[Beowolff]

Red Baron was the first fight sim I had where planes were more than stick figures. I agree about the immersion of Red Baron, from CFS 1, 2, and 3, and including IL2, I have never played a sim where I actually cared about my ai squadron mates like in RB. I'm not sure exactly why.

well I think we don't care about our more modern AI fly mates because the more modern games simply don't allow it. they're meant to be mere cannon-fodder from the get go and that's how we think of them because of that. in modern games they're more concerned with kills/score of the player (and how photo-realistic it is) and there's no real immersion of connection to your fellow AI flyers. if your AI buddies speak it's only a highly repetitive 'you've got one on your tail'... or, 'white 3 return to base' or something similarly 'non-personal' and obviously canned and repeated over and over.

out of the flight there's no cut scenes usually to show 'skuttlebutt' or rumor mill, there's no out of flight/mission interaction or very little, you never see (or hear) your armorers or mechanics, you never see or hear directly from your CO, the pre-flight/mission information is cut and dried and gives no 'feel' for being in a real mission brief... and so on. the enemy is predictable and so on and so on.

all makes for an unbelievable play in the game.