Contents:
Flawed
Beginning
History
Begins
Early UOP's
"The Dr.1 is Porked!"
SWWISA
The Last Classic UOP
To
the East!
Revolution
of CdT
A New Breed of UOP
Pat Wilson and WFP
Stachel's Hell's Angels
The Promised Land
The End of the Road
The Second Coming of The
Promised Land
Yet one patch
remains in the community’s history. The ultimate UnOfficial Patch ever
created for Red Baron. The one patch that the entire community waited with
baited breath for months to be released. The only patch ever to garner
publication in gaming magazines and actually be nominated for Flight Sim
of the Year in 2003, six years after Red Baron’s release. That patch is
Full Canvas Jacket, and it represents the culmination of years of work by
the talented modder who goes by the handle, Kessler. The patch, now over a
year old, stands as a giant over the rest, and leaves Red Baron
unchallenged as the ultimate flight simulation of the First World War.
To list what Full Canvas Jacket accomplishes compares to listing
the feats of a great athlete. Aircraft skins, squadrons, aces, events,
sound effects, menu music (composed and performed by Kessler himself),
flight model, damage model, terrain, sky, clouds, cockpits, artificial
intelligence, ground objects, infantry, buildings, trees, machine gun
nests, anti-aircraft fire; the list goes on and on. Everything that could
be altered and improved within the structure of Red Baron was and Kessler
left no stone unturned. Full Canvas Jacket did more than modify Red Baron;
it changed the game as it had always been known. Red Baron transformed
into an accurate and moving representation of the period and those who
risked their lives everyday in the skies over the Western Front. Full
Canvas Jacket can be regarded as the “shot heard round the world” and
the community’s world changed forever upon its release.
Kessler had worked since the beginning tweaking Red Baron, usually
creating new terrains, photo-realistic buildings and better sound effects.
His site, The Promised Land, was always a source for new and better audio
and visual effects. In 2001 he released a “Promised Land” update for
Red Baron, giving the game all of the above in one patch. Yet Kessler knew
he had to finish the job right to be satisfied and began work on creating
a single install, non-date based UOP for Red Baron. When the screenshots
of his aircraft were released, the community was stunned. No one had ever
seen aircraft that looked so incredibly realistic. No one really knew how
he had done it, but with each passing day more pictures of more planes
were released to an amazed and excited community. Not only did the planes
look “real”, so did everything else. The terrain had transformed from
a blurry mass of green and blue to something beyond photo-realistic. One
could actually see shadows being cast by trees along open fields below the
planes. The rivers looked like they slowly flowed along the French
countryside. The sky and clouds filling it looked exactly as Red Baron
pilots had always imagined it. The trenches looked chillingly realistic.
The one phrase uttered most often in the months leading up to July of 2003
was “it looks so real!”
When
Full Canvas Jacket was finally released in July of 2003, the culmination
of work by Kessler, and in all actuality, an entire community of
enthusiasts drew to a dramatic conclusion. Years of work researching,
modifying, studying, and patience had finally paid off. Flying Full Canvas
Jacket resembles that of being in a movie, or even better, actually flying
in World War I itself. To sit in the photo-realistic cockpit, take off
over the stunning terrain, and engage in a ferocious dogfight with
aircraft that look like they are going to jump off the screen was simply
breathtaking. Kessler’s Full Canvas Jacket represents the ideal imagined
by Beery, WingStrut, Stachel, Pat Wilson, every member of SWWISA, Baron
von Benz, Karel, Baron von Helton, and every enthusiast who felt called to
tweak a flew plane skins since the late 1990’s.
(How
Far we’ve come: An SE5 from the original Red Baron 3D
compared to the Full Canvas Jacket version)
(The
Wow Factor: A Roland CII from the original Red Baron 3D
compared with its big brother from Full Canvas Jacket)
