When flying this evening I was hit with a moment of clarity about just how far this hobby has come.

 

I'm 28 years old soon and came into the wonderful world of flight simming at the age of about 8 - so 20 years ago, on a program called Airbus A320 which I played on the Amiga.

 

Here are some shots of the computer, joystick and software itself:

 

 

 

 

 

And here is a shot today of my flight in the same aircraft

 

 

It's really quite staggering how far things have progressed. It makes me very excited to think what I might be enjoying at the age of 48!

 

 

I love FSX also, she's my old lady :lol:   It's my no.1 sim of choice.....no2 is P3D 2.1 which is FSX with more updates/features and no.3 is Xplane10 the new fat kid on the block that is too slow and can't catch up to FSX   (no offense to BIG people)

 

The new FREE Flightgear 3.0 looks pretty awesome in the graphics department but the planes are really bad and low quality.

I would love to have FSX when I was a teenager because I had FS2 on my Atari ST and in those days I had more time to fly and discover things. I used to fly until 4 am sometimes, I had wonderful times back then exploring that limited world. It is indeed amazing how the simulation is now.

 

Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk

I love FSX also, she's my old lady :lol:   It's my no.1 sim of choice.....no2 is P3D 2.1 which is FSX with more updates/features and no.3 is Xplane10 the new fat kid on the block that is too slow and can't catch up to FSX   (no offense to BIG people)

 

The new FREE Flightgear 3.0 looks pretty awesome in the graphics department but the planes are really bad and low quality.

Not really, have you seen Tu-154B-2 for Flightgear? Very advanced airliner indeed.

Not really, have you seen Tu-154B-2 for Flightgear? Very advanced airliner indeed.

going to check it out...thanks!

 

 

The new FREE Flightgear 3.0 looks pretty awesome in the graphics department but the planes are really bad and low quality.

 

As already pointed out, not all of them are of low quality.  There are a few real gems in the FlightGear collection, the Tu-154 being one of them.  I actually have more issues with the vector nature of the graphics, but that's starting to digress from the topic of the thread...

 

I'm 10 years older than the original poster; I can recall watching my uncle mess with a flight simulator on his C64 - I would of been 8 or 9 maybe?  I do recall that it all monochrome and if I recall correctly, wire frame style graphics.  I also recall that the manual was huuuuge! :lol:

 

I've always felt that I was lucky to grow up during the rapid growth of the PC's. I bought my first pc (386) when I was about 14, and then a 486 a few years later.  I can recall many, many hours spent playing various military flight sims.  Really was the heyday for them back then!

The new FREE Flightgear 3.0 looks pretty awesome in the graphics department but the planes are really bad and low quality.

 

That's because everyone is simply buying planes and flying them in MSFS instead of spending time improving the ones in FlightGear.

Wow, I had that same yellow and black joystick and ran FS2 and Airbus on an Atari ST way back then.

 

I remember at the time thinking that one day we would have a world full of photoscenery and fantastic graphics a few years down the road.

 

I enjoyed it then, but it makes me appreciate what we have now much more.

 

IAN

When I was in college I recall going to my older brother who had one of the first IBM PCs. I don't think it even had a hard drive or if it did maybe it was 10mb's and that was when the truly first MS Flight Sim came out. Little squeaks from the internal speaker and bad quality wire frame graphics and tiny crude gauges. This was in DOS and a B&W maybe 10 inch screen and keyboard input only. The program ran on 5 inch floppies. This was in the 1970s.

 

When these young whippersnappers complain FSX isn't realistic enough they have no idea.

When I was in college I recall going to my older brother who had one of the first IBM PCs. I don't think it even had a hard drive or if it did maybe it was 10mb's and that was when the truly first MS Flight Sim came out. Little squeaks from the internal speaker and bad quality wire frame graphics and tiny crude gauges. This was in DOS and a B&W maybe 10 inch screen and keyboard input only. The program ran on 5 inch floppies. This was in the 1970s.

 

When these young whippersnappers complain FSX isn't realistic enough they have no idea.

Haha I'm probably a whippersnapper myself based on the average simmer's age but you're right, you do take current technology for granted.

 

The program I mention in the first post ran from 2 x 1.44mb floppy disks. The average instruction manual for an addon aircraft or airport is probably bigger!

Yeah when games at the store came in full size boxes hehe.

First sim I ever played - Tomahawk for the Apple II GS:

 

We've come a long way folks...

My first...

FSII on the Commodore 64!

My first...

FSII on the Commodore 64!

 

The image on the box makes it look like you're running in some kind of track event!

A time capsule revealed in a crude 'shop job:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/429806-near-miss-how-far-weve-come/?p=2885701

Click on the screen shot to get its full effect.