Ive been at this for longer than the stuff i still have.
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Ah, ring bound manuals. I still have my Longbow 2 manual somewhere.
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Was there an F-22 sim in 1998? I know people that worked on the project! Not the sim, but the airplane.
I’ve also worked with people that claimed to know about the Aurora too when I was a college intern in the early/mid 90’s.
Yup the good old days! Who remembers “ok Larry”? Lol used to live that mission. Can anyone guess what I’m talking about and what version of msfs I’m referring to?
I have a Falcon 4 Squadron Leader Binder still in shrink-wrap. Saw it for $19.99 after I already had one. Hoping that one day someone with a Falcon 4 jones will offer me something for it. The manual probably cost more than $19.99 to produce. I know the Falcon 4 story and performed the patching “dance” many times.
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i’m older now and grumpier than ever 
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There were 3 released, but sort of missed your date. 1996, 97 and 99!
I played this one to death at the time and bought it again on Steam in the winter sale over Xmas for a bit of nostalgia.
Barely runs now and we forget how spoiled we are with having controls that just work and interfaces that are so much more streamlined nowadays.
I also grabbed F-117 Stealth Fighter 2.0 for the same reasons - as I played that loads back in the day. Actually that one holds up pretty well!
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There was F29 Retaliator, which featured the F22, and the X29. This was the first in the series by DID.
f22 lightning 3, nothing like being armed with tactical nuclear weapons!
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Me too, ArrantSprings97, mine was an Apple IIc and Flight Simulator was put out by Bruce Artwick. I remember the buildings looked like yellow lines on a totally black background. The simulator certainly has come a long way!
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63 yo and rediscovering flight sims after many years. We’re finally at a point where computer hardware and software allows us to have a very immersive experience. I’m grateful for that. When I think back 25 years to the first SIGGRAPH I attended (1998 - Orlando) I’m amazed at what I’m able to experience at my computer desk for relatively little money.
I personally enjoy troubleshooting, fine tuning, and optimizing my hardware, and the sim itself - to an extent. I do sometimes fall into the trap of ‘chasing fps’ and ‘chasing MHz’ from time to time, and have to remind myself that it’s chasing a tiger’s tail sometimes.
Overclockers take this to the extreme, and while I appreciate what they’re able to learn and implement, I’m pretty happy just running my system with a mild ‘factory’ overclock, and searching for the combinations of BIOS/ GPU/ OS settings that will simply give me a good stable experience.
The other side of it is of course the internet. We have so many resources at our fingertips now - something unheard of when I was a younger man (Encyclopedia Britannica anyone?) Many of those resources are selflessly shared by users like those on this forum, and I’m just as grateful for you all as well.
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i have gone the other way. fed up of keep fine tuning and upgrading pc, so gone the easy console route. As long as i am up and flying i am happy
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Ha! What is this? Filled polygons - in colours?! Next thing you tell us that you were able to purchase one of those bloody-expensive EGA graphic cards! And I bet you have 5 FPS, too!
You spoiled kid 
This is where it‘s at:
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My first experience with Flight Simulator was on a TRS-80 Model I – 128x48 rectangular block b&w graphics. None of these fancy colors! The “mountains” were just a jagged flat line on the side of the world.
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I get that. My job is learning about, integrating, and troubleshooting digital video systems. I love my job, so I love the ‘tweaking’ needed for my PC gaming system. Maybe AsoboSoft should make a ‘Crew Chief’ sim, where you’d need to learn how to maintain and fix all the aircraft systems. 
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I had ‘Solo Flight II’ on the C64 and was amazed at the digitized controllers voice. Also ‘A.C.E’. I still have a C64 setup and play them occasionally. ‘Missile Warning’, ‘Stall Warning’ ! Great memories.
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“Back in the day” my buddy and I (we were probably 11 or 12 at the time) would take turns flying while the other would go in the next room with a walkie-talkie and act as the controller. We started out on FS’95. …those were the days… 
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You may actually have hit on a point that also influenzes the way us ‘oldies’ see this Sim.
Back in the day we had to imagine flying. When I was a kid there were no computers. The fascination with flying was indeed expressed in games that required a lot of imagination. Cycling an hour to the local airport and just watch is as close to one got. So to see this Sim now still every day amazes me.
Youngsters these days dont need to imagine. It is there for them so their expectations start from a completely different base.
We put a number of dining chairs one behind the other. We took it in turns to occupy the front seat, cause that was the ‘pilot’.
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someone i cant name used to skip school and take the bus to RAF Bentwaters to find they were very helpful in setting up to watch the A-10s. then used to get lifts home , if lucky in some british sports cars. he tells me it was a lot of fun and got him well hooked on aviation.
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Because we are “Oldies” and somethings are just not worth getting all worked up about.
We are relaxed and enjoy life and realize that ,occasionally, life is a bit shorter than we would like.
Others will realize that one day too. In the meantime, enjoy life and enjoy the best home flight simulator to date. We love it !
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