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iBeta's Realism Patch 3, Merlin's B-1B Cockpit.
By Bob "Groucho" MarksThere are, of course, many other small fixes in there. All of these come with no frame rate hit. iBeta has made it a point to try and not “turn on” too many cycle-eating functions. In fact, iBeta has noted that you may actually see a slight increase due to the changes in the ground unit structures, though I have not been able to confirm that.
What you will not see in RP3 (or, indeed, probably not in any subsequent iBeta RP release) are any graphics enhancements, such as F4Turbo. I asked Eric “Snacko” Marlow, Executive Producer about that omission from F4Patch. His reply was that iBeta prefers to stick to what they do best: enhancing the reality side of the immersion equation, letting the user choose whatever graphics related tweaks work best for them.
His answer, besides tacitly diffusing the eRAZOR source code hack collaboration issue (will they or won’t they? Looks like they won’t), also seems to imply that iBeta will do nothing to discourage users---and programmers---from attempting to merge the two. Time will tell, although if there is one thing I’ve learned recently it’s that the F4 community does not suffer from a lack of imagination . . . or talent.There has been much caterwauling about iBeta’s patches being too USAF F-16C Block 50-52 centric. I am not of that mindset---the Block 50-52 series of the Viper “C” model represents the current production version of the aircraft, in the inventory of the country that operates the majority of F-16s built.
Truth be told, there are many small differences within that block of aircraft. Attempting to model, for example, the Danish-built version and the “CJ” Wild Weasel version and the Hellenic Air Force version with anything approaching the precision that the iBeta team is trying to do with their selected variant would be obscenely complicated. In my mind they are doing the obvious thing: stick to the one build, and get it right.
That’s one thing the iBeta team has done so consistently since MicroProse Alameda was shut down---get it right. My HGU-55 helmet goes off to those gentlemen for their efforts. Once again, they’ve made the King of Sims that much better. If you are not using the RP3 executable, you are not really playing Falcon.