I remember using the first version of Flight Simulator in the early 1980s ... which had a role in me later becoming a commercial pilot.

I have high hopes for this next version, the graphics are absolutely unbelievable.  But I know graphics alone don't make the simulator, at best they make a decent game.

I hope Microsoft is keeping us "hard core" PC simulator enthusiasts in mind here, but here's to hoping!

San Francisco

 

 

Are my speakers broken? No, that's just FS1 engine sounds... Better graphics keep our interest for sure despite it being a sim. If they didn't, 90% of paid add-ons wouldn't exist. 

Edited June 16, 20196 yr by reignman40

I was only thinking to myself over the last few days: although (for my age) I started flight simming a bit later in life (with FS98 when I was in my mid 30s), it was really FS2000 that seriously got me hooked - mainly because of the superb training modules authored by John and Martha King. That got me wondering - that was out 19 years ago now and I now wonder how many real world pilots had FS2000 as their first flight simulator.

Many will users disagree with me but I felt that FS2000 had a specific leaning toward serious flight training about it that has been lacking ever since. I remember showing the training modules to my PPL friend and he was extremely impressed by them considering the scope of the product.

Edited June 16, 20196 yr by JonP01

They make now what we dreamed of 40 years ago, don't they  . ?

But you know, our mind has a powerful built-in software because in spite of the coarse graphics, rudimentary panels etc. we felt we were there anyway 😉.

I have had a roller coaster relationship with Microsoft Flight Simulator over the years. My first version was Flight Simulator 2 for the Commodore Amiga 500 (Christmas 1988), and that was followed by FS4 on the PC in 1992. I enjoyed both of these, and particularly enjoyed flying around the Mallard Software Hawaii and Tahiti regions in the latter. However, the introduction of textured graphics in FS5 was a massive disappointment for me. In short, they looked rubbish. The terrain was (IMO) a shimmering mess of textured garbage (due to a lack of AA and AF), and that set the foundation for successive disappointments with the terrain graphics in each successive iteration of Microsoft Flight Simulator (up to and including FS2000). After that, I was so fed up with the rubbish terrain graphics that I decided to concentrate exclusively on Flight Unlimited 3 (and the Flight Unlimited 2 San Francisco scenery) until my return to the MSFS series with FSX in 2008......and this was only because I was able to use decent quality photoscenery of the UK, together with Gary Summons' rapidly expanding UK Xtreme airport and VFR Airfields products (rather than any vast improvement in the quality of the default terrain graphics).

With respect to FS5, I would have actually preferred a version that retained the colour vector graphics, but overlaid this on a realistic mesh, and with more 3D objects than FS4. It would have been "cleaner", and less of a punishment for my eyes!

Edited June 17, 20196 yr by Christopher Low

9 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

With respect to FS5, I would have actually preferred a version that retained the colour vector graphics, but overlaid this on a realistic mesh, and with more 3D objects than FS4. It would have been "cleaner", and less of a punishment for my eyes!

In FS5 you had the option to turn of the textured ground tiles if I remember correctly. I used to do this because my 4 MB internal memory couldn't cope 😄

If that is the case, then I was certainly not aware of it at the time.

I was flying in SubLogic FA: ATP much more than in FS5 at that time. Flight Light and FL plus filled the bill quite well too around that time for me. Not to mention BAO Tower and Wesson TRACON series.