Flightsim started , for me, when I got my .049 model airplane for Xmas.  Flew it in a supermarket parking lot on Sunday mornings way before the store opened.  It was controlled on a 15 foot line and handle.  I spun around in circles till I got dizzy!  Probably around 1956 or so!

Anyone remember Sublogic ATP? Was one of my favorites. They had an add-on that cost $100 which gave you all the airports in the US (So they claimed, it was most not all) which I purchased. Waited a week in anticipation for it to shipped to me only to have one of the 5 1/4" disks to be bad and had to wait another week for the replacement disk 😖

15 hours ago, AOB said:

Is it me or is the official microsoft flight sim website full of grumpy old buggers like me trying to impress one another with their FS lineage? Now I like a good site like this one but when it gets to old geezers playing mine is bigger than yours ..... 😄

I daily go there and here at Avsim. I personally think that your question applies way more to here than the official site.

6 hours ago, Fielder said:

 

We had to walk 3 miles every day to the public library flight sim computer

 

And it was uphill both ways! 

12 minutes ago, Mike A said:

And it was uphill both ways! 

In 10 feet of snow! 

1 hour ago, lehbird said:

Anyone remember Sublogic ATP? Was one of my favorites.

I worked on it.

Not exectly Sublogic's ATP, but its two successors: LAGO's Airline Simulator 1.0 and Airline Simulator 2.0, which were based on ATP code, licensed from Sublogic.

Ah, just remembered another classic from the olden days, the Holy Bible of pre-flight-simulators flight simulation that I possessed:

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

I worked on it.

Not exectly Sublogic's ATP, but its two successors: LAGO's Airline Simulator 1.0 and Airline Simulator 2.0, which were based on ATP code, licensed from Sublogic.

Oh wow, really ?

It might be a massive coincidence or it maybe from reading this thread earlier that subliminally put the idea in my head but I've spent the morning looking up old flight sims I used to own and spent the majority looking at Airline simulator and ATP. I can't remember which version I had but suspect it was 1.0 I remember it came with a pair of 3d glasses, probably about 1999 time, bought from the transair pilot shop in the UK.

I remember sat reading the manual amazed at the details included in the flight model.

I found this Airline Simulator 2 Description and Features (nomissoft.com) and even today reading that description makes my mouth water ! I remember it flying really fluidly , well relatively speaking compared to other sims at the time and it used look up tables for the flight modelling.

I still have the ATP pilots operating handbook & commercial aircraft flight manual here on my bookcase, this for those who haven't had the pleasure of owning a copy is about 250 pages and contains sections on topics such as "flight physics and aircraft control"  , cruise descents , slow descents, speed transitions, instrument scans etc. There's a chapter of 16 flight lessons included from the basics of aircraft stability and  effect of controls right through to flying the ILS. Talking about hardcore simming , you're not hardcore unless you've flown an ILS using just a keyboard for control !

The manual has some really good information in it which is as relevant today as it was back then, and interesting for real world ops as well.

In the back there's a set of jeppeson plates for places like JFK, LAS, LAX and BOS which I remember studying at great length, as a teen ager growing up in the UK these were exotic magical places, and it still amazes me that I grew up to actually fly jets into these places using the same approaches, which although I'd never been there all felt  familiar to me. Ah the true magic of flight simulation, and halcyon days of proper printed manuals and flight lessons.

How times have changed...?.... The ATP manual introduction contains the following " Microsoft Flight Simulator was developed by innovative software engineers with little true interest in aviation. In contrast ATP is the crowning achievement of a dedicated group of genuine flying enthusiasts who have spent the better part of the last two years earning their wings "..... ahem, no comment 😂 

Edited January 30, 20224 yr by jon b

I'm 88 and can out geezer anyone on almost any subject except flight simming.  On this subject I turn off the geezer knob and ask questions.  Just ask Sue.

Noel

 

Oh yeah ! Love you anyway Noel.

4 hours ago, charliearon said:

Flightsim started , for me, when I got my .049 model airplane for Xmas.  Flew it in a supermarket parking lot on Sunday mornings way before the store opened.  It was controlled on a 15 foot line and handle.  I spun around in circles till I got dizzy!  Probably around 1956 or so!

 

For me it was about 1966. It was a very basic balsa wood plane, couple of bits of balsa with a weight at the nose. Then of course it was plastic rockets fired from an elastic band with built in parachute.

As a grown up boy I worked for a photographic company, we worked for a supplier of scientific equipment for schools and colleges  and I was lucky enough to get my hands on the first Sinclair ZX81. The ZX81 ran a flight sim program, you can imagine how primitive it was. Later, it was on to Flight of The Intruder on the Amiga. Then of course Flight Unlimited 3. 

13 hours ago, pete_auau said:

was that on the  commondore 64  computer  🙂

My first system was an IMSAI 8080 kit. 🙂

I believe the first with a monitor was a z80 system I built from various parts. Had an 8" floppy disc that held 396K of data. IIRC it used the CP/M OS and had 4K ram.  

yep, I'm old.

 

 

T

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

 

 

As a grown up boy I worked for a photographic company, we worked for a supplier of scientific equipment for schools and colleges  and I was lucky enough to get my hands on the first Sinclair ZX81. The ZX81 ran a flight sim program, you can imagine how primitive it was. Later, it was on to Flight of The Intruder on the Amiga. Then of course Flight Unlimited 3. 

The box graphics were exaggerated! 😡

 

 6:38.... "that was a smooth touchdown..." and the sim jumped you into the logbook automatically instead of letting you remain in the cockpit and look around a bit longer. 😡

23 hours ago, vgbaron said:

Well, I turned 85 on 1/22 so I meet the old requirement for sure -  but grumpy ?  MOI?  🙂 

 

22 hours ago, flyinpilot212121 said:

Question, did they have flight sim back in the dinosaur age?? Kidding 😂

 

22 hours ago, vgbaron said:

LOL! Actually, the very first flightsim, if you can call it that, that I fkew was called 747 Simulator. It was all ASCII text characters as computers didn't have graphics then. No sound, you just watched the ascii spinners and the numbers changing. In a way it was pure instrument flight.  🙂

What, you didn't play PteranadonSimulator-89,000,000?😉

13 hours ago, charliearon said:

In 10 feet of snow! 

And take our own batteries.