Ahh, the days of floppies & stiffies. How I remember them...

At my age, I just cannot remember how big a stiffy was. well. If I  recall, they were quite reliable & performed quite well. I'll have to ask my 'air hostess' if she remembers! Yes, even in those early days, I had a 'shared cockpit' sim..

 

For me, the biggest advance of FSX:SE is the ability it gave me to be able to use that coffee/tea cup holder on my PC. A simple touch of a button & the hidden tray slides out. I could not do this with FSX. Also, I have a few more coffee cup & tea coasters that I never had before.

 

I was also quite excited then the FSX Steam version came out. I thought that, now, at last, we will be able to fly planes from the good old days, such as William Beslers's Steam plane from the 1930's, the Huettner Steam plane from 1934, that had revolving boilers & the conceptual Hughes 300 helicopter with a steam engine where conceptual drawings were made for Don Johnson of Thermodynamic Systems Inc. Newport Beach, CA in the 1960's!

 

I was sorely mistaken when all I saw was the usual bunch of planes, Not a steam driven craft in sight!  How disapointed I was, as even in FS2004, there were Steam add-ons available, such as Henson's Aerial Steam Carriage (henson.zip) & the Ader Batwing, amongst others. We had the unforgettable FS2002/FS2004 Unreal Aviation Potty Harry's Amazing Steam-Powered Helicopter. "Helix Sky Yacht" (uaphasph.zip),as well as  the FS2002/FS2004 Unreal Aviation SteamBat. For all you users who feel that they might be taking FS a little too seriously, here is Potty Harry's amazing steam-powered bat-winged flying machine with flapping wings made from the finest umbrella material and Unobtanium alloy for superior strength& of course, a Steam train, or two from the mazing Bill Lyons (cc10taf.zip). .. All for FS2004!

 

Dovetail, please make good & get your DLC developers to create Steam planes for us, or change your description of what you are marketing.

 

The guys testing & comparing FSX & FSX:SE.. It will be great to see the leap in performance, if any, when the distance of the steam plume of AI trains are compared. Those results could actually sway potential Steam buyers.

 

Methinks the youngsters have forgotten that it's actually only a game, one from a defunct gaming studio & one from a gaming distributor.

 

Sigh, the days of green wireline graphics, and only one Pit stop. Not forgetting loading off floppy disks. What an upgrade when stiffie disks came out.

 

lol!  That's funny.  My first FlightSim was a P51 simulator that I loaded into my Radio Shack TRASH80 color computer with a tape drive...yes, a TAPE DRIVE!!!  This was in the days before the toaster-sized 5-1/4 floppy drives!!! 

 

Ahhh...the good ol days of a 2MHz clock and 16 kbytes of memory!!!

I started off, in 1978, with a mono Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, also cassette based . In fact, a mate of mine still has his in storage!

 

It came with a 16K keyboard & you had to get a briefcase size interface box to take it up to 48K & to get it to work with floppies. Those days they had a capacity of 80K, & if we were luck, we found floppy discs that we could flip over to get 160K!! . Also had to do a hardware mod to get 'true desenders'. Without the mod, letters such as Y, K was condensed & took up the space an 'a' made. So, the tail of  'p' in the word 'space' did not drop below the line..the 'p' took up the same area that 'a' would take.

 

AND We Flew!

 

This, from 1980! FS1 @ $25.00

The SubLOGIC T80-FS1 Flight Simulator is a program, designed to run on a "low-cost" Radio Shack TRS-80 microcomputer with at least 16K of memory. It offers aircraft simulation that considers 23 important aircraft characteristics an out-the-window 3D dynamic flight display, extensive flight controls, minimum VFR-instrumentation plus additional instruments and full armament. The program, written in optimized assembly language, is capable of presenting 3-6 frames per second. In addition an aerial battle, British Ace, is included. Finally, anyone can beat the limitations of flying for the price of a microcomputer plus T80-FS1 package ($49,95).

Our choice of aircraft for the simulation is an early, first generation aircraft, the Sopwith Camel of WW1. This aircraft offered room for refinement as does our simulation. The aircraft’s characteristics (weight, length, ceiling, horsepower, top speed) btw are nearly identical to those of a modern Piper Cub 150 making it an ideal light aircraft for training.

Selectable downward view, bomb sights, visible enemy gun blasts and a "simulation reset" command were all added since the introduction of the Apple II FS1. The T80-FS1 also has a slightly higher frame projection rate.

