The Golden Age of Flight Simulators

[towerman 0]

being 45 years old I am glad I lived in that era, I've flown most of the games shown aand I really loved jetfighter

[magnetite 38]

I foresee the same happening with FSX. This platform will still be alive, strong and kicking well into 2020

How would that work? I was kind of curious about this over the past week. If we do have 128-bit CPUs and OSes come out down the road, wouldn't that mean that it wouldn't be able to run 32-bit code? Which would mean that we might not be able to run FSX. I could be wrong. Edited January 14, 2012 by magnetite

[magnetite 38]

Why would we ever possibly need anything more than 64bit Processors?

I don't know. I heard rumors that Windows 9 will be 128-bit, but if you're saying that the only reason for 32-bit to 64-bit was for memory issues, then I have probably nothing to worry about. Edited January 14, 2012 by magnetite

[TheBFG 1]

I foresee the same happening with FSX. This platform will still be alive, strong and kicking well into 2020

Yep, just look at Falcon 4.0! Still going with community made upgrades etc. It's really getting very old now but there's still nothing else that does what Falcon 4 does. Which is amazing...

[Mr.midnight 4]

Those were Great times indeed......Thank you sirRobert

[virtuali 4,421]

The early-mid '90s were really the Golden Age of flight sims, there were several reasons for this:- The PC was booming as a game machine, because of many innovations happening during those years, the CD-Rom, the Sound Blaster, the ever increasing CPU speed at a very fast pace, but what really shocked the market was the 3DFX, the first consumer 3d acceleration card. It really changed the game overnight in graphic quality and speed.- The competing systems were too underpowered to compete with the PC, gaming consoles were still using to very expensive and memory limited cartridges and controls systems were limited, and graphics were still 2D. The other computer systems at that time were either destroyed by piracy (Amiga) or filling only niche markets (Atari ST was used by musicians, mainly), and Apple in the mid-90s was trying really hard to self-destroy...- There was lots of hype following the first Gulf War that happened in 1991. It was both the first war won by Air power alone, and it saw the debut or the widespread use of many interesting machines, like the A10, the F-117. No self-respecting sim of that time could miss the famous "CNN View", with the green night-view mode, or the various weapon cameras, so you could see the target you were about to bomb.I do recall very well that a new sim came out almost montly, from many publishers that today don't exists anymore or are doing entirely different things: Falcon, Apache Longbow, EF2000, TFX, F-22, the Jane's series from EA, F-14 Fleet Defender, F-15 Strike Eagle, F-16, Tornado and Hind by D.I., the various sims from Novalogic, F-117 Stealth Fighter, Aces of the Pacific/Over Europe, Red Baron, B-17, etc...And of course, the MS Flight Sim series, which really took off with MSFS 4.0 and the Aircraft & Scenery Designer expansion. The roots of the current 3rd-party Flight sim community started back then, about 1991-1992, before the internet, we used to chat on Compuserve, downloading whole airports as 100K files with our 2400 baud modems. I do recall going into celebration mode, when Compuserve opened a 28.8k node in Milano, it felt like a new world being able to download an FS4 addon scenery in just a few minutes!

[dighost 25]

LOL, I remember having to download a patch for Falcon 3 with my modem. I think the patch was like 80k in size, and it was a long distance call. I think it took like 6 minutes for the entire file, and the stupid line kept disconnecting. I remember thinking my parents were going to have a cow with all the charges.

[David B 53]

Wow guys, what memories. Thanks for the site johan. Would be interesting to fly some of the adventures again with FSX. :-) I still have a lot of those older games. F-14 Fleet defender...what a blast(no pun intended). Wish they could have made that one more modern.Flight Assignment ATP, still holds it's own. Simon Hradecky took it up a notch with his tools as well. 3DAGS anyone. :-) He had the editor ATPUTIL, that opened up so much for FA ATP. As said, those were the good ole days. As most of you, I think I probably purchased just about everything that was released in the flight sim genre. Never manged to master any of the per se. Maybe someday, Simon will release his AS3. Although it would seem, he would have to keep recoding to keep up with the everchanging graphic chips etc. Would be awesome to see a modern day version of flight assignment ATP. I know the virtual stuff, pretty much covers that angle now anyway...but still fun non the less.I remember the first time I met Mr. Artwick, it was at the conference in Ithaca. Also, were I met Joe Lincoln "Pawpaw" from Tekmate, Laemming Wheeler<SP>, Dr Jim Maas et al. What fun. Also, enjoyed the Microwings era aka Bob McKay. Those conf. were a blast too. Wonder what happened to Bob? Seems to have disappeared from all flight sim.I rember being in class at Southwest, and receiving the beta to MSFS 5.1; needless to say...didn't get too much beta testing done. :-) Can you say "firehose" training. :-) I see thay have a new updated version of Falcon. Still have my old CD; may give that a try.I remember trying to see if i could put together an idea I had re:"Golden Age of flying" Were the planes, airports, scenery,nav aids etc...would reflect the time you were flying. Ie around the 30's would be the DC-3 and so on. Just never developed the skills to do so. Thought it would have been a cool add on at the time. :-) We are blessed with so many options from our passionate developers; I feel I'll have many hours of enjoyment with FSx or maybe even prepare3d when version 2.0 is released.Yes, I do love the PMDG NGX...stunning piece of work. However, right now; I'm having a blast with FSlabs Concorde...another stunning piece of work! Well I coud go on and on with memories; as I'm sure you nice folks could as well. Have Fun! Best, DavidEdit for spelling

