Earliest flight sim you played?

[ATAG_Pattle]

Hi All,

Was talking to 'Seas the other day about the first flight sim I played. I thought it may have been Red Baron. Anyway, I thought I'd confirm that.

Found this 80's site, http://www.listal.com/list/evolution...ght-simulators.

Flash back immediately to the trusty Commodore 64 and it's 'quick' 45 minute cassette tape download times, with no guarantee of success at the end of said 45 minutes, and I am in nostalgia heaven!

So officially, mine is F15 Strike Eagle. The game I played the most in the early days - Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eosVhMLr1A

I'm keen to know how far back you go in your flight sim career.

Cheers, Pattle

[Oersted]

I played the very first "sim" on that page, Fighter Pilot for the C64 from 1984. Can't say it was enjoyable at all. To land you basically had to line up with the runway from 20 km. out, when it was just two pixels, and then you had to keep in the absolute center all the way in. More a mathematical excercise than flying.

An even earlier sim experience was a "moon lander" I played on my dad's Texas Instruments calculator. You had to bring forward and vertical velocity to zero by the time you got to ground level by squirting with your thrusters. All input and output was numerical. The output came on a paper roll! - Wonder what the youthes of now-a-days would say to that...

[MACHETTTTTE]

Well, in my case it was Chuck Yeager's Air Combat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGKO2VfdgJA

I played it only once for about 10 minutes at my friends house, cause I didn't own a PC at that time.
Looking at the footage and listening to the sounds (1:56 ) I think it was a smart move afterall. No regrets

When I got my PC, I put hundreds of hours into this beauty:

Jane's WWII Fighters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFg-EZ19_Z8

Not only it was a great sim, even by 2days standards, but it also had a virtual museum section with planes and interviews. Brilliant stuff.

Ah, those memories...

[ATAG_Pattle]

I had a friend who had Chuck Yaeger's as well - Was different. Janes was massive when it came out and had a long run as being THE flight sim if I recall correctly.

After Secret Weapons, Aces over Europe (1993) set the new bar for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwT-7KubfLY

[ATAG_Highseas]

I played on my dad's Texas Instruments calculator. You had to bring forward and vertical velocity to zero by the time you got to ground level by squirting with your thrusters. All input and output was numerical. The output came on a paper roll! - Wonder what the youthes of now-a-days would say to that...

The miniature hand held printer with incorporated calculator !!

Now that should have been the future

Makes a lot more sence than a telephone you carry about with you... That's just stupid.

Carting a telephone about all the time... ???

madness.


I think my first "flight" anything was at my Uncle's house in about 1979. I was a seven year old boy... and it was space game!! I guess a fore-runner to Elite.. it was first person perspective !!! IMAGINE THAT !!!

I have no idea what it was cxalled or who it was by.. but man.. it blew my mind for sure !

He was a systems anylist.. security stuff for banks mainly...
he had an IBM.... and it had that space game on. It was just incredible ! Cheers Uncle Alan !

EDIT:

Just rang said uncle to ask if he remebers what the game was called... he doesnt.. but he does remember that machine as it kept me quite for hours !... Little Nephew staring at the equivelent of the starfield simulator screensaver for hours ... while being able to change its direction !

hahaha

he recons it was probably more like 1981 / 1982.

[1lokos]

On computer, 1942-The Pacific Air War (1994, Microprose).

[IIJG27Rich]

Warbirds 1997 for $2 an hour Then around 2000 WWII Fighters for a while untill I saw a screenshot of an IL-2 109 F2. Downloaded the Demo in August 2001 and it's pretty much been IL-2 ever since.

[ATAG_Pattle]

I play both 1942 (pretty sure you could play as a tactical game and come into a battle and fly if you chose.) Was that 1942? I was playing Warbirds in 97 as well. Groundbreaking for the time.

[PanTast]

A-10 Cuba 1998

[ATAG_Colander]

But I barely remember playing it (TRS-80).

