4 minutes ago, Patco Lch said:

No disrespect to this being the MFSF forum but to me the golden age is now. My P3DV5.4 checks all my boxes for flying an assortment of airliners current and retro as well as VFR bush flying and runs excellent on my system. Perhaps this makes me an oddball but that’s just my personal preference.

Naah, You are no oddball. I was just writing about wanting to add XP and P3D to the 'Now' as they haven't exactly been standing still for the past eight years. 

We can safely conclude that flight simming anno domini 2024 is, regardless of your sim of choice, better than in 2016 or before.

1 hour ago, jonesrob said:

FS2004 gave me the most satisfaction. I was learning, belonged to a couple of va's, one airliners and one GA, learned the Feelthere (?) B737-400, photo scenery appeared, I enjoyed vatsim. Been simming for 20 years but it all seems a mental drain these days.

I can relate to that... Then I was able modify panels and gauges, even scenery at will... and I had the code on my computer, no need to synch with XBox before simming.  I could also reload the airplane after small changes without quitting the sim..

Yes, the sim quality is much better now, no contest.. but the MS Games straightjacket can indeed be a mental drain.. maybe it is just me getting older and not understanding the technology.. 😉

uuummm well seeing as I never played any of those other sims in the poll I had to vote Now!

Fs2004 was an awesome sim.  Definitely made huge steps forward with aircraft and AI.

p3dv4 was big in that it moved the sim to 64 bit. Not to mention the 3rd party aircraft fidelity.

MSFS with its huge upgrades to lighting and satellite imagery amongst other things.

can’t speak to x-plane as I’ve never flown it, but the above are all important milestones in the long history of flight sims in my opinion.

 

When FS9 appeared, I got happier because I was tired of the limitations of the previous sims (I was using mostly FS98 and CFS2).

When FSX appeared, I got happier because I was tired of the limitations of FS9.

When P3D 2, 3 and then 4 appeared, I got each time happier because I was tired of the limitations of FSX and previous P3D versions.

When XP11, MSFS and XP12 appeared, I got happier because I was tired of the limitations of P3D.

It doesn't mean that everything was perfect every time, of course. But my sim experience and enjoyment improved every time for sure.

Edited February 6, 20242 yr by Daube

Moved to neutral territory.

Now is the golden age because people have more choices than ever. 

More choices = we all win. 

As a GA flyer, MSFS 2020 has completely transformed flight sim for me.  I mean, I took off from my home airport the other day and went into drone mode into my backyard.  My larger garage was modeled so it was easy to find.  I remember in FSX if you bought a bunch of landclass products and another to add roads, you might get a rough approximation between urban, suburban or rural areas that was advanced at the time.  Now, we have actual VFR flight. 

Other people want very different things, and alternate and older options still work great too. 

As per my sig I've used almost all the sims out there over the years (and with high fidelity aircraft it was P3D 4.x/5.x and then XP 11.x onwards).. nothing compares to firing up my first sim (Sublogic Flight Simulator 2) on the Commodore 64 of course 🙂.. that'll always be a special "happy" period.

But apart from that, it's the MSFS era without a question, for the sheer breadth of capabilities and new tech in the platform (be it in world rendering & visuals, or weather, or the FDE with computational fluid dynamics aka CFD tech, atmospheric airflow modelling also using CFD, performance, innovative use of modern tech like AI & cloud, etc etc). It has indeed been the sim where I don't have to compromise in one area or another, and brought that "WOW!" feeling back into flight simming for me which I felt with FS2 on C64 (and Flight Unlimited a close second). Add to that its thriving ecosystem of add-on development and all the major devs developing for it, this certainly is the golden age for me, especially since May 2022 when high fidelity birds started appearing. And hopefully with the coming of MSFS 2024 the ante is upped yet again!
 

Edited February 6, 20242 yr by lwt1971

Another reason I’m happier now is I’m retired and have plenty of time to spend flying, tweaking and looking at addons. It’s pretty much how I spend my afternoons. Without my sim hobby I don’t know what I would do. I guess I’d have to go out and get a job😕

Definitely now! In short, MSFS is all I could ever dream of back in the FSX days.

Got in to flight simming with FS2004 towards the end of its run in around 2006. Quite quickly moved to FSX and stuck with it for probably almost a decade. While I got many, many hours of enjoyment out of it, it was always more of a 'project' spending more time tweaking, implementing workarounds and trying to eek a tiny bit of extra performance or an extra frame out of what was even at launch a dated and poorly optimised engine, than actually flying.

