Hi all,

Firstly - I apologise if I've got this post in the wrong place. It's a bit hard to know where to place this request I have. Mods can relocate this post as they see fit.

I'm requesting help from the flight sim veterans here that have been flying since the eighties!

I cannot get my physical copy of SubLOGIC scenery disk 12 (New York, Halifax, Montreal) to work with my physical copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.13. I have been successful with scenery disks 9 and Hawaiian Odyssey. I completed a binary comparison of my scenery disk 12 with an acquaintance's copy and the two disks are alike. So either they've degraded in the same way, or there it's something else.

Does anyone recall running SubLOGIC scenery disk 12 with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2? I know it can be run with subsequent MSFS versions 3 & 4 using the converts.exe and my disk produces a good .scn file for this purpose. My interest right now however is seeing if I can get it to run with MSFS 2, like the other disks I have.

I'd love to hear from anyone with any experience here. Better yet, anyone with a copy of physical scenery disk 12 they can test for/with me.

Trent

Don't recall if I ever had that one if I do it's buried in my attic. How about this? https://www.myabandonware.com/game/scenery-disk-12-3bo

Kernel32, appreciate your response.

The source of the file you have referenced is from the physical disk of my acquaintance. :) The only other lead I have managed to unearth was from MobyGames, and I subsequently got in touch with that contributor and purchased his copy of scenery disk 12. I've been watching eBay for months, and scenery disk 12 has not yet come up for sale - it's a tricky disk to track down!

Should you ever be inclined to get up in the attic and find that you do have a copy of this disk, I would really love to hear from you again! I'm assembling a library of flight simulators from the eighties and nineties, and this is the only scenery disk I can't get to work with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2 which is extremely frustrating!

mfahey - are you the mfahey of IFR Project? If so, I'm the fella that recently emailed you about that! Small world!

Trent

Good luck with your venture, it’s a noble project.

As someone once said...we choose to do these things, not because they are easy, but because we think they will be easy...

4 hours ago, BlueSox30 said:

Hi all,

Firstly - I apologise if I've got this post in the wrong place. It's a bit hard to know where to place this request I have. Mods can relocate this post as they see fit.

I'm requesting help from the flight sim veterans here that have been flying since the eighties!

I cannot get my physical copy of SubLOGIC scenery disk 12 (New York, Halifax, Montreal) to work with my physical copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2.13. I have been successful with scenery disks 9 and Hawaiian Odyssey. I completed a binary comparison of my scenery disk 12 with an acquaintance's copy and the two disks are alike. So either they've degraded in the same way, or there it's something else.

Does anyone recall running SubLOGIC scenery disk 12 with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2? I know it can be run with subsequent MSFS versions 3 & 4 using the converts.exe and my disk produces a good .scn file for this purpose. My interest right now however is seeing if I can get it to run with MSFS 2, like the other disks I have.

I'd love to hear from anyone with any experience here. Better yet, anyone with a copy of physical scenery disk 12 they can test for/with me.

Trent

Wow.

Hi there,

I run a community server with several people interested in old MSFS, one guy I know has a physical copy of Disk 12, he said he will look into the issue here when he can. I've also messaged another person, one who has actually been working to construct the missing Disks 8 and 10 himself with new content. I don't go as far back as FSII, but it's definitely interesting. If you ever need help, especially with FSFW95 and onward, shoot me a pm!

I wonder if it has something to do with reading the copy-protected disc on non-standard hardware (if running off dosbox, etc). Even some of their later releases used nonstandard sector layouts so they're notoriously difficult to create images from.

The disks have all been archived online so I'll try running it myself via dosbox. Are you running on original hardware?

Thanks

Edited yesterday at 04:29 PM1 day by Garbs

This may sound strange, but I can understand someone wanting to get FS1/2/3/4 running again. There is a nostalgia factor to these, and at least the colour vector graphics were "clean". However, everything from FS5 to FS2002 was garbage as far as I am concerned. Not worth the time and effort to get it running, never mind get any enjoyment out of it.

Edited yesterday at 04:38 PM1 day by Christopher Low

Flight Simulator 2000 is my personal favorite considering with the right improvements it can become a very good representation of late-90s air traffic. The paid add-ons from that time period are especially interesting, it's unheard of to get 20+ aircraft in the same box nowadays. It's all down to personal preference, I was born later than these simulators released so it feels rather 'novel' to go back in time and experience the old world of flight simulation. Besides, where else can I get a good Pre-T5 Heathrow, or pre-2010 Warsaw? I've attached a few screenshots from my FS2000 just to show this old girl still has some life in her.

Whether an old piece of software is "garbage" or not is purely subjective; I can get from point A>B with full ATC and proper procedures all while seeing some colourful Landor or World Tails at the stands. How many other people here can say they've flown both the old Airbus 2000 and the Fenix on the same day?

ImgBB

2025 02 10 05 14 51 hosted at ImgBB

Image 2025 02 10 05 14 51 in the GarbageHaul85's images album

https://ibb.co/1YRcLjz4

https://ibb.co/Z1wJx88H

https://ibb.co/wZ7L07Yh

Edited yesterday at 04:49 PM1 day by Garbs

10 hours ago, BlueSox30 said:

Does anyone recall running SubLOGIC scenery disk 12 with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2? I know it can be run with subsequent MSFS versions 3 & 4 using the converts.exe and my disk produces a good .scn file for this purpose. My interest right now however is seeing if I can get it to run with MSFS 2, like the other disks I have.

