Originally posted by udet
what are FR and RR?
Those terms actually came into existence pretty late in AW's history. FR stood for, but did not actually mean, "full realism". RR stood for, and actually mean, "relaxed realism".
Back in the very ancient days, late 80s, AW started out with extremely little in the way of realism (no gravity, for example) and the planes moved at 1/2 speed or even less (this was when 2400 Baud was a FAST connection). As the game and the internet evolved and realism features were added, they kept the less-realistic stuff alive as a kiddie pool. Eventually, by the early/mid-90s, the arenas had become as follows:
HT: "Half-Time", meaning planes moved in slo-mo. In addition, no spins, no blackouts, not even real stalling in the vertical, greater toughness, and lots more ammo with less lethality. This was where the real dweebs played and drunk vets would sometimes sneak in there to terrorize them, physically and verbally. GAWD that was hilarious, especially because there was no killshooter
Kesmai, instead of frowning on these Evil Acts of Overt Griefing, thought it was all hilarious and often ran Evil Con Missions to reduce the HT dweebs literally to tears. I mean, NOBODY had any respect for the HT dweebs
Edit: Seriously, guys who griefed HT would post up their exploits on the official boards, including films. and everybody applauded particularly Evil acts. When HT dweebs posted complaints, they were howled off the stage, even by Kesmoids. When they'd then post up that they were quitting, Moggy or Centurion would simply post "A kill has been recorded" and that was that. Ah, the memories Today, that sort of fun would get players banned and company reps would get fired 
RT: "Real Time", meaning the planes flew at realistic speeds and all the realism effects then in the game were present. This was the Great Bastion of HATE, the like of which has never been seen since they pulled the plug on Stimpy, the DOS AW host
.
When DOS AW died, they changed this format in AW4W, AW2, and AW3. They kept the old HT stuff going in the newbie arena, renamed the RT arena to FR, and created the RR arena which was basically the newbie/HT arena only with full-speed planes.
But over time, the line between the FR and RR arenas blurred as Kesmai dumbed FR down. Aparently they did this because they had like 50 RR arenas and the lone FR arena was mostly empty, so they wanted to lure RR dweebs over. By 1/2way through AW3, the so-called FR arena was called KR by the cynical vets, for "kinda real". That's when I quit flying AW.