[RCAF Rob]

First Flight Sim I played was Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 back in '82 or '83 on the PC that a friend of my fathers owned, he worked for the Transportation Safety Board as a crash investigator. The first one I owned was Flight Simulator II for the C64 and I can't remember what the name of it was but I could be Combat Pilot - F16 maybe also for the C64 was the first combat flight sim I owned. I also had Falcon AT when I got a 286! then Falcon 3.0 series and all hope was lost after that, have owned many and forgotten more than I can remember.

Cool thread

[ATAG_Flare]

Uh oh - prepare yourselves for this one!

Red Baron - in 2011!!!!!

A friend gave me a usb stick that had to be run in compatibility mode for Windows XP! I thought that was old!

I then graduated to Chuck Yeager Air Combat, then jumped straight into CloD!

[HurricaneHarvest]

I remember in 1972, as kids, we use to hold Roman candles in our out stretched arms, and flying around pretending we were WW2 fighters, shooting each other .. lots of burny fun ..

.

[ATAG_Pattle]

When I wasn't moving up front the Commodore 64, the the Amiga, I was playing this Luftwaffe boardgame. Anyone else play this? 2427_1.jpg

[ATAG_Freya]

MS flight sim.. so early I can't remember what version exactly, but it was on 5 1/4" floppy disc, tandy 1000. Other than that, played a lot of older ones, Chuck Yeager, Knights of the Sky, BOB and SWOTL, 1942 ( have the GOLD edition box manuals disc in pristine condition to this day in the basement somewhere..), b-17... Holy cats am I that old? I should get out more. But I really got hooked by playing FS : SDOE and janes ww2. Was so excited when Janes attack squadron came out and had a lancaster, then dissapointed as it was a buggy game with no TF to save it. Ah the memories, nice thread! And now board games too! I never got into those, but I never new about them.

[ATAG_Pattle]

I was on the original forum for B17 2. The developer had all our names in the game used for the aircrews. That was about 1999-2000 from memory. http://store.steampowered.com/app/328900/. One of the guys on the forum had flown them in WWII. The developers ended up recruiting him for some quality assurance!

The Luftwaffe board game was full on, each aircraft was a small square, allowing you to stack formations, both bomber and fighter, with fate and one's imagination dealing it's hand via the role of a dice.

[=FI=Murph]

I played an offline version of Warbirds, with a very limited number of missions. First "modern" sim was Jane's WWII Fighters. Still has the best music soundtrack of any sim, IMHO, composed and recorded with a full orchestra exclusively for the game. Also one of the coolest game interfaces. It was the first sim I played online.

[RAF74_Buzzsaw]

Red Baron I... which got me hooked.

It had completely awesome box art collections.

Game can still be downloaded and played:

http://www.old-games.com/download/4387/red-baron



Or if you want a little better graphics, RED BARON 3D is also good:

http://www.old-games.com/download/6288/red-baron-3d

The mods for this game make it much better... like CLIFFS OF DOVER.

Mod page:

http://www.wingsofhonour.com/redbaro...es_uop.en.html

Until IL-2 came along, RB3D had the best online gaming of any boxed game.

And some people still believe it has the best campaign of any Flight Sim ever released.

[Artist]

Red Baron got me hooked, too. Then followed (not exactly in that order):
- Aces Over Europe
- Aces Over Pacific
- Airwar
- Airwarrior
- Battlehawks 1942
- FlyingCorps
- MegaFortress
- MS_CombatSimulator
- MS_FlightSimulator_5
- MS_FlightSimulator_6
- Sopwith
- Swotl

Still have all of them on disk - and a dosbox to occasionally start'em up.

[ATAG_((dB))]

War Thunder ....Tatawwwwwwwwww

[SIA_Sp00k]

Scary, with the exception of Cuba A10, I have played everyone of those games above. My first true love however was Battle of Britain , their Finest Hour. I WAS Britains greatest Hero in those days

[ATAG_Pattle]

I gave BOB a good run too!