Even when I, albeit briefly, made a switch to P3D at V4 things didn't improve that much. 90% of my flights consisted it just a takeoff, just to test whether yet another extravagant CFG tweak had given me an extra 1fps or broken something else.

Then MSFS came along and all that changed. I no longer even look at a FPS counter. I just enjoy the view and experience and have so much more fun. It's not perfect but it's a far more satisfying and enjoyable experience than any other sim of the past, and felt like both a breath of fresh air and a revolutionary leap forward.

 

Considering "golden age", MSFS undoubtedly and that's an understatement.  Considering most happy/content, that was FSX. The fact that MSFS has yet to have a full featured save/load flight still ticks me off, and it was nearly a deal breaker when I first tried MSFS.  I don't spend hours at a time sim flying, never have, but dang I do miss setting up a long GA flight with several waypoints and then being able to fly it out conveniently over multiple 1/2-1 hour sessions, thus my (somewhat) discontentment with MSFS.  VR almost makes up for it.  Though there is a VR mod for FSX, at that time the VR tech was rather dreadful.

Edited February 6, 20242 yr by TheFamilyMan

I chose P3D, because for me that was the first sim I truly invested time and money in, and have been rewarded with some great “memories” over the years (and still do this day) thanks to FSLABS, QW, PMDG etc. The sim also helped my real world commercial and instrument training. 

FS9 would be second as that was the first FS I started using, and introduced myself to payware aircraft, which overall enhanced my flight simming experience. Ever since then I haven’t used a single freeware aircraft in any of the sims.

I’m sure MSFS will eventually become my number 1, but as of right now it still sits pretty dormant on my computer.

2 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

nothing compares to firing up my first sim (Sublogic Flight Simulator 2) on the Commodore 64 of course 🙂.. that'll always be a special "happy" period.

Interesting timing as this afternoon I randomly fired up my C64 replica for the first time in ages and had a quick go with Solo flight, I couldn’t get FS2 to load. I was almost appalled at how bad it actually was.

However for me too flying the C64 sublogic FS 2 ( cassette edition ,C64 disk drives were an expensive rarity in the UK) which was limited to the area between KCMI and KIKK will always be a special time.

Firstly there were those 2 large printed manuals teaching you not only about how to operate the sim, but also the physics of flight, VFR and IFR navigation.

Secondly the sim required you to be more absorbed and interactive , you had to use your own imagination to build up the world you were flying around in. It was a bit like reading a book rather than todays sims which are more like watching a film where imagination is not required.

I spent hours and hours every night and all day on weekends flying around the Champaign/ Urbana area in my PA28 up to Bloomington and Kankakee via the RBS VOR to the extent that those places now hold an almost mythical quality for me from my formative years. 

I was lucky enough to make the transition from simulation to real flying , but never really left simming.

I found myself once in the most surreal situation, heading back from the US West Coast to Europe on a particularly southerly routing due to winds my route took me over that magical portion of Illinois.  

From memory I dialled in the KCMI ATIS on 124.85 and selected the Champaign VOR (CMI 110.0) and sat there and just wondered how the heck did that happen?.. I was actually flying over these magical places from my childhood but not at 2 FPS on a C64 using my imagination ,but from the left hand seat of a real 747-400 jet. As I say, it was absolutely surreal, like my life had gone full circle.

So yes, those times will remain the happiest for me, but what we have now is almost incomprehensible in comparison.

As I now fly using a high end VR headset down Scottish valleys at low level in a fast jet I find myself just swearing out loud as  I’m just in complete awe at the whole experience.

I also recently flew an old familiar route from KIKK to KCMI in MS2020 VR using the new FSW Lear jet and that too was an incredible experience comparing the “real” world below to what once was just white vector line roads on a plain green earth.

Yes we are at a time where simulation is the best it’s has ever been, but I’m not sure we’ll necessarily look back and think it’s the golden era as things are going to get even better very soon (fingers crossed)

Edited February 6, 20242 yr by jon b

Definitely FSX. It was the time of discovery, wonders of GPS, flight tracking, long legs, awesome addons, flying through the whole world. I just can't describe it.

Nowadays? Much much better quality, but does it feel the same? Hell no, far far cry from those days when "everything is new". Ahhh bring it back please!