 

The very good 35 page manual offers a lot of information on how to handle the simulation as well as information about flying in general. This very first version did not yet contain a real panel, but instead a row of numerical parameters along the left side of the screen and some sliding gauges at the right and bottom. The rest of the 320x200 screen was reserved for the 3D-view of the (simple) scenery.

he display is rendered at three to six frames per second (ten frames per second on landing with the disk version only)

World Map View:

 

Runway View:

 

See the picture below from the original FS1 manual.

I started off, in 1978, with a mono Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, also cassette based . In fact, a mate of mine still has his in storage!

 

You guys make me feel young. Thank you.

Edited February 11, 201511 yr by n4gix
Removed EXCESSIVE quoted material!

AnkH has a point. True visual and feature apples to apples is often not being done.

 

Regardless, from what people are saying and showing, FSX:SE's gains (if any) are minimal and certainly not what I have been hoping for.

 

I'll continue to wait for a more substantial FSX successor and simply enjoy my current FSX setup.

I remember Fighter Pilot on the ZX Spectrum and the overlay for the keyboard with all the commands written on.

You loaded from tape, started the mission and played it. There was no faffing around tweaking stuff whilst overloading the system and causing OOM's like the mains sims of today

AnkH has a point. True visual and feature apples to apples is often not being done. Regardless, from what people are saying and showing, FSX:SE's gains (if any) are minimal and certainly not what I have been hoping for. I'll continue to wait for a more substantial FSX successor and simply enjoy my current FSX setup.

 

I'm a Forensic Scientist as my day job where I compare the known to the unknown...I don't want to get into the science of dissecting FSX and FSX-SE.

 

Here are my criteria...and yes, these are mine.  Others obviously have different requirements

 

Are there slight visual differences between the two comparisons?  Sure. 

 

Are the visual differences in FSX-SE significant when I'm flying at 35000ft?  No.

 

Are the visual differences in FSX-SE significant when I'm flying at 120kts at 3000 feet?  No.

 

Is the smoothness of FSX-SE in straight and level flight better than is FSX-MS?  On my system, absolutely.

 

Is the smoothness of FSX-SE in turns of any sort (gentle or steep) better than in FSX-MS?  Yep...without a doubt on my system.

 

Are there any stutters of any sort in FSX-SE?  None that I have noticed on my system - not even a micro-stutter.

 

Is the VAS shedding is FSX-SE improved?  Without a doubt, and it's something to behold when you actually can watch it go down by almost 1GB after a departure.

 

 

not even a micro-stutter

 

You being a scientist and me not, is there an exact definition to what a "Micro Stutter" is? I here this term quite often and have not seen a definitive explanation to what a micro stutter is.

Those seeing less of a performance boost are running a setup that is pushing up against a system bottleneck. I've been unable to measure anything other than straightforward obvious improvements with -SE.

You being a scientist and me not, is there an exact definition to what a "Micro Stutter" is? I here this term quite often and have not seen a definitive explanation to what a micro stutter is.

 

Of course it's only my opinion, but what I mean by micro-stutter are  what I used to get every couple of minutes in FSX...those small pauses while FSX does something in the background, most noticeable when you look at clouds passing by in the corners of the monitor.  But, again, that was my experience, and I could never get rid of them.

 

I don't have it at all in FSX-SE.

Those seeing less of a performance boost are running a setup that is pushing up against a system bottleneck. I've been unable to measure anything other than straightforward obvious improvements with -SE.

 

Same here.

I'm a Forensic Scientist as my day job where I compare the known to the unknown...I don't want to get into the science of dissecting FSX and FSX-SE.

 

Here are my criteria...and yes, these are mine.

I see no evidence of scientific testing. You have only given your subjective opinion which is, you like it and you feel it works well on your machine.

I see no evidence of scientific testing. You have only given your subjective opinion which is, you like it and you feel it works well on your machine.

 

Uh...yeah...you said exactly what I said...

 

 

 

I don't want to get into the science of dissecting FSX and FSX-SE.

 

If you'd read the whole thread, you'd get the context of what I was talking about.

 

Anyway, this thread is getting weird.  I'm done.

Maybe we spend far too much time getting 'Analysis Paralysis' in trying to prove something to someone, instead of actually flying for enjoyment!!

Maybe we spend far too much time getting 'Analysis Paralysis' in trying to prove something to someone, instead of actually flying for enjoyment!!

 

This is of course true. Many have seen improvements, many have not. Ultimately arguing scientifically or not for either case is pointless because differences are inevitable due to the variety of systems and configurations, that is a fact. The wise man will enjoy the sim for what it is.

I tip my hat to you... well said!