I'd love to hear from anyone with any experience here. Better yet, anyone with a copy of physical scenery disk 12 they can test for/with me.

Trent

Is scenery disk 12 all of New York State? Or just part of it?

I had scenery disks for basically Atlantic City, New Jersey all the way to Key West FL, but I don't recall a disk for New York. Beyond the New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Mass. that came with my SubLogic FS-II copy.

Reading this made my brain start to hurt as in went back into what's left of its archives to see if I can help. I had many of the discs but need to restart my brain with a DOS boot to go back in time! Let me think about it.

Ah the halcyon days of rushing home from school to fly over a wire frame landscape 🥰

"mfahey - are you the mfahey of IFR Project? If so, I'm the fella that recently emailed you about that! Small world!"

Ha yes Trent - that mfahey is me! Sorry about being so slack in the email replies, I travel pretty well continuously (in real life) :) I promise I will reply this week!

Funny enough I may have a Scenery Disk 12, I certainly had one and flew it back in the day. When I'm at home in a few days I search my storage boxes, I haven't purposely ever thrown away any Sublogic, BAO and MSFS software, disks or manuals so there is a good chance I will find it.

I'm really pleased with the level of interest shown in my little endeavour!

To reiterate - even if you don't have a copy of Scenery Disk 12 lying around - if you have any memory of running this with MSFS 2, that would be a great help to me as I'm starting to question if it was ever intended to run with MSFS 2.

18 hours ago, Garbs said:

Hi there,

I run a community server with several people interested in old MSFS, one guy I know has a physical copy of Disk 12, he said he will look into the issue here when he can. I've also messaged another person, one who has actually been working to construct the missing Disks 8 and 10 himself with new content. I don't go as far back as FSII, but it's definitely interesting. If you ever need help, especially with FSFW95 and onward, shoot me a pm!

I wonder if it has something to do with reading the copy-protected disc on non-standard hardware (if running off dosbox, etc). Even some of their later releases used nonstandard sector layouts so they're notoriously difficult to create images from.

The disks have all been archived online so I'll try running it myself via dosbox. Are you running on original hardware?

Thanks

This is all very interesting! I will PM you in relation to your community server - it would be great to engage with other like-minded individuals.

You're very correct in respect of the non-standard sector copy protection SubLOGIC used, but they can be made to work with DosBox. I have them all working with MSFS 2 in DosBox (except SD12), including the very tricky Disk 9 (the one floating around the internet 'works' but has serious problems).

There are other faithful emulators like PCE and 86Box that will run images of the disks including the non-standard sector copy protection so these are a bit easier but like on my actual hardware (physical 5.25" disk, floppy drive, MS-DOS 6.22 etc), an image of my physical Scenery Disk 12 won't work on these. I assume there are two possibilities - I have a bad SD12 disk or it was never made to work with MSFS 2.

The goal is to get Scenery Disk 12 running with MSFS 2 in DosBox to complete my collection - the first step is to find a physical copy of both MSFS 2 and SD 12 that will work with each other.

18 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

This may sound strange, but I can understand someone wanting to get FS1/2/3/4 running again. There is a nostalgia factor to these, and at least the colour vector graphics were "clean". However, everything from FS5 to FS2002 was garbage as far as I am concerned. Not worth the time and effort to get it running, never mind get any enjoyment out of it.

I've become very interested in the early years of microcomputing and to learn more about the various platforms that people remember so fondly - the IBM PC and Apple 2 and Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit range and Amiga etc - all these computers that existed years before I ever got my first 486 PC - and to find out a little more about how the hardware shaped the Flight Simulators of the time. It's been lots of fun - the experience of these computers (through emulators) is so alien, novel and quaint.

17 hours ago, Mace said:

Is scenery disk 12 all of New York State? Or just part of it?

I had scenery disks for basically Atlantic City, New Jersey all the way to Key West FL, but I don't recall a disk for New York. Beyond the New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Mass. that came with my SubLogic FS-II copy.

Scenery Disk 12 was one of the last, if not the last scenery disk to be released, around 1988, after MSFS 3 had been released. It includes renderings of New York City, Boston, Halifax, Montreal, Philadelphia, and Hartford.

It wasn't released for many of the platforms that had received scenery disks in the past, but I do know it was released for DOS and the Amiga. This makes the DOS platform (IBM and compatibles) one of the few (if not the only) platforms to be able to run every scenery disk released.

2 hours ago, mfahey said:

"mfahey - are you the mfahey of IFR Project? If so, I'm the fella that recently emailed you about that! Small world!"

Ha yes Trent - that mfahey is me! Sorry about being so slack in the email replies, I travel pretty well continuously (in real life) :) I promise I will reply this week!

Funny enough I may have a Scenery Disk 12, I certainly had one and flew it back in the day. When I'm at home in a few days I search my storage boxes, I haven't purposely ever thrown away any Sublogic, BAO and MSFS software, disks or manuals so there is a good chance I will find it.

Clarifying if you have memories of flying Scenery Disk 12 back in the day? Or other scenery disks? If SD 12, do you recall flying this in MSFS 2 specifically? Long time ago, I know!

No worries about email replies, I was simply worried something unfortunate might've happened to you. Now that I know you have a repository of vintage flight simulation software lookout for another email!

I used Flight Simulator 2 on the Commodore Amiga 500, but my first PC version was Flight Simulator 4.0b. I particularly enjoyed using the Mallard Software Hawaii and Tahiti packages with this version, and also their impressive (for the time) rendition of the Grand Canyon.

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by Christopher Low