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When was your "Golden Age" in this hobby?

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Back to FS98- I was really into the MD88 panel by a guy named Eric Ernst I believe

 

Eric is an amazing guy and someone who really moved the bar in this hobby.  I think the FS98 to FS2002 era embodied the essence of the "hobby". Freeware was at its prime. Payware was the exception, not the rule. You had people putting commercial quality effort into FS development solely for the joy of the hobby. It felt much more like a hobby then. You didn't have the large bureaucracies that you have now (give witness SATCO --> VATSIM) - it was just hobbiests coming together doing what they love and eager to show off the next greatest thing. I was far more engaged with fellow members and contributors then than I am now. I flew in the VA's, always flew online - loved flyins...worked ATC posts, even made a bit of scenery for FS2002 and Fly! and worked on ADE's (the old .air files). Almost everything in my sim back then was a creative effort by a fellow enthusiast. If it wasn't fun, it rarely happened.

 

Today, I skulk in the forums, don't fly in the VA's, don't fly online, any works I do I generally hoarde to myself, and my sim is almost 100% payware (hundreds of dollars worth) and almost next to nothing by way of freeware. Don't get me wrong, I think it's absolutely incredible the level of realism that has been achieved in a tired old sim that is FSX...but when I marvel at something, I tend to marvel at the labors of capitalism not someone's labor of love. It's engaging, but not for the reasons it was fifteen years ago. The hobby changed or I did or both.

 

I miss the simpler times. Sometimes less is more.

 

J

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For me it has been more of a roller coaster ride. When I initially got into flight simming with Flight Unlimited II around 1997, everything was obviously new and exciting.

 

When FU3 came out in 1999, it was a huge disappointment because my system at the time wasn't fast enough, but once I upgraded a year later, the excitement came back. Then I stuck with FU3 until FS9 came out. Towards the end I got a little bored with flightsims. FS 2002 didn't have what I wanted, and FU3 was getting long i the tooth. So 2003-2004 was a bit of a low.

 

With FS9, didn't care much for default scenery because of the framerate problems. However FS9 with Megascenery around 2005 - 2006 was another very exciting period.

 

With FSX, flight simming for me hit an all-time low. It was so buggy and slow that I completely gave up on flight sims. I hardly played FS at all between 2007 - 2011. I only got back when I discovered OrbX scenery and upgraded my system in 2011. Right now is a very good time to be a flight simmer IMO. Even though our current sims (FSX and P3D 1.4) are outdated technology-wise, there is so much amazing content coming out.


Asus Prime X370 Pro / Ryzen 7 3800X / 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz / Gainward Ghost RTX 3060 Ti
MSFS / XP

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Ok, this may sound strange... but I think it was sometime around 2004~2005, when I was just flying for fun with some friends in FS9.

 

My simulator was worse, my graphics weren't as good as they are today, I wasn't flying great PMDG aircrafts; my route planning was poor, my flying techniques were poor, I didn't have the knowledge I have today (which isn't really much actually, but I know a lot more now then I knew at that time), my aircrafts were all simple, freeware models. 

 

But I just don't have nowadays the fun I had at that time. Hard to explain.  :mellow:

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My "Golden Age" is right now :)

Things got better and better, and for me, FS has never looked so good since the last 30 years.

Our kids will have an other "Golden Age" and when they look back to our possibilitys they will say: "Oh my God, how could they do..." :)

 

 

Best regards/schöne Grüße

Werner


_______________________________________________________________________________________
Best regards / Schöne Grüße
Werner

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But I just don't have nowadays the fun I had at that time. Hard to explain. :mellow:

Hard to explain, but not difficult to understand. I feel this way often.

 

If anything has really inspired that "old" feeling lately, it would be VFR flight over MSE and/or ORBX scenery in the RealAir Duke v2.0. I absolutely love this plane because it offers tremendous realism, but I can just climb into it and fly it without having to go through a space shuttle launch. 60 minutes of pure wow is not hard to find with this combo and it requires almost 0 brain cycles, yet very satisfying to fly.

