22 hours 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.

Great post Rob.  (As are all the comments in the thread. So interesting)

I think from my own assessment of my golden age, there's an element I didn't really consider, reflecting back from today's standpoint;  age, emotion, lifestyle/life phase, where we were in the learning journey, etc.   We could call this the psychology of flight simming.  

I started flight simming in April 2004.   So my own golden age took place at a time where I was learning vast amounts every day. (Anyone remember their first successful ILS coupled approach? 😎 - mine was in the PSS A320 and I remember being truly gobsmacked that I'd manage to get this airliner to approach and land itself!).  I was younger, I had better health, the world was a little more calm.   I guess what I'm saying is that for me, the actual technology of the sims between 2005 and now was probably almost insignificant.   It was about where I was on the learning journey, immersing myself in the new hobby.

 

22 hours ago, Ixoye said:

I was happier and more engaged when I played FS2004, but that probably mostly has to do with age.

This is what I have realised too.  👍

In my golden age of 2005, I was 33 years old, had only 1 child, a high paying job in programme management that took me travelling all over the world, plenty disposable income, and better health. I was working on my UK NPPL (UK sports pilot type licence).

Today, I'm almost 52, have 3 beautiful children (a plus) but less free time, a high pressure, (relatively) low-paid job as a school teacher, deteriorating health (relatively) and ............. well, I've found the answer to the question I raised with this thread!!!!   :-

Getting old sucks!

😄😄

 

50 minutes ago, JYW said:

I can't edit the post now, but Ray if you're able to, you could amend the P3D option to read 2011-2019: P3D iterations.

Of course. But with v5 released in 2020 and v6 in 2023 I've brought it up to date to give all P3D users their choice if applicable. Hopefully you're happy with that. 👍

1 hour ago, JYW said:

but who has sentimental memories of being happier / more satisfied in earlier days. 😎

This will be true for the majority of us who got married in the mean time! 

3 hours ago, jon b said:

This will be true for the majority of us who got married in the mean time! 

Oooooh, boy………. as a certified clueless male, did I ever “step in it” once.  A few months after I got married, I was in mid-flight at my computer when my wife came into the room and the following conversation ensued:

Wife: “What, are you playing that flying game again? Why do you spend so much time doing that?”

Me: “Because this is my passion.”

Wife: “WHAT??? I’M SUPPOSED TO BE YOU PASSION!!!”

Needless to say, it took me a long time to live that unforced error down 🥵

I am one of the ones that said 'Before 2003'

to be honest my favourite generation was Sublogic Flight Simulator 2 back in the very early 80s, because all though it was very limited in those days we were blown away that a home computer could do these things, and most importantly the limitations were easily overcome by the most powerful graphic chip, your imagination. Therefore Wire Framed Buildings were filled in because you could imagine them that way.

Todays MSFS is top notch and amazing to see how far its come, but absolutely early 80s was the age of wonder, imagining where this was going to develop into over time, and the excitement of every innovation along the way

On 2/6/2024 at 11:15 PM, jhaley101 said:

I'm still addicted to Kennedy Approach. it's installed on my PC and still playing it a ton in 2024.   I never was able to get my career salary very high, but now that I can save successfully, I'm loving it

That’s amazing, thanks for the tip off, just bought it off steam.

I never would have guessed in a million years that someone would recreate Kennedy approach and I could play it in 2024.

On 2/7/2024 at 7:19 AM, JYW said:

This is what I have realised too.  👍

In my golden age of 2005, I was 33 years old, had only 1 child, a high paying job in programme management that took me travelling all over the world, plenty disposable income, and better health. I was working on my UK NPPL (UK sports pilot type licence).

Today, I'm almost 52, have 3 beautiful children (a plus) but less free time, a high pressure, (relatively) low-paid job as a school teacher, deteriorating health (relatively) and ............. well, I've found the answer to the question I raised with this thread!!!!   :-

Getting old sucks!

😄😄

 

I don’t mind getting older. Lotsa positives, like separating what’s important and what’s not using a very sharp knife. Unlike in youth, I don’t think I ever had a knife. 😝

I don’t remember what year it was, but I do remember I had an Apple II GS. Clouds were like fuzzy dice and there was a distinctive ‘click, click, click’ to the frame rate. I’m on P3d and still can’t believe what I’m looking at sometimes.

