Microsoft Flight Simulator Nostalgia Thread

[InfWizard 12]

FS98: I was really uninterested in Microsoft's Flight Simulator until FS98 and only flew various combat sims before that. FS98 spawned the first big wave of freeware developers and Internet downloads. It was the first time my home airport and town was included in a flight sim thanks to a talented freeware developer.

 

FS2000: It was plagued with problems, but I quite liked it and the aircraft were much improved from FS98. I was especially fond of the Aérospatiale/BAC Concorde, and that nice thick manual I read from cover to cover. 

 

FS2002: A major scenery revolution, AI Traffic and ATC all at once. By far the biggest leap forward in the series. Even though I was way too old to play with computer games at this stage, I just couldn't leave it alone. It was really the first sim in the FS series to allow immersive VFR flying. I spent 100s of hours sightseeing the mountains of Montana in the C208 floatplane. The addon scene exploded at this stage and I still hadn't considered any payware addon. 

 

FS2004: Well, I couldn't use it at first. It brought my computer to it's knees, so no doubt there was some serious code going on at this point. The scenery wasn't that much improved from FS2002, but third party developers really raised the bar to unimaginable levels for this sim. I totally loved getting all the vintage aircraft, and the Ford Tri-Motor was a blast. Flight1 got most of my money at this point. Ultimate Terrain, Flight & Ground Environment and their Cessna 172 and Aeroworx King Air B200 Xtreme were amazing. Active Sky was acquired as well, and when the Level-D 767 was installed I became an airline addict. I also remember the amazing pre-ORBX sceneries, VOZ Austraia and FSAddons's Tongass Fjords. 

 

FSX: Much can be said about the performance, but the scenery was so beautiful that I just had to buy yet another extremely expensive computer to get this baby running. It is still the most complete flight simulator in terms of realism - flight wise and scenery wise. Carrier operations in FSX Acceleration was a blast, and so were the Air Racing - probably the most difficult feature to master in the sim to date. I loved the ACES Team for their FS Insider web site, and all the developer blogs. And here we are, ten years later still using FSX (P3D v3.4 at my end).

 

Here are some screenshots showing the graphical improvements from FS98 until MS Flight: 

https://simmerhead.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/microsoft-flight-simulator-evolution/

https://simmerhead.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/microsoft-flight-simulator-evolution-part-ii/

 

 

 

I took the time to go onto your website and look at the 98-2002 comparisons. The first sim I played was 2002, so I missed the transition from 1998. The transition from 1998 to 2002 is absolutely amazing. It is really impressive that there was that much of a leap in the course of 4 years in the quality of the scenery.

[Afterburner 374]

As bad as FS2000 performed, there were a lot of positive aspects that I have fond memories of. For example, it was the first FS version to actually draw the sun in the sky. Sunsets were so romantic and made flying during twilight a pure joy - way better than in FS98. Another new feature to highlight was the rendition of rain. Alas, weather in general was a big step forward from FS98 (in my opinion, even surpassing the successor FS2002). Do you also remember the moving light dots on streets at night that represented cars?  This is a feature that was actually removed from FS2002. Lots of nice features, which made me with my weak Pentium II 350 MHz dream about a more powerful PC.

 

And last but not least, as simmerhead has mentioned, FS2000 erected my interest in Concorde that has lasted ever since. Could it be that the British Airways Concorde was the only airplane in FS history that had a real-world airline livery by default?