FSX-MS Does Anybody Remember the old "Flight Assignment ATP" ?

[JCMDFCCP 0]

I suppose in my old age I have gotten nostalgic, but I was recently thinking about the old Sublogic Title: "Flight Assignment ATP", which was around at about the same time Flight Simulator was developed. Despite the primative graphics, that program was way ahead of its time in that it consisted of a career path with progressive levels of difficulty, a "free flight" option, and a very comprehensive evaluation system in which evey flight was scored on the basis of airmanship, safety, navigation, and flight planning. Does anybody know of an addon (or addons) that come close to what this program had? I am not talking about creating and flying missions, but rather a serious career oriented program that enables creating and generating differrent routes, allows flexibility in choosing appropriate aircraft for the route (commuter props vs heavy transport planes), and most importantly gives feedback for fuel planning, airmanship/ skill, and safety on completion of the flight. Any "old timers" who remember that program will probably agree with me how immersive that program was. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening. Jeremy in OKC

[Mike_CFII_MEL 789]

Hi Jeremy, Yes I remember Flight Assignment ATP from Sub Logic, as a matter of fact I still have the 5-1/4" diskettes (4 disc set). The date printed on the discs are 1990. I have about 50 (5-1/4") discs, heck I still have my sub logic scenery disc for San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, dated 1985. Another oldie but goodie was TRACON (dated 1988) and TRACON II (dated 1990) by Wesson International. Man I'm feeling old right about now. I still remember when I created a BBS called Transcontinental dedicated to Flight Simulation, this was before the internet. It was run with Tribbs software and an old 386 computer.

[JRMurray 214]

I loved it, and like Michael, still have the diskettes. I'm pretty sure I also still have the manual sitting somewhere--perhaps in a drawer in my basement.

[JCMDFCCP 0]

Hi Mike: WOW! I threw mine out years ago! I would love to get some smart people together and interested in designing a program similar to F.A. ATP. That would really appeal to the hard core "professional" simming experience.....do you know of anything that is currently available that even comes close?

[robert young 2,897]

I remember it too. I thought it was a brilliant piece of software for its time. Considering the limitations of hardware then, it was a very clever and intelligent achievement, and an object lesson in how to use limited resources to great effect. The printed manual was also excellent - using very clear language, and it put today's typical documentation with most software to shame. Rob - RealAir

[Javiz 104]

Hi Jeremy, Afraid i can't point you in the right direction of an FSX addon that comes close to what ATP was about but i sure do remember it ! In fact i can just pull out the POH & CAFM ( Commercial Aircraft Flight Manual ) booklet that came with the program from my FS collection of books, manuals and software i collected over the years. Great fun paging thru it every now and then. ( still have the box and floppy's too ) Those were the days ! Agree with you 100% how immersive ATP was ! Unbelievable really that no such program is around today.I still remember how exiting it was to have to start your career by successfully completing a series of flights with the Shorts 360 and via the 737, A320,767 finally getting your ATP Wings as Captain of a 747. Absolutely fantastic to learn a little bit about commercial aviation this way. I felt quite proud but also a little sad after i finished that last 747 flight. I might still have all the certificates that you could print laying around somewhere but the readabillity might have turned to zero... The fact that such a program doesn't exist for FSX ( atleast not to my knowledge ) might just be because it has all gotten too complex. I mean, we didn't have airliner manuals that consisted of hundreds of pages 'just' to fly the plane. It was all a bit simplistic back then, wasn't it. Still it might just be possible if, like with ATP was the case, only the default FSX airliners would be used ( in fact it would be almost impossible if a choice of third party airliner add-ons would be available with such a program, wouldn't it.. ) but if one is used to flying any of the much more sophisticated third party airliners would he/she be interested in going back to flying default.... PMDG has the B1900C/D and J41 for starters, then on to the 737NG, next the MD-11 and finally the 747.....Doesn't sound too bad for an FSX/ATP career, does it.... Maybe we should ask PMDG kindly.... The 'booklet' might turn out 10 times as thick as the original ATP booklet was though... Cheers,Jan

[AirVan 0]

FsPassengers allows you to Rank up and add some of that experience to FSX. You cannot fly certain aircraft until you have the hours and rating to do so. I am a c(1) with 10 flight hours in FSPx lol. Stuck flying under 3300lb single props for the time being.

