8 hours ago, Snuffleupagus said:

I agree. You know what’s kinda odd?… I still haven’t felt the same excitement and “immersion” feelings I had when loading up FS9 to do a VATSIM flight. 

Same here, i can still vividly remember flying Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0. for the first time.

I always liked airplanes very much from a very young age, but i knew totally nothing about them. The pinnacle of my discoveries in FS4.0 came when i learned about flaps. I had never heard of flaps, i didn't know planes had something like flaps, so when i found out about flaps for the first time and saw the effect on the plane's behavior....if felt like i discovered something truly unique and magical, something that none of my school friends could ever top, i felt like i could become a pilot right then right there!

Never felt that excitement and level of "immersion"again, with any succeeding flight simulator version.

1 hour ago, FlyIce said:

Regarding the Microsoft Flight, I am a bit curious exactly what was going on with that project behind the door. It seems to be a half-effort reboot of FSX, almost immediately stalled with no true technical progress and confined within a tiny map containing only Hawaii (if I remember correctly). Then it just died and passed. The whole thing is kind of weird. 

My money would be a board of suits was trying out a MTX (Microtransaction) business model thinking they could do it all in house and cut out the 3rd party developers. I also have a strong feeling any simmer that was around during that also had bad flashbacks when Asobo said that MSFS2020 would have a marketplace after being burned by MSF. 

I feel MS would of been okay not making another flight sim after FSX because from a stockholder point of view, they are missing out on the real money to be made in addons and when they tried to do it in house, it failed so money wise there was no reoccurring cash to be made and a lot of R&D would need to be invested with having already fired their ACE team, so they would be starting from scratch and would have to make it way better than FSX which would of been a huge investment. 

Lucky for us Asobo approached MS (I read) and sold them on the idea showing a lot of things that werent around during MSF to out best FSX. (Got to remember that even LM with P3D favored more a steroided up FSX than anything new and cutting edge like the release of MSFS2020). So they sell the idea at a time where they could use/promote products like Bing, Game Pass and take another shot at recurring revenue with a more share friendly to the 3rd party dev's co-op marketplace.

My start was 5.1, maybe the graphics were “rubbish”, but I learned to navigate using VORs and that was enough!

Made me feel like I had inside information. I was a part of something, and look at as all now!!

The old versions going way back took a lot of imagination, and I mean that in a very, very good way. When people talk about immersion breaking stuff like the horizon line or popping scenery I can't help but be grateful I can still look right past it. Simulation of any kind will always be best for people who can use their imagination to fill in the gaps and cover the blemishes of any software. It's like playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends; the more you can forget you're sitting in someone's house at a table rolling dice, the more fun you'll have. I love that we're pushing the tech further and further and will always cheerlead it, but we can't forget how important our brains are in creating a positive experience. 

My first Flight Simulator Experience was around 1984 playing Flight Simulator II for the Commodore 64 at the age of 12.  I was always an aviation fan and would always read a lot of books.  I was also one of those dorky kids when on recess at school I would run around the soccer field with my arms spread out making airplane noises.  However when I got my first flight simulator I was addicted.  Even thought the graphics and performance were really poor I would spend several hours a day just flying around in it.  My favorite route was a long haul flight between JFK and Martha's Vineyard or Meigs Field to Champaign in Illinois.  Choices were limited back then and you had just one airplane which was a Piper Cherokee Archer.  

I played FS2 for a long while and finely in 1992 bought my first IBM compatible PC.  I got Flight Simulator 4.0 and played it a lot but where I really hit it home was Flight Assignment: ATP.  I absolutely loved flying the heavy metal and even by today's standards the feeling of a lightly loaded airliner vs a heavy loaded one was pretty impressive.  If memory serves I had installed USA West and USA East scenery packages and a Western Europe package.  I might have had a Japan package as well for it but can't remember.  You could fly Continental routes easily but I can't remember if you could fly to Europe or Japan from the USA.  Can't remember if it included Alaska and Hawaii but I don't think so.  You had a choice of a A320, 767-200, 737-200, Shorts 360 and the 747-300.  All in Sub Logic Airlines colors!

I kind of got busy but trucked right a long with that early IBM compatible PC until around 1997 when FS98 was released.  I think it was FS98 that was really took a giant leap.  The internet and its massive freeware database and many freeware flight groups.  Many long time relationships that are still alive and well today were created during those early days.  Anyone remember the old Project Freeware Group and forums?  

Of coarse I tried every M$ Flight Simulator afterwords.  I seem to remember FS2000 was not really great and performance was horrid no matter what you did.  It did give a glimpse of the future and for the first time could fly somewhat cleanly around the globe.  Many areas at least for the time looked pretty amazing.  I remember flying into Anchorage and it looked pretty genuine.  Of coarse some areas still looked pretty generic but was maybe the 1st unofficial global simulator!

The nice thing about back in those days we were getting a new sim every 2 years and next up was FS2002.  Things really exploded with FS2002 and it offered much better performance and visuals over FS2000.  A lot of high end developers started to come online at that time as well.  Spent a lot of time with FS2002 and before we know it FS2004 came out.  Probably until FS2020 came out FS2004 was arguably the best Flight Simulator (at least for Microsoft) ever created in my opinion.  It had the performance and in time you could get just about anything you wanted for it.  I think many Flight Simulator users still have FS2004 installed just because of the massive library!

Of coarse Microsoft could not stop there so here comes FSX.  It was sort of a throwback and unless you had a super computer it ran like garbage.  Luckily with FSX it had a lot of time to mature (mainly because Microsoft got out of the FS business at the time).  Eventually you had everything in FSX and computer power had caught up.  It took a long time and it was not until 2012 when I built a new system that FSX truly ran great and even more so for aircraft development to mature.  I want to say it was not until around 2018 or so that we finely had just about every plane you could want in FSX at least for the time.  

Last but not least we started to get wind of FS2020 I think around 2019.  We were all very skeptical by all those wow pictures and videos during the first announcements but amazingly it took over as the best Flight Simulator in history.  Easily knocking out FS2002 and FS2004 out of those top spots.  Also it really could not have come out at a better time.  During Covid when we were forced to stay home and do nothing we could finely explore the world in all its glory and I be dammed the world was pretty darn genuine.  Also since release we have had some of the most detailed aftermarket airports and airplanes.  Only drawback with FS2020 is it takes as long to develop an airplane for it as it does in real life.  Even though we have had 4 solid years I feel in these days that is really not enough.  

Here we are near the launch of FS2024.  Not really much can be said about it as its not actually out yet.  I hope its all its supposed to be and I think even if it ends up coming up a bit short at first it will quickly mature into a better product than FS2020.  Also being cloud based means faster boot times and less foot print on your PC.  Hopefully the servers can keep up.  I feel in the short term its creating a bit of a rift for projects currently in development but I am sure it will be worked out in time.  Like it or not FS2024 will be the future of Flight Simulation as far as the Microsoft series goes.  You can embrace it now or embrace it a bit later but eventually just about everyone will be on it.             

The first video by the OP, that jump to MSFS 2020 is insane, insane. The like of which we will never see again IMO. 

As a gamer for over 40 years though imagination used to fill in a lot of the gaps, its just always hard looking back once its moved on.

I will say that i always want games to look like games, i like graphics.

Love watching the other videos posted! Thank you all for sharing. Really brings back some great memories!