I last played RB3D about 4 years ago. I had got back into it after seeing the WWI movie "Flyboys"... not that that movie was fully historically accurate. Anyway, I don't remember why I stopped playing it, but when I tried to play it again about a year ago, I found that i couldn't. I used to have a dual-boot Win98SE and WinXP, as I couldn't play RB3D in max resolution in WinXP, and the sound cut out under XP as well, so I played under 98SE. Unfortunately, I'd done some hardware changes and somehow Win98SE took exception to this and refused to boot. Now I'm running another dual boot, Win7-64bit and Linux, though I haven't booted up the later in a LONG time. I haven't tried installing RB3D as I doubt that it will work under max resolution (if at all), and as I'm trying to focus on FS2 right now, it would prove counter-productive to my efforts.
I do recall that when they switched from RBII to RB3D, you couldn't set enemy planes on fire anymore, which raised the difficulty factor considerably. Of course, I almost always fly in invincible+unlimited ammo.+unlimited fuel mode, so my kill rate was through the roof. I liked that when I reached a certain rank, I could pick and chose which planes where assigned to which pilots (and myself) and though I hated it, it added realism that when you lost pilots (which were replaced) you also lost the planes, so you could end up flying less advanced planes if you lose too many people.
The real clincher though, is that I used to play the original Red Baron for DOS... and as I got better, I even played in non-god mode. I loved the Dr.I in that game. I recall once I made a head-on pass at a recon flight, and then somehow managed to combine all my control surfaces (including that wicked one-piece rudder) and flipped my fighter knife-edge vertically and found myself completely lever, going the opposite direction, in perfect firing position against the plane I'd just attacked head on. It was the perfect maneuver and I was never able to duplicate it.