Edited January 15, 2012 by David B

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

1990s Era games were bigger leaps then what we have now. Things started to get interesting when VGA monitors came out and 256 colors be shown back in the late 80s. FS 4.0 first one I played on normal basis, but then I ended up for 8 years not playing flight simulator till 1998. With FSX its to the point where the VFR playing is doable for majority of people. 1990s they had frontiers to push, now its coming to a trickle there less innovation more just trying to meet sales numbers for wall street analysts.

[JimmiG 244]

I think the golden age of flight simulators was in the late 90's and early 00's. We had X-Plane, Pro Pilot, Fly!, Flight Unlimited and MSFS. Now X-Plane is really the only serious civilian flightsim that's still being actively developed.

[pstrub 998]

JimmiG, I agree to some extent, and I love to remember the old days. But we shouldn't forget that certain things we the simulation-fans hold in high esteem are actually a things that emerged during the 00's: high system-accuracy models like PMDG and serious online-flying on IVAO and VATSIM.

[sluggy 3]

Those were the days! I used to thrash EAW, F15, EF2000, Gunship etc back in the day. Still amazes me how many great sims were available for my brand new C64, with it's 38k of RAM!Cheers, SLuggu

[TheBFG 1]

Why is it that so few people mention Falcon 4.0?I also had a go with many of the military titles mentioned in this thread, but they are all completely blown out the water by Falcon 4.0. And I still don't know of a military study sim today that beats it. Pity it's now so old that it's somewhat of a pain to run it, but for systems etc... it's still amazing with all the community addons.

[Attila 2]

F4 AF is definitely the best simulator of its kind. Talk about having to know systems and being able to perform complex tasks under pressure. It is because of F4 and F3 before it that I never even looked at MSFS before FSX.The only reason I use FSX is because of the whole world coverage with real-time weather capability. It is also nice to challenge oneself with mastering new systems, but flying a 737NG on automatic or manually just does not compare to flying a successful mission in F4.I have boxes of games stashed in the basement, but I still have five shelves that I didn't get around to packing away. Looking at them I see SU-27 Flanker, Flanker 2, Jane's ATF, Longbow, Apache, Eurofighter 2.0 and European Air War. I sure spent a lot of money and time on flight simulation over the years.Then I see my superb model of the Avro Arrow, whose life was cut short by politicians and bean counters. A sad tale that is.

[TheBFG 1]

F4 AF is definitely the best simulator of its kind. Talk about having to know systems and being able to perform complex tasks under pressure. It is because of F4 and F3 before it that I never even looked at MSFS before FSX.The only reason I use FSX is because of the whole world coverage with real-time weather capability. It is also nice to challenge oneself with mastering new systems, but flying a 737NG on automatic or manually just does not compare to flying a successful mission in F4.

I must say, F4 is the only "game" that ever made me literally sweat. Complex tasks under pressure indeed, it's fantastic. I was a full time Falcon 4.0 ###### when I discovered FS9 and since then I have hardly touched Falcon 4.0 unfortunately. I hear what you're saying but I don't quite agree on the whole F4 being better than managing an airliner from A to B :) I actually found that MSFS added a whole lot more to the picture, but if you do it properly. In Falcon 4.0, you kind of had to do it properly, so I think I brought that same mentality to FSX, preparing for every flight and running all the checklists and learning your aircraft systems etc... if you do this then FSX with a complex airliner gives me quite a bit more joy than F4.But Falcon 4 will forever be the title that got me into this "style" of high fidelity flight simming in the first place, I never did like the "games" much. I'm only happy if I've gone through at least 500 pages of material before flying the thing :)