What was your first flight simulator in the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise?

FS5.1 on DOS. Remember the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files that had to be run to make it all work?

Then every iteration of the program since plus occasional forays into ProPilot, Fly! and X Plane.

1 Like

FS2 on my Atari ST. The framerate was a slideshow, I have no idea how I ever managed to fly anywhere.

I even bought some addon scenery in the form of the Hawaiian Adventure.

MSFS 5.0 for DOS, during the 3DFX days (the older among us know what this meant :winking_face_with_tongue: ) I had ProPilot 99 which supported 3DFX. Back to MSFS with 2000 …

2 Likes

Flight Simulator II on PC, saw it running…it was love at first sight and was hooked. I bought a 286 computer in 1986 along with FSII. Later when Microsoft Flight Simulator 3.0 came out in 1988 I purchased a 386… All the money I worked after school basically went into computers and flight sim software for a few years. Keyboard and mouse controls.

I have purchased every version since then, also bought a while back Flight Simulator 1.0 to have a full collection. I slo flew Flight Assignment ATP (my favourite for many years) and ProPilot.

When ai airplane traffic was added I remember watching the sky on the screen full of flashing red and white strobes/ lights on the traffic on the ground and in the air.

I was in a group called ProjectAI. Schedules, liveries and models for ai traffic were created to add so much realism to our FS.

It is so amazing to see the technology today used in all aspects of MSFS, every day it gets better.

3 Likes

I remember having my mother print out loads of PDF manuals and Jeppesen charts from her office as our home printer couldn’t handle the volume :laughing:

SubLogic Flight Simulator on an Apple II. I can’t remember what year this was. I do remember the name Bruce Artwick who I think was the original developer.

I’ve used every version since then, as well as every X-Plane since version Version 4.

1 Like

Microsoft Flight Simulator (1984)

I still have the manual

:timer_clock:

9 Likes

I think that was the same map from the Amiga version, with the VORs.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 was my first sim. As a kid i was always roaming about inside game stores, and the casing immediately caught my attention. I think i was around 10 years old. It definitely has learned me a lot, when FSX and the PMDG 737 came out i learned even more. Flying airplanes is awesome, and i really appreciate the developers who make this possible for us!

1 Like

I haven’t kept the manual since then! Thank you for reminding me.

The first MS FS I actually owned was FS 4.0 with the legendary Experimental Aircraft Designer. Sunk lots of hours into it designing the most hilarious planes.

Here’s a video about this.

If anybody wants to take a look, you can even play it in the browser:

One of the coolest sim/games I used to use was the FA-18 on my Amiga 2000 but that was years after that first wire frame MSFS experience.

1 Like

I did my first flights on Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0.

Then I moved to 5.1.

And I used FS9/FS2004 for 20 years.:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

I can’t believe I never posted in this thread. I’ve posted in some others discussing the same topic, but anyway, my first version of the sim was this one:

My original was a less-than-legit floppy I got as a teenager, shared from the closest thing to a bearded old hacker my little town had, the guy who ran the biggest local dial-up BBS system where people traded 8-bit games and utilities for Atari, C64, Apple II and Trash-80 software, played “door games” and posted messages on discussion boards.

Fast forward to many years later … this is a complete-in-box copy I picked up 25 years ago in a big lot of Atari stuff off eBay. The main disk still boots up and the scenery disk is readabl on real hardware.

3 Likes

I still have FS95 on CD and I think that was probably my first MS sim. I can still run it in Win 11 but it it is not pretty like MS2024.