 

When I fly the big PMDG metal, i'm combing through my flight planners, figuring out my weight and balance, fuel loadouts, pulling up charts, reviewing winds aloft and forcast weather at my destination, running ETOPS calculations, finding suitable alternates, setting up the sim and a half-dozen external apps, working through all the ground ops...baggage, passenger boarding, flight crew...filing flight plans with VATSIM and finding an online controller, going through long checklists that were meant for 2 pilots, 1000+ clicks to get the aircraft ready to taxi, and....Out of Memory! You Lose! At that point, I just want to retreat to my XBox to play Skyrim and put an arrow through a villager.

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The Golden age for me was 2000 to 2004  was always flying online.    We have now get the best addons ever like NGX,777 MD11 because there has been no new sim since FSX not including X-plane.  I use to fly everyday back then these days I find im flying less and less one week I might do a flight every night and then not touch FSX for a month. or two.


Jason Richards

 

 

 

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The '80s. Solo Flight, Project Stealth, Gunship, FSII, ACE... It was innocent. It was fun. There was no pretence. No grizzling about frames (which were awful), or demands for release. I think it hit the peak for me when I could finally land an F4U on a carrier in Aces of the Pacific, which was a bit later. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy FSX immensely and want to see if X-Plane will reach the same lofty heights for me (note - for me!). And there are some great planes and wonderful sceneries.

 

I'm sure it's looking back through rose tinted glasses, and the wire frame alps would just make me cringe now. But that wasn't now.

 

Mike

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I have two golden ages, or maybe it's all one and I just don't realize it. First 2002 - 03, I bailed into FS about the time FS2002 was released, I call this the "Ketchikan epoch", that stupid looking GPS (remember, it showed your track in yellow? ...which was actually pretty cool), Naji's bush scenery (Fox camp1, Fox camp2, etc.), Flight Simulator Scenery Creator (FSSC), a Super Cub by Bob Wening, Nova and Nova Gold textures, Bush Flying Unlimited, a really hideous homemade airport on Kinskuch Lake in Canada with an ILS so I could land the Lear 45, Alaska Terrain Mesh by Eddie Denney (all downloaded on dial-up), Frank Betts sceneries, etc.

 

Then 2004-06 or so when FS9 came along. I tried for probably 2 whole hours not to like it, just a bunch of newfangled garbage, you know :smile: . After about hour #3 it was all about FS9 and freeware. IMHO the user guide that came with 9 Dragons Kai Tak should be required reading for all simmers even if you don't install the actual scenery, it was brilliant and fascinating, I must have read through all the stories and listened to the captain interviews .mp3 20 times, you'll never see anything like it in a payware release, I was completely lost in it for a month or more. At the end of the user guide there was a scan of the tower log showing the last flight cleared out of Kai Tak, almost brings tears to my eyes to this day just thinking about it. Then there was Project Opensky in it's heyday, iFDG, the Stratojet Excalibur, a play with panels and XML gauges, Robert Versluys A380, the Vistaliners 727 (loved it), Holger's Columbia River Gorge and British Columbia sceneries, multiplayer on "The Zone", VOZ, Milton Shupe's Commanders, Dave Garwood's Dragon Rapide, FSGenesis freeware mesh... I have to stop somewhere but I could go on for hours, lol

 

Like others have said, those were great times but I don't want to go back. It took me a lot more than 3 hours to warm up to FSX, like 4 years actually, but once I built a capable machine and saw it running flat out with Orbx, Carenado, A2A, etc. it was curtains for FS9.

 

Jim

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Having been simming since FS98, I'd say now.

 

Forgetting the many wonderful add-ons, we now have PC's that can run all this stuff reasonably well, which certainly wasn't the case most of the time through history.  I don't remember the last time I had a CTD or OOM.

 

Having said that, is there much left of the original Flight Simulator product?  For me, not much.

