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Guest snnib

Memories of Flightsim

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Guest snnib

It is hard to believe that it is over a quarter of a century since I discovered flight simulation and if I remember correctly it was a Microsoft product runningon a Mac-Apple. I would be interest if anyone can confirm that? A machine with a tiny screen and the simulation was black and white. That is white lines on a black background. It came on one tiny little disk and understandably I think it was only for an area aroundSan Francisco. I those days I was just mucking about and I really did not have a clue about Flying. It was of course the cutting edge of technology but looking back now it seems really very primitive. Of course that was before the advent of the jolly ole www.Must have been around 1981 - over a quarter of a century ago!!! With the news that MS Flight Simulator MAY now have come to an end it all seems very sad. But who knows there may be something exciting around the corner. With or without a new simulator I shall be using FS9 mostly and FSX for a great many years to come.Once we got onto the internet things started to get better.I remember I first really started getting into things when Eric Ernst was developing aircraft,his Saab 340 was the one that really taught me much about navigation and doing my first ILS approach into Chicago (What a thrill) and then of course his famous 767 (which later became the PIC 767 as it is now known.) In those days we were able to use the aircraft ashe was developing it and each day we would log on to his web site to see if there were anynew additions that we could download. A very exciting time. He was a pilot with American Airlines I think if I remember correctly and of course was doing all the simulation developingwork in his spare time. All his work in those days was freeware.We spent hours in those early days on the internet downloading his work with the dreadfully slow dialup connections but it was worth it.Another marvellous utility that also started of as freeware was FS Navigator. Only the other day I reformatted my hard drives (all 4 of them!!!) and installed everything again and I was amazing to see that I bought this program in April 2000 and there I was installing itto run in FS9 on Vistax64 all these years later and it is still performing beautifully.That program also was freeware and how amazed we all were when it first came out. Atlast we were able to see exactly where we were and suddenly I was flying so much better inso many different ways. With it also we kept on getting little updates on many occasionswhich must have been 2 or 3 years before it became payware. Super stuff indeed.Far from those days I now have a vast array of utilities, scenery and aircraft to keep me happy until the end of my days (I am 66 now) and yesterday I flew the PMDG MD11 from Stockholm's Arlanda to Heathrow using Active Sky Advanced, Xtreme sceneries and FsNav etc etc and I am still utterly amazed at the beauty of whole thing (Always am and always will be). I find that the MD11 does the best ILS approach and landing that I have ever experienced.Using my dual-core E8400 3.00GHZ with Vistax64bit and an Asus EN9800GTX+ everything waszipping along at 45 to 55fps. Silky smoooooooooth in others words.Yes indeed we have come along way and it is THANKS to those marvellous early day developersand later those clever chaps in the ACEs teams that brought use to where we aretoday. I thank them all for giving me such an incredible interest - FLYING. My life would be so dull without it.Regards to all, Richard from Downunder

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Guest Rockcliffe

That's a lovely post, Richard. I'm sure we all have our own memories.My experience doesn't go back as far as you, but I remember shortly after I purchased FS2002 and was overwhelmed by the complexity of it all.Then I flew the 182rg across the Mediterranean and landed at Gibraltar, just as the sun was rising across the sea. It was about 2 a.m. and minus 20 outside in Canada and here I was virtually enjoying a Mediterranean dawn. I was hooked and I still am seven years later.Blair

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:( Richard, that is one of the most moving posts I've ever read on any forum. Very well done mate, and I'm sure you will have started a thread that many fellow simmers can tell us theirfond memories too. Unfortunately, my career pressures kept me away from the emerging computer world, but once things slowed down in 1999, I got the chance to build my first PC, which was built purely to run MSFS 2000. Even with its inherent shortcomings, I was hooked and have enjoyed every FS rendition since. FSX still has a couple of little creases in it, but now that the add-on developers have had the fear of the impending arrival of FS11 removed by Microsoft, at least for the foreseeable future, I'm pretty sure we are all going to start having a great deal more fun with FSX, than we have been able to experience so far. :(

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Guest magnum_force
:( Richard, that is one of the most moving posts I've ever read on any forum. Very well done mate, and I'm sure you will have started a thread that many fellow simmers can tell us theirfond memories too. Unfortunately, my career pressures kept me away from the emerging computer world, but once things slowed down in 1999, I got the chance to build my first PC, which was built purely to run MSFS 2000. Even with its inherent shortcomings, I was hooked and have enjoyed every FS rendition since. FSX still has a couple of little creases in it, but now that the add-on developers have had the fear of the impending arrival of FS11 removed by Microsoft, at least for the foreseeable future, I'm pretty sure we are all going to start having a great deal more fun with FSX, than we have been able to experience so far. :(
A very great post. Thanks. :( I will be happy with the FS versions out right now until the day I die, and I am 48.I love my flight simulator.I would be very lonely without it.ThanksRoger M.

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[Yup, it was about August 1984 that our company bought their first IBM PCXT... One young graduate engineer, a colleague of mine, one lunch break said to me, "Have you ever seen a flight simulator?" He loaded up the single 5.25 floppy disk into the drive and the original Sublogic FS screen came up and then that original panel appeared... You know the one with the sacred 6 and not much else. No external views, a couple of wireframe hills with the biplane and a simple rectangle for a runway.But my goodness, I was hooked. So much so that my manager, the Chief Engineer came and had a word to me an hour later, reminding me I was there to do some work and not waste the company's money.Well, that evening I went home and said to my significant other we had to borrow enough money to buy a computer and as they say, the rest was history. Well about 6 computers later and we have an amazing hobby. I can't get over how far we have come, well beyond my wildest dreams back then.Anyhow cheers and happy simming everyone.Oh and before I forget, have a look at just how far we have come in this video...New video...

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It is hard to believe that it is over a quarter of a century since I discovered flight simulation and if I remember correctly it was a Microsoft product runningon a Mac-Apple. I would be interest if anyone can confirm that? A machine with a tiny screen and the simulation was black and white. That is white lines on a black background. It came on one tiny little disk and understandably I think it was only for an area aroundSan Francisco.
Microsoft did release a version for the Apple Macintosh in march 1986. The first Macs did indeed have a monochrome 320x240 monitor. Scenery included 5 areas, San Francisco being one of them (the others were Chicago, New York/Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles)

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Guest snnib
Microsoft did release a version for the Apple Macintosh in march 1986. The first Macs did indeed have a monochrome 320x240 monitor. Scenery included 5 areas, San Francisco being one of them (the others were Chicago, New York/Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles)
Ahhh, thanks for the info, I was only 5 years out :( Its all so long ago. Its was great fun flying from Oakland across to Ksfo. Amazing graphics !!!!? Hard to make out what was what.regardsRichard

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You know, I've seen it mentioned in articles surrounding the closure of Ace's that FS is the oldest running game series for the PC, which is true of course! If I'm not mistaken though, I think it is the oldest program series of any type for the PC. FS1.0 was first released in 1982 (and i bought it the first day of release!), Lotus 123 and MS Word in 1983. The only software that I remember that was released earlier was Visicalc on 1981, but I think they have been gone for quite sometime now!! Does anyone know of any other program for the PC that was released earlier and still has a version of it selling today? I can't think of one.


Thanks

Tom

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