On 2/7/2024 at 12:08 PM, Mike A said:

Oooooh, boy………. as a certified clueless male, did I ever “step in it” once.  A few months after I got married, I was in mid-flight at my computer when my wife came into the room and the following conversation ensued:

Wife: “What, are you playing that flying game again? Why do you spend so much time doing that?”

Me: “Because this is my passion.”

Wife: “WHAT??? I’M SUPPOSED TO BE YOU PASSION!!!”

Needless to say, it took me a long time to live that unforced error down 🥵

Flight simming is like smoking cigars. First there is indignation, but eventually they get used to it. Keeps us out of their hair for a while.

An option was lacking, at least for me, and that was the short time living MS FLIGHT!

MS FLIGHT was the happier experience I ever had with flight simulation, and also the one that turned me into an unbeliever, naysayer and grumpy simmer, one that looks like never happy with anything... one that can't like and stay with a platform for much time or, even less, with multiple sims at the same time...

I really LOVED pretty much everything about MS FLIGHT, and built expectations on it's future that when what ended up happening to it actually did happen it was a total dismay.

This being said, MFS 2020 is by far the civil flightsim that brought me years of dreams about features and a way of playing a flight simulator and it is still, if I honestly express my deepest feelings and forget about the bias caused by my picky requirements about some stuff like aerodynamics and overall physics modelling, and weather effects, or the bias caused by a feel of : "this is unfair, MS / ASOBO is killing the competition !!! " and compassion for those other platforms, or the bias caused by the will to have some historic addons like Active Sky or the FSLabs Airbuses in MFS.... it is still as I was saying the BEST CIVIL FLIGHT SIMULATOR EXPERIENCE EVER !

There were other great moments too, like Flight Assignment ATP ( culminating with Rev D and then later Airline Simulator 2 ), FLIGHT UNLIMITED 1, 2 and 3, Fly! and Fly!2, LAS ( Light Aircraft Simulator, UK made mid nineties... ), and the promising PROPILOT !!!  These were all good moments in my simmer life...

Ah, and I kept using ELITE, bought PS1 and then PSX and enjoyed those as much as I could ( Aerowinx PSX is too complex / professional for me... and with very few details of the World that I really need to see to feel happy, and running it using another sim for the visuals never really convinced me... ).

But truly, the era that marked my simmer life was that of fs9 and then FSX, the greatest addons ( all being relative ) I used with it, the people I met thanks to participating in forums like AIRSIM PT, AVSIM, FLIGHTIM, X-PlANE.ORG..., simmers events here in Portugal alternating with Portugal Air Show until 2006.... well... Those were probably the best times I recall.

After the trauma caused by MS FLIGHT, and because a friend finally convinced me that feel of flight wise, and flight dynamics wise there was nothing like DCS World, and latter IL2, I also tried those sims, just as I did use Combat Flight Simulator up to version 3, and a few other historic combat sims, and even War Thunder to which I almost became addict some 6 years ago 🙂 for a period of 6 months 🙂

Presently my goto sims are MFS 2020 and Airlinetools A32x ( a professional / training Airbus A320 sim platform ).

 

I would have to say it was probably around the era of FS9 and FSX. I thought that FS9 sim was a massive leap over what came before it and set the tone and trajectory for future versions. It was also the era (again my personal opinion) when really high quality scenery add-ons started to appear that were specifically aimed at VFR pilots (such as Georender which again in my opinion set the tone for all future high end scenery for smaller airports and airfields such as ORBX, etc).

Unfortunately due to certain circumstances beyond my control I'm not really sure I will ever see a time when I can move forward to the current versions of MSFS since the expenditure required on hardware to get there is beyond my means and probably always will be if my country's and (partly by extension of that) my own economic future are actually going to be what I think they will be (that is as close to politics as I am going!!). I am also still running my old Windows 7 machine for FSX which of course means I am also running it offline (I am only online these days with my little Atom-powered Chromebook). And the desktop hardware simply won't work with Windows 11 so there is a "hard" barrier there to install anything modern. So I am forced to be "content" with FSX. That said, objectively everything about my FSX install is vastly superior to my old FS9 install and I have amassed far more hours per year on FSX than any previous versions.

So I guess I'd really have to say FSX but who am I kidding? I watch heaps of MSFS videos on YouTube and I would be lying if I said I wouldn't be much happier running it!

I did not vote because the choices were not clear to me. OP used the abbreviation ESP. I pass.