What software got you hooked on Flight Sim?

[FormerSF3 15]

Alan,

 

Microsoft for the Mac was the first simulator I figured out that you could fly from the LA map area to the San Fran map area in the Lear Jet.  I would turn north from LA and then dead recon for a while until picking up a VOR on the San Francisco chart.

[Alan_A 1,650]

Alan,

 

Microsoft for the Mac was the first simulator I figured out that you could fly from the LA map area to the San Fran map area in the Lear Jet.  I would turn north from LA and then dead recon for a while until picking up a VOR on the San Francisco chart.

 

I remember that!  It was a lot of fun to fly from one urban "island" to another.  Actually, given the state of the graphics, the empty spaces weren't all that different from the detailed areas.  I got good at instrument flying really fast, because there wasn't all that much you could do by way of VFR.

 

Another Mac artifact - in spite of my screenshot, Meigs wasn't the default airport.  It was 27R at KOAK.  I'm probably one of the few simmers out there that isn't nostalgic for Meigs, because I hardly ever flew there.  It was Bay Area all the time, such as it was...

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

i was about 8 yrs old back in 1997. My dad boight me a peice of software called "747 Jumbo." it was an addon for FS98 for the 747 100 and 200 variants. At the time, my dad and i realized once we got home that we had to get fs98 for it to work so we ended up going back a couple days later and picked up fs98. Since then, ive been hooked.

[MicTango04 3]

It was back around late 1996 early 1997 I got introduced to Jane's combat simulations ATF on msdos by a friend. Since then I was hooked and look back with very fond memories. Then eventually I saved up all my pocket money and got Fighters Anthology on Windows 95 when my dad got my first pc.

For MS Flight simulator I also remember fondly of a mathematics tutor at the time was quite an avid flight simulator enthusiast, as he would let me try out his FS 95 after tuition, through FS95 I remember he would setup a scenario where we'd work out time and distance using long multiplication and division to make it more interesting. Since then I have just embraced everything related to aviation.

[SKEWR 364]

What got me hooked? F19! My friend's mother worked the technology center at a college hospital. He fired up F19 and I was stunned! Eventually I got it for myself and I played the living heck out of it. (Mavericks and AMRAAMs were OP tho ) I played it so often (at horrible frame rates) that I started planning my missions and then, for the challenge, I wanted picture perfect landings.

 

Having played F19 and deciding I wanted to be an airline pilot, my next major sim was FA: ATP. The cover of my manual turned from brown to white in some spots as I tried to learn and teach myself everything. At the time I was working for American and found a pilot who gave me some of the NAT planning maps. So, of course, i tried to replicate it using the 767 (I think i did well, as the scenery didn't give you much clue where you were). Next I tried to learn the approach charts on my own. Did a fairly good job. I bought my AIM as a part of flight school and I read the crap out of that and tried to fly more professionally (lol).

 

In both cases, I played with horrid frames. Maybe that's where I built up my tolerance (or if you prefer, lowered expectations) for bad FPS. However, those days of just popping in a flying were some of my fondest memories. It was before real life (and cfg tweeks!) began. 

[Guest]

 

 

For me it was playing Microprose's F19 Stealth Fighter.

 

This one! It was my very first flying game. Played it endlessly on my Atari 1024 STfm. I also played it endlessly because computergames were extremely hard to get (and expensive) so I didn't have much choice. But I LOVED it. Totally awesome.

 

My first civilian sim must have been in the beginning of the nineties but for quite some time I mainly played flighter games. Another one I loved was F22 ADF. It wasn't until the beginning of this century that MS FS took over and I stopped playing fighter sims completely. And somewhere around 2009 or so I almost stopped playing games completely and focused on flightsimming only. Up to that point I might stop simming for almost a year or so before I would get back to it but the last 6 to 8 years I have been plaging FS/P3D at LEAST weekly. Once or twice a year another game may grab my attention but flightsimming is the only 'game' that I just keep on playing, over and over again. 

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Does anyone remember F29 Retaliator? I played that on the Commodore Amiga 500, and I seem to recall that it had decent graphics for the day.

[vadriver 248]

fsuipc ... until then, nothing was "SIMMABLE" with any immersion & then head trackers !!

[Guest]

fsuipc ... until then, nothing was "SIMMABLE" with any immersion & then head trackers !!

 

 

Wow... I must be missing something.  :wink: But head trackers: +1! I bought my first TrackIR (4 Pro) 10 years ago! And as a matter of fact, I am still using that very same device! 10 years old and still going strong! When I received it 10 years ago I thought it would be broken within a month, as fragile as it looked: amazing it still works!!! Wouldn't want to fly without it. And it certainly helped in making flightsimming my main (computerized) hobby.

[sascha 314]

 

 

Then it was subLogic ATP, which to me was a game changer!!!

 

A yes! The excitement of entering finals after a long flight has never been the same ...

[simmerhead 885]

A yes! The excitement of entering finals after a long flight has never been the same ...

 

Tell that to the FSX OOM-club

[ryanbatc 12,857]

 Another one I loved was F22 ADF. . 

 

Was it maybe called F22 ATF?  Advanced Tactical Fighter?  I played that one all the time... probably more than F19.  Then following that I got addicted to Jane's Longbow 1 (and 2) and later Jane's USAF.  Played some Falcon 4 but stayed more with the civilian MSFS.  Only a few years ago I bought XP10 and started using that.

[simmerhead 885]

EF2000 had pretty good graphics and realism for it's day (1995) and was a real milestone, but was a nightmare to run in the 640K MS-DOS environment (Anybody remember creating boot disks with edited autoexec.bat and config.sys?)

[Guest]

Was it maybe called F22 ATF?  Advanced Tactical Fighter?  I played that one all the time... probably more than F19.  Then following that I got addicted to Jane's Longbow 1 (and 2) and later Jane's USAF.  Played some Falcon 4 but stayed more with the civilian MSFS.  Only a few years ago I bought XP10 and started using that.

The game from DID was called F22 Air Dominance Fighter. I think the real plane was called ATF...?

 

EF2000 had pretty good graphics and realism for it's day (1995) and was a real milestone, but was a nightmare to run in the 640K MS-DOS environment (Anybody remember creating boot disks with edited autoexec.bat and config.sys?)

Ah, yes, forgot that one! Played it more than F22 for sure, though not as much as Stealth Fighter. Those were the days... fighter sims all over the place. And .bat and .sys LOL I am prettig happy with Windows 10, I have to say.

[Alan_A 1,650]

 

 

Anybody remember creating boot disks with edited autoexec.bat and config.sys?

 

Of course - not to mention the wonders of QEMM, the Quarterdeck Extended Memory Module, needed to load elements of DOS into high memory to free up more RAM for the program.  Fun times!