So, you think you can just GLIDE through life?

Liebe RB3D players and Forumites,
Allow me to recommend to you the best way I know to approach an "obsolete" technology, i.e. GLIDE...

Two salient points must first be made (more details after):
1) The best way, and I would say, the only way to play RB3D is with a GLIDE card;
2) While it is no longer easy to obtain a GLIDE card, under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should you purchase one, on-line, through COMPUVEST.com (you have been warned!)...

GLIDE, of course, was the proprietary graphics acceleration technology of 3dfx Interactive, Inc.; when I last looked, they still maintained a 'support' website for all the poor shmucks like us who still have their cards and believe in life after death.

To expand upon point #1 above, you haven't really seen RB3D until you've seen it in GLIDE; as a friend of mine concurred, after I had introduced him to RED BARON, RB2, and RB3D, "it's like a whole 'nother game!" For example, when a bomb drops, you see the shock wave that it creates; and looking forward through the spinning prop looks just like-- well, just like looking through a spinning prop...

On the down side, Sierra never did get the smoke effect right-- it looked like the plane was blowing smoke rings instead of going down in flames-- but there are patches available that will correct this.

And I can tell you-- some of these patches are GREAT!!!; but, the point that I want to make here is that they also work in GLIDE...

("Direct Draw"? Give me a break! Compared to GLIDE, it's like a coloring book to a fine watercolour; "Direct Flaw" would be a better description!)

Now to some specifics, wherein I'll tell you about my own experiences with the cards, and then how to go about obtaining one:

V2 1000 (aka Voodoo 1000): the low-end, PCI slot, 'baby' of the bunch, with 12 Megs of video memory, *but not to be underestimated; it's really an acceleration card, in that it works with your existing graphics card. I use it with an on-board video (i.e., 'built-in') motherboard, and really have no complaints. The "flying through cloud" effect is just as good as on the more advanced cards, but the clouds here do have these disconcerting sharp edges...
You could also have two of these cards work together in tandem, via the SLI connection on the card, but, while I've used this, the effect is nothing spectacular. I think that you might just as well buy the next card up:

Voodoo 2000, available in both PCI and AGP, 16 Megs; this is what my friend uses, and he is perfectly satisfied with it. He is also a great one for obtaining patches, and he's yet to complain about any compatability issues (his OS is Windows 98); next we have my card:

Voodoo 3000, AGP, 16 Megs-- in terms of the most bang for the buck, this is the one you should buy! As a footnote, there is also:

Voodoo 3500, AGP, 16 Megs, whose main feature is that it came with a built-in television tuner, if watching t.v. on your monitor is what spins your prop. I'm afraid I consider this one more of an aberration than an upgrade, even though its core speed was faster than the 3000; I ended up returning mine unopened when I realized that it would not work with Windows 2000 (alas, how youth is wasted on the young!);

Voodoo 4500: AGP, 32 Megs, but I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage here, for this is the one card that I missed, having decided to go for the gusto and purchased the ultimate in the Voodoo line:

Voodoo 5500: AGP, fastest core speed, 64 bitchin' Megs; how good was it? Well, say that you're in your Snipe, you've shot down one of the D.XII Pfalzs (do you recall this RB2 and RB3D scernario?), and you discover that your immediate sky is empty. You press the "E" key (to spot the nearest enemy) and suanter off in that direction; as you approach, but are still fairly far away, you begin to make out which is friend and which is foe... For, whereas the other cards would show you pixels-- actually black dots-- this card would show you colors. Very impressive. In this case, the 'browns' or single-colored are the Snipes, while the multi-colored are the Pfalzs; put another way, you don't have to be on top of 'em to sort 'em out...

{End of Part 1; please refer to "O tempora! O mores! O 3dfx!}