FB. That’s not a terrible thing, few games are IMHO but just remember that this game still has limitations posed by 1996-1997 technology.

All limitations aside though, the FCJ add on is a great fix that brings RB3D back from the simulation archives and makes it an eminently playable game for most modern flight simmers. For the first time in three years I have RB3D on my computer and with this update I don’t plan on taking it off. When you consider that most of us have had RB3D for five or six years now the idea of paying 28 bucks to bring it back up to a much more modern setup seems like a fairly good idea. I know some will balk at paying the money but in general it seems pretty fair to me.

Testing System Specs

• Pentium 4 – 2.8 GHz (Dell Dimension 4600)
  800MHz FSB (with all that hyper-threading stuff)
• 1 GB 400MHz DDR RAM
• RAID 0 Config
• SB Audigy 2 sound card
• NVIDIA Ti 4600 video card

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