 

Flyable aircraft: no - currently PMDG 737 and occasionally Aerosoft A320

AI traffic: no - a mixture of freeware downloads

ATC: no - ProATC-X

Airports: not really - most of those I've use often have been replaced  

Weather: no - Opus FSX

Textures: no - GEX/REX

Landclass: no - UTX

 

Did I miss anything?


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I'm with A.J...

 

1. Turn of the century: Flight Unlimited 2/Fly was my first feeling of immersion that started to close in on reality.

 

2. Now: FSX with ORBX/PMDG and REX (+42" screen) another huge step closer to my real world flying.

 

Richard

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For me every FS-epoch was a golden age, because every time I was amazed by all the new possibilities.

In 1993 two little programs for the Amiga started my simulator hobby: F18 Interceptor and A320 Final Approach. Later I flew the "4-bit or so"-cockpits of MS FS4 and Sublogic ATPL for hours.

FLTSIM5 gave me a great time with its "as real as it gets" learjet cockpit.

FS98 I gave to a friend because my PC was too slow. Later he told me of FS2000 to be so cool, but I resisted as I did not want to spend so many hours in front of a small tube again... 

With FS2002 I was back in the game. Dreamfleet's 737-400 was great, PSS Airbus A320 amazing and Wilco's/Feel there (?) Airbus A320 was the first real 3D cockpit.

FS2004 was to heavy on my machine again, so I had a longer break between 2005 and 2010.

2010 I restarted FS9 (for Ifly 737), than launched FSX (for PMDG 737NGX).

Now I am regulary flying the NGX and the T7F inside FSX. Majestic's Dash-8  and Aerosoft Airbus A320X I use inside P3D. Everything in real-real-3D with Nvidia's 3D Vision 2 on an Asus 27" 3D-monitor and I must say:

YES! It is almost "as real as it gets" by now, and it never has been more exciting...

 

Greetings,

Claus

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Pretty much a consensese. 2002 to 2004. 2004 was remarkable with VC inovation. But as before 95, 98 etc, I moved on. It also was pre "hyper internet" more kinder times.

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The Amiga - I remember wanting one of those but I was a newly wed and the wife would not hear of it so I sat with the old Apple green lines of the sim.

 

Now it is like the country song:

She tells me if I spend all night flying again tonight she is leaving me. I say dang honey I am going to miss you. :)

 

I guess my fondest memory was the EF2000 sim. I read about it in a magazine while on a 6 month bike tour and all I could think about was when it ended buying the Pentium 150 (cutting edge back then) when I got home and flying it. Spent many a night cruising Norway.


Rob

"Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it"

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I have to say I had two Golden Ages in my short flight sim "career". The first was when I purchased and installed Orbx PNX, their freeware KHQM, and the RealAir Duke twins on the same day. Taking off from KHQM en route to CYYJ in the Turbine Duke and looking at the Orbx scenery was an "Oh $*%7" moment especially since I was new to FSX (little over a 3 weeks into it) after using the supposedly superior MS Flight for 4 months.

My next "Golden Age" was flying the NGX for the first time. I didn't fly anything else for maybe 4 weeks, especialy when I found the livery for Air Jamaica  B)

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Having been in this hobby since 1981, there's not the slightest doubt in my mind that the Golden Age is now, flying RealAir and A2A aircraft in OrbX sceneries.

 

Still, I've fond memories of the late 90s. I abandonned an aging MSFS franchise, passing on FS95, FS98,FS2000 for the more innovative Flight Unlimited 2 and 3 and for Fly!. Both had wonderful cockpits and sceneries. Fly! specially offered the ability to build up your own sceneries à la Ultimate Terrain : who remember Todd Klaus and Terrascene ? My computer was grinding USGS mesh, vector and landclass data whole nights in a row :P . I miss that ! Who remember that Allen Kriesman of Ultimate Terrain fame had a nifty freeware with which you could build up hangars and any buildings you wanted for your airport  I remember also that Fly! had an outstanding followup with the regretted Richard Harvey.

 

Thats MAAM DC3 which brought me back to MSFS  B)  with FS2K2 when FU and Fly! teams disbanded...


Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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