[awralls 5]

FS Captain goes some way towards delivering what the wonderful ATP managed. Still a little buggy but the developer is still dedicated to it and, while glacial, progress is continuous. www.fscaptain.net Andy

[virtuali 4,421]

I can probably add a lot about ATP, since I was always very involved with its development :) After subLOGIC ( BTW, the "sub" in the name meant "Stu Moment + Bruce Artwick, the two founders) was left alone with ATP, they tried to do another sim, called "Flight Light", with a more advanced version "Flight Light Plus": It was intended as a flight sim for beginners, with visual aids for procedures and ILS approaches...and was published in 1995 by subLOGIC, which was then acquired by Sierra. Now, someone might recall one addon for ATP called 3DAGS, made by Simon Hradecky, published by LAGO in 1994: http://homepage.ntlw...ter1/3dags.html This was the FIRST ever flight sim that had a working glass cockpit, and a *working* FMS integrated with the autopilot. And, it added 3D anaglyph capabilities to ATP yes, 17 years before the "3D glasses" frenzy that is happening today... In 1996, LAGO acquired the rights to the ATP code from Sierra, and published an European version of ATP+3DAGS, called Airline Simulator: http://simpilot.net/~stotzer/as.html I made the default scenery for it, which included ALL Europe, with 300 airports and 26 being used in the main career assignments. Yes, back then it was possible for a single person to create a scenery of an entire continent...there were no such things as databases of vector data, mesh elevation, google maps, etc. I had to do all the roads, rivers, cities, coastlines and of course runways and taxiways of Europe by hand, using a digitizer on actual TPC maps... In 1995, I also made a complete Italian Scenery for ATP, here's a screenshot: After Airline Simulator was published, Simon started working on an entirely new flight modeling, based on advanced aerodynamics theories, instead of lookup tables. It took more than 3 years of work, and the result was Airline Simulator 2.0, published in 1999 by Justflight: http://www.gamershel...creenshots.html It added 800x600 graphics and 256 colors instead of ATP's 16, but the most important features were the flight model and the autopilot performances, which are STILL unmatched today (the autopilot was able to bring down the MD80 perfectly safe on the runway with crosswind up to 30 kts). The scenery, which I also did for this version, was a much improved version of the AS1.0 scenery, with more colors, better lights and some special effects like working docking systems, etc. Still can't believe it was 12 years ago... Simon is working for a long time on a new version, called AS3, with a new OpenGL graphic engine, last news were it was to be published by Aerosoft. You can get lots of interesting info on ATP on this site: http://simpilot.net/~stotzer/history.html

[briansommers 74]

wow, I remember almost all of that!! - good times for sure. yep as mentioned FSCaptain and FSPassengers are about the closest thing you will get now... or just join a virtual airline.. and work yourself up the line that way.. I have both (FSP and FSC) - I like FSP better because of the fact it is a little more open ended and does not require any panel mod like FSC. I believe FSC is a lot more involved as far as where you fly, It can generate places based on a hub or allow you to enter all the flights yourself. What I don't like is that you have to install something called FCOM in your panel, just a 2d popup, no big deal, but it does make me a bit nervous using it with PMDG stuff, - where fspax allows you to set it up where it won't change anything on the plane just add possible failures. I'm rooting for FSC , hoping they can get all the bugs squished, because it has tons more depth then FSP, but... so... FSPFSCVirtual Airlinesor just keep track of your own "record" on paper yourself. I have a light background in Role playing games, not the pooter ones but the old 70's pencil and paper.. I've thought of writing a "airline pilot" rpg type of thing.. where you would have charts to roll against to determine what you fly, etc etc.. but.. whew it makes my head spin when I think about all the details. well hey, virtuali looks like you know how to code,.. there ya go.. come up with something..a flight sim career that could use any plane a user has on his hd and any airports that the user wishes.. this could be fun. oh.. almost forgot Airhauler - a cargo career type of thing.. also the makers of REX have just announce SimAir which seems to be something along this line.

[monteclaro 1]

Ideal Flight http://codelegend.com/

[briansommers 74]

that doesn't do failures correct?

[monteclaro 1]

Not yet, but Steve is working to add this feature. Steve is always improving IF. You can try IF free. Luis

[tf51d 284]

I suppose in my old age I have gotten nostalgic, but I was recently thinking about the old Sublogic Title: "Flight Assignment ATP", which was around at about the same time Flight Simulator was developed. Despite the primative graphics, that program was way ahead of its time in that it consisted of a career path with progressive levels of difficulty, a "free flight" option, and a very comprehensive evaluation system in which evey flight was scored on the basis of airmanship, safety, navigation, and flight planning. Does anybody know of an addon (or addons) that come close to what this program had? I am not talking about creating and flying missions, but rather a serious career oriented program that enables creating and generating differrent routes, allows flexibility in choosing appropriate aircraft for the route (commuter props vs heavy transport planes), and most importantly gives feedback for fuel planning, airmanship/ skill, and safety on completion of the flight. Any "old timers" who remember that program will probably agree with me how immersive that program was. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for listening. Jeremy in OKC

Remember it, I was a Beta Tester for it, (along with the scenery packs, and Flight Lite, which quite honestly wasn't as successful as ATP)!!! That does bring back memories. That was probably the first real attempt of implementing ATC in a sim! think the closest I've seen to a career based sim today is the FSPassengers addon for FS2004/FSX.

[Dean_EGTC 57]

I remember ATP fondly as well. Progressing through the long Career Assignments was a real challenge. I still have the two large maps - East & West USA, that it came with. A great introduction to simming that I think all newbies would benefit from.