A poignant look at Flight Simulator...

[NuGuy]

Heyas,

I gotcha all beat. I had subLogics (later bought by MS) flight sim for my Apple 2. It ran much better than what the vid showed.

A bud of mine had it for his TRS-80. That was pretty choppy, though.

Nu

 

[dseagrav]

Pirated FS4 on my mighty 286 for me. I got my copy from the Snap-On tool guy who sold to my stepdad's motorcycle shop. Bought FS5 and all the PC versions after. My stepdad hated it; I had to play FS while he was gone or asleep because if he caught me playing it, he'd make me "turn that dorky thing off and go outside!" He swore I'd never fly because I was too much a worthless farkup, and convinced me that pilots were all super-geniuses with perfect health, and I had no hope. (I'm very badly nearsighted) I still regret never having worked up the courage to prove him wrong while he was still alive. Until some people at an FBO "worked me over" I really believed FS was as close as I would ever get to flying an airplane. If I hadn't gotten "super dorky" one day and gone to the airport to buy a sectional...

 

[Murdoughnut]

I just got the new Dell XPS 400 so I could run online flight sim sessions more smoothly. Then, like two days later, I learned about FS X which is coming out near the holidays. It's like everything's falling into place. If I get back home and my woman all of a sudden discovers a passion for fellatio, I'm definitely buying a lottery ticket. Things are looking up my friends!

I saw this in the most recent issue of Flying. http://www.hotseatinc.com/uploads/30/PAGES/1900/ I wouldn't drop the $900 they want for it, but might be easy to design and build yourself.

 

[Lostdog65]

The song about 9 minutes in is by Loreena McKennit (sp)...I think. The song is in the movie Braveheart. She sings with Enya and Maire Brennan on a few songs. Wonderful voice...excellent choice of music.

Eric

 

[mushroom]

First flew the Sublogic one on the Apple my freshman year of high school ('81-'82). Amazing how far the technology has come since then.

 

[Tinstaafl]

The song is one of Enya's, I think. Not Loreena McKennit. I have a lot of music from those two as well as Maire Brennan from 'Clannad'. Pretty sure I've heard it while listening to Enya. Her 'The Memory of Trees' perhaps?

 

[Ill Mitch]

Heyas,

I gotcha all beat. I had subLogics (later bought by MS) flight sim for my Apple 2. It ran much better than what the vid showed.

A bud of mine had it for his TRS-80. That was pretty choppy, though.

Nu

That's what I started with, Flight Sim 2 for the apple. I have had every version except FS2000 (because it sucked).

www.megascenery.com to take a look at what is out there now. Pretty amazing stuff.

 

[mtrv]

Here is an up to date flightsim video, that I just seen.
Very realistic looking! Microsoft's FS2004 and add ons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gigOl-8tsYc&search=fs2004

 

[~~~^~~~]

First flew the Sublogic one on the Apple my freshman year of high school ('81-'82). Amazing how far the technology has come since then.

Yep - Ran on a 5 1/4 inch floppy. Remember when Bruce Artwick was the FSim guy?

Probably the best Flight Sim ever was Fly! by Gathering of Developers (GOD). You had to know the systems to get the airplanes started and every switch in the cockpit worked as it was supposed to. On the Hawker you had to get the APU going for an engine start. I did some of the Beta testing on that.

What happened to the Sublogic sim where they would deduct points for exceeding limts and bad landings? Also, anyone remember the air ambulance add on where you had to fly rescue missions? The crop duster scenario was fun too. FS4 was the best Microsoft Sim - after that it was all grpahics and no flight modelling.

Falcon 3.0 worked well too.

Oh well, now I fly for a living and have not even loaded FS 2004. But those things were sure fun in high school.

 

[AirBadger]

While FS2004 is pretty cool by itself, its really 3rd party developers that make it realistic. The 747-400 from www.precisionmanuals.com and 767 from www.leveldsim.com come to mind. Really cool stuff, all the important systems are modelled.