I was thinking how long I’ve been doing this hobby. I flew every evolution of MSFS since FS1, the very first. I believe it was on either a Commodore 64 or a Tandy 1000 back in 1982 or 1983. I wonder how rare I am among the community. How many others can say they have flown every release of MSFS? I was an original member of SATCO which pre-dated VATSIM around 1998. Those were fun days. Anyone remember the mess that was MSFS2000 that had the Concorde on Windows Millennium Edition or Windows 2000? lol. I remember buying it on disc, sticking it in some old junk computer disc drive which immediately shredded the disk. Lost 65 bucks on that one. Had to buy it again.
Anyway, just wondering how many old sim vets are here still that can say they regularly used FS1 or thereabouts.
Born in ‘88 here and my first Flightsim was I think FS3.0 but not entirely sure. I did some flying on “Pro Pilot” also which was (imo) actually pretty good.
My first stint of serious flightsimming started with FS9 and the LevelD767.
I agree that FS9 was really good actually, maybe even better than FSX. Now I pretty much made the switch to XP11 which is also an awesome sim
For me it was FS2 on Apple ][e, I think thats 1983ish?
It was still BAO (Bruce Artwick) at that time, not MS as I recall, really only had a few metros… Los Angeles, San Fran, Seattle, Chicago and New York…
Mountains were 2d and looked liked cardboard cut outs.
Anyhow, I was 12 or 13 at the time, my dad was a licensed pilot so I had good guidance. In the intervening time I have owned every version of MS/BAO Flightsim since that time. And many others. And earned my PPL back in 2000. But I’ve been inactive for a long while in the real world (in airplanes anyhow, I do still stand up and walk around a fair bit ).
In late 1978 we were playing a sim on a COntrol Data machine called Plato. It was amusing as the scenery was stick figures and the aircraft were circles and triangles. The goal was to get a missile shot off at the other guy. We then played kind of an air war against others using a 300 baud modem and every time you gave it a command you had to hit enter to send the command to the server. This required two fellows to play, one to fly and one to hit the enter key continuously so that your flight controls (and missile shots) were pseudo-real-time.
Then there was Microsoft flight simulator on my leading-edge 8088 computer when it came out in 1982. Not only have I owned all of the MS flight sims but I have bought brand new (at the time) state-of-the-art computers to be able to play them. Same for the current release! Flight sim sells computers.
Started with FS98 when I was a kid with a mouse and keyboard. Managed to get the plane in the air and crash into the World Trade Center (I was a kid I said).
I then took a break for almost 20 years and thought I would casually try out MSFS 2020 on my gaming laptop. A couple of months later I own a gaming PC, rudder pedals, joystick, yoke, throttle quadrant, TrackIR, VR headset and a Navigraph subscription. All for this sim. I don’t want to do the math but hopefully it’s marginally cheaper than a PPL.
Original MS Flight Simulator on a BBC Acorn Electron. Home made joystick and throttle quadrant.
About 1984/5. Played during lunch time at work. “Grown men with toys.” the boss said. I’m about Mark Duff’s age. Took lessons but didn’t bother getting PPL cus of wife and children costs.
MSFS old,
Monochrome string graphics of Chicago O’Hare. Dials I couldn’t read.
Strangely, in the Museum of Computing in Santa Clara, the guide stated they “have one of every computer since 1970.”
I said I didn’t see a BBC Acorn Elecrtron.
He replied “We’ve got one of nearly every computer since 1970.”
The Spectrum version of Psion Flight Simulator didn’t come out until 1983.
There was no way to save data apart from by writing it down or printing it. Games were loaded from a cassette deck. It was called Sinclair Spectrum in the UK, and made by Timex in their plant up in Dundee, Scotland.
I believe Timex made it under license for sale in the Colonies, where it was called the Timex/Sinclair TS2068.
Psion Flight Simulator on the SInclair ZX81 back in 1981 was when I first flew - 41 years.
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