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Bobsk8

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My first was FS 5.1, and despite the graphics, I probably had more fun in the old versions.

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"Nightflight" anyone ?.... On a Sinclair 48K ZX Spectrum ?... Talking about we've come a long way.... Apart from 2 x 12 white dots ( may have been 16...;-)  depicting the runway all pitch black... Still loved it ! A friend lend me his C64 and Sublogic FSII. Wow!!... Bought it myself a week later along with an Atari 1024ST. Holy Moly!! 

It was the little booklets that came with FSII that showed me how to fly and navigate and later on Charlie Gulick's "40 Great Flight Simulator Adventures" ( and "40 more" later on) and 2 pounds of imagination that made it all magical. Extremely exiting to go to the special computershop by train each month and buy new Flight Simulator stuff. BAO's (Bruce Artwick Organisation) "Aircraft Factory" for one thing with which you could create your own aircraft models (500 poly's limit at first...;-)

Those were the magical days/years. No matter the unbelievable beauty of MS/Asobo Flight Simulator that magic has gone. Possibly because almost no imagination is needed anymore...

Bruce Artwick for President ! 🙂 

Edited by Javiz
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Jan

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7 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

My first was FS 5.1, and despite the graphics, I probably had more fun in the old versions.

Yeah me too, i started with FS 3.0 and found a whole new world to discover, i didn't even know what flaps were back then so the whole experience was about discovering the wondrous world of aviation.


MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Plus | Intel Core i9-10900K @ 5.3GHz | 64GB Corsair Vengeance | Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 | 500 GB M.2 NVMe for win | 2TB M.2 NVMe for FS2020 | TrackIr v5 | Honeycomb Alpha & Bravo | Thrustmaster Hotas Warthog

Eric from EHAM, a flying Dutchman.

 

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8 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

My first was FS 5.1, and despite the graphics, I probably had more fun in the old versions.

Made my first flight sim experiences with that one as well. I didn’t own it because we had a Mac back then but I played it often at my friend‘s place. I think I enjoyed it much more than he did, I even pushed him into buying the NYC addon. Then, 1-2 years later, I did some holiday jobs so I could buy my first PC. My first game was FS 95. My parents gave it to me for Christmas together with a joystick. Since then, I always got back to simming once a new version was out, apart from FS 2000 because that was at a time when I thought I had to be cool.

Edited by Shack95

i9-11900K, RTX 4090, 32 GB ram, Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo, TCA Airbus sidestick and quadrant, Reverb G2

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10 hours ago, Javiz said:

No matter the unbelievable beauty of MS/Asobo Flight Simulator that magic has gone. Possibly because almost no imagination is needed anymore...

I beg to disagree 😃. Landing a convincingly flying aircraft in the Mato Grosso, in the Moluccas or in Peru is magic for me ! All smoke and mirrors and I believe I am there ! Magic ! 

Edited by Dominique_K
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Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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I played FS1 and then FS2 on my job's office PC with floppy discs (a true IBM which cost $5,000 bucks then).  I too learned first about Meigs Field. I later tried to land on Catalina Island - 1000 feet up - w/o too much success.  But I was hooked to this day on flight simming: With FS 2020, it's now become a modestly expensive little hobby...

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I watched the video and when it got to the part on FSX in 2006, that video looks comparable to vanilla X-Plane and vanilla P3D without any mods, lol.


i5-12400, RTX 3060 Ti, 32 GB RAM

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16 hours ago, Fielder said:

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Amazing! And to think that some people complain today about the prices of some addon sceneries or some aircraft. LOL.

 

KCGX Meigs Field, Chicago

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11 hours ago, andyjohnston.net said:

My first was FS 5.1, and despite the graphics, I probably had more fun in the old versions.

The introduction of textures in FS5 was a massive downgrade in the development of Microsoft Flight Simulator as far as I am concerned. I would have preferred them to continue with FS4 style vector graphics, but with added terrain mesh and more 3D objects.

Edited by Christopher Low

Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

FSBetaTesters3.png

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I also started all the way back in the Bruce Artwick days (e.g. version 1.0) and it's interesting that we all have a similar experience: even though the graphics were rudimentary and the frame rate was 1 FPS (sometimes less!) we still felt immersed. How could that be? I think it's BECAUSE the experience was visually so far from reality. Your brain filled in all the missing details - you saw a rectangle on the screen, but mentally you visualized the Chicago skyline in more detail than FS2020 has today. The early versions were really "day dream simulators".

FS2020 is currently in the "uncanny valley" - the territory where graphics are SO real, that you begin to notice the slightest imperfections, and they make things look "odd". This wasn't a factor with early versions, since they weren't meant to look real - it was more like a painting than a photograph. That's not a knock against FS2020 - I personally think it's the pinnacle of what can be accomplished on a PC. I'd love to hear what Bruce Artwick thinks of it.

Ironically, it's hard to go back to those early versions and recapture that day dream feeling, since you now know what's possible - whereas back then it was all amazingly cutting edge - so in a way we've all had an experience that can't be replicated no matter how good technology gets in the future.

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51 minutes ago, enright said:

FS2020 is currently in the "uncanny valley" - the territory where graphics are SO real, that you begin to notice the slightest imperfections, and they make things look "odd". This wasn't a factor with early versions, since they weren't meant to look real - it was more like a painting than a photograph. That's not a knock against FS2020 - I personally think it's the pinnacle of what can be accomplished on a PC. I'd love to hear what Bruce Artwick thinks of it.

This is exactly what bothers me about modern flight simulators. I love the look of P3Dv4 ORBx TrueEarth Great Britain from (even relatively low) altitude, but get up close and personal to those autogen buildings, and both the textures and positioning are rather lame. In short, the better that something looks overall, the easier it is to spot imperfections in that perfection. When we had to do most of the scenery rendering in our minds, that never happened :wink:

Edited by Christopher Low

Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

FSBetaTesters3.png

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1 hour ago, polosim said:

Amazing! And to think that some people complain today about the prices of some addon sceneries or some aircraft. LOL.

 

KCGX Meigs Field, Chicago

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Where are the "trees"?   😉

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BOBSK8             MSFS 2020 ,    ,PMDG 737-600-800PMDG DC6 , A2A Comanche, Fenix A320,    Milviz C 310 ,  FSLTL  

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I started with MSFS 2004 A Century of Flight, and from what I remember it looked much better than in this video.


System: I ASRock X670E | AMD 7800X3D | 32Gb DDR5 6000 | RTX 4090 | 2TB NVMe | LG Ultra Gear 34* UW |

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16 hours ago, regis9 said:

$89.99…MSFS is a steal! 🙂

You can get it for reasonably cheaper than that these days.

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11 minutes ago, Ixoye said:

I started with MSFS 2004 A Century of Flight, and from what I remember it looked much better than in this video.

 

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BOBSK8             MSFS 2020 ,    ,PMDG 737-600-800PMDG DC6 , A2A Comanche, Fenix A320,    Milviz C 310 ,  FSLTL  

TrackIR   Avliasoft EFB2    FSI Panel ,  ATC  by PF3  , A Pilots LIfe V2 ,  CLX PC , Auto FPS

 

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