I know a lot has been said on this forum about how simulation does not even compare to the real thing. Maybe in a lot of ways that is true, but I would argue about how well we are able to simulate flight and that it is actually very amazing. Think about it, by sitting at a desk, having a small box packed with electronics, a video display and some sort of crude controller we can actually simulate many aspects of flight. Not only that, but you can pick any spot on this planet of ours and actually make a virtual flight there. We also have a huge hanger full of a variety of aircraft that we can fly at our choosing. You could never have that in real life. These things were hardly imaginable 20 years ago, at least without spending millions of dollars. It is easy to take things for granted and focus on the things we can't do, but look at all we can do, I am amazed everytime I "fly" my computer. Gotta love it!

I'll second that !Anyone who started simming with the early flight simulation programs of 20 years ago should also agree.My first ever was run (from tape- which was a really vulnerable medium) on a Spectrum 128,Black(or rather Grey) and White, not much in the way of graphics- a horizon, the most basic of instruments and the whole thing controlled by the arrow keys on the Spectrum's "dead chicken feel " keyboard.Ah ,those were the days......................Seriously , we all thought it was marvellous then.I think it's (FS9) just as awesome now.Dave

I third it, HIGHLY! I couldn't agree more and I too am amazed :-eek everytime I 'fly' my computer. The number of different aircraft we have available on the internet through the work various people and companies of is also amazing!Sincerely,Jim

I "third" that notion.I remember my first experience with Flight Simulation was on a Timex/Sinclair 1000. I bought their "simulator" which included crude instrumentation, 3 airports, and the runways were nothing more than big white blocks to outline the shape.After I advanced to the Commodore 64, I regularly flew SOLO FLIGHT by Micro prose that allowed you to deliver "mail" in several regions of increasing difficulty. The Rockies being the most difficult. The plane was flown from a third person perspective, looking from behind the plane. Eventually I graduated to Flight Simulator 2 by Sublogic, only to find a 1-2 FPS slide show on my C-64.It was the poor performance of FS on a C-64 that moved me to my first IBM clone. A turbo charged PCXT could manage 5 to 7 FPS and I was estatic.It wasn't until FS98 that I began to see totally "smooth" performance and was knocked out of my socks by that. Also 3d acceleration was absolutely incredible.Even though Pro Pilot by Sierra looked to be a contender, it was really Pro Pilot 99 that weaned me off of Microsoft for a time. Using accurate coast lines and DEM's, Mount Rainier never looked better, and even at 640x480, aliasing didn't seem too bad and with ATC it clearly killed both FS98 and FS2000.It wasn't until FS2002 came out that I gave Microsoft another look and we all know how GREAT FS2002 is/was.Even though FS2004 is only an "evolutionary" upgrade, it is STILL incredible. 20 years ago, I was amazed at the Timex/Sinclair and it's BLOCK runways. I can only imagine what 20 years of further development will bring us. It's a great time to be a simmer.

Hi John,I agree also. I posted in another thread about how simming might be akin to watching a sports game at home on TV vs. actually going to the game. And one could also wonder at the marvels of technology that bring a sports game into our homes in full color and stereo sound. That's a different thing to the "atmosphere" aspect (almost a pun there?).But just to add to your (and other) posts here: Most of us will never fly a heavy transport, or a fighter jet, or even a simple GA aircrtaft in places in the world where we don't live. Simming gives us this opportunity. And when you get into instrument flying and training, simulation comes into it's own in providing valuable tools and a sense of what it's really like. I've even found that by using the VC and Active Camera (the FS2004 payware version), then enabling the "momentum" effect in A.C. (I don't know the actual term), and enabling turbulence in clouds, that one can almost get the "vertigo" effect that is such a killer to pilots that venture into IMC without proper training. And that's certainly realism.I started simming with FS4, loved ATP, and have had almost all aviation sims since. Bruce.

Whole heartly agree with you on that and so much more. The fact that we fly a sim instead of playing a game makes it where we expect things to be more real and we get things to be so close to real. This allowing us to use real charts, real weather, and real aviation knowledge. If you have the money you can also buy real consoles and avionic stacks as well. However just in the simplest of forms this sim and simming is amazing. To be able to fly in a world that is never the same for the most part with new challenges and different visual all based on making a world as close to real as we can make is something you just have to experience to believe. Every flight I get that I see or hear or have to do something different makes me want to send an email to MS and thank them for what they do.NP

What boggles my mind is that everything in this flight sim world originated with variations of this: 0010101101001101. Not to mention the entire world of computing. Amazing!

I agree. My first sim was SubLogic's Flight Simulator on an Apple IIe. I thought it was pretty cool back then.Heck, when I had my Atari 2600 video game system and PacMan came out for it, I thought it was cool, even though everything was using blocks.

Oh Yeah! Indeedy!I mean here am I just arrived at Glasgow Scotland my home airport, having set weather to atrocious, and calling up approach plates on Garmin, I make a perfect a/p landing.All this for

I flew subLOGIC FS on my C64 and then got the combat version. I can't remember what it was called. Then I bought the helicopter simulator by subLOGIC. Boy was that a blast. Jim

Same here-except started with "final flight" on the vic-20.I think the combat version was called "Jet".I got an amiga just so I could get fs2 that actually had threshold lines on the runway!Amazing how far it has come...http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Yes, Jet! :) Boy have we ever come a long way. In Jet, the top half of the screen was blue and bottom half green. If you were landing on a carrier, the top half was blue and the bottom half was a different shade of blue. :) The carrier was just a black rectangle with a 2-pixel wide line representing the wire. Even back then, framerates were not very good. It's extraordinary that we have the kind of flight simulators that we see now on the PC. Absolutely extraordinary.Jim

Amazing....When flying online with PIC767, sometimes I bring in my mind subLOGIC's ATP back in 1993, FS2.14 in 1987 and PSION's Flightsimulator for spectrum back in 1985...We MUST be Happy...:)I still have that IBM PC/XT Intel 8088 @ 4.77 Mhz, 640MB RAM and Hercules Monitor. Don't ask for FPS...:-shyI don't have Spectrum 48K but I can run an emulatorIn ATP (subLOGIC) 10 years ago, there was INCLUDED ATC & VOICE...and very nice insrument runways.Samuel Kalachoras :-waveAthensGreece