Crikey - I have played more than I originally thought!!

[LuseKofte]

Well, in my case it was Chuck Yeager's Air Combat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGKO2VfdgJA

I played it only once for about 10 minutes at my friends house, cause I didn't own a PC at that time.
Looking at the footage and listening to the sounds (1:56 ) I think it was a smart move afterall. No regrets

When I got my PC, I put hundreds of hours into this beauty:

Jane's WWII Fighters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFg-EZ19_Z8

Not only it was a great sim, even by 2days standards, but it also had a virtual museum section with planes and interviews. Brilliant stuff.

Ah, those memories...

I played a similar sim like that in my first computer in 1996. You could only fly P 51 and you could not hurt friendlies, but you could blow up ground targets like trains and stuff. If you know no better it is fun. Never flew Janes, when I really succumbed to Flightsim it was IL 2 and MS CFS series. I really liked the MSCFS first one, it had BOB series and you really got into the gameplay trying to defend Britain. When I spotted IL 2 CD I never looked back, at the day I never heard of the IL 2 and after it was my greatest passion, and still is at BOS.

Ah wait my first taste in a PC simulator was in 1995 and it was in Spitsbergen in the living quarters in Svea mining field. We moved houses from there to Longyarbyen. So when we spend the night in Svea I flew MS flight simulator with mouse and keyboard.

[ATAG_Highseas]

I just remembered Overlord !

played a couple of weeks of that on a mates new "Pentium" must have been 1994 or 1995...

I remember being blown away by the graphics... Super VGA !!!!!!


Don't remember any taking off or landing though... and we probably had it on full immunity arcade mode settings...

I'd completely forgotten about that !!

[ATAG_Ezzie]

Amstrad F-15 eagle game in 1984. And then many of the ones already mentioned.

Was lucky enough to fly a RAAF F-18 simulator in 91 a couple of times, the F-111 AUP sim briefly in 1999 and a few more modern ones since then.

Tornado by some company I forget in 1993 was a standout game for its time. Anyone else play that?

Ezzie

[9./JG52 Mindle]

Erm... This one?

[Vlerkies]

Asteroids on Atari, if that qualifies.

Then Commodore and ZX Spectrum stuff, waiting hours for tapes to load, if they did that is



Later on one of my favs was LHX heli thing. Loads of fun
The graphics are epic

[ATAG_Monkeynut]

Thank Vlerkies, I was trying to remember my first sim then saw your picture from the spectrum 48k, that's it!

Never could control it very well, but it blew my six year old mind back in 82ish, it looked so much better than most of the other games! Don't remember it being so colourful though.

First proper PC Sim was one the early F-16 ones in about 88, then lhx, f-19 stealth fighter, f-15 strike eagle (both microprose and basically the same), tornado, Comanche series. Probably the next after that was Forgotten Battles, didn't have a decent enough PC to play the newer ones for a few years! Another break and a brief foray into DCS brought me to CLOD.

Also played most of the flying games released on consoles over the years.

[Karaya]

From that particular (but incomplete) list my first sim was "Nighthawk: F-117A Stealth Fighter 2.0" which was great fun at the time. The sim (as well as many other retro sims) is actually available again for purchase on Steam btw! I've played older sims than that though such as "LHX Attack Chopper" (1990) and the first Red Baron (1990) when I was still in elementary school and had we had just gotten our very first PC (486 CPU). I still very fondly remember those days as that's where I picked up my interest and love for flight simming as a whole. So many great sims back then: TFX Tactical Fighter Experiment, Strike Commander, the US Navy Fighter series, etc.!

[HenryLuebberstedt]

My first one on PC was "Their finest hour" by Lucasfilm (later Lucasart). Oh boy, one had to struggle with autoexec.bat an config.sys to load the driver files in a most efficient manner to gain most RAM as possible. Than came:

1. Aces over the Pacific (first real 3D sim)
2. Aces over Europe (horrible sound)
3. LHX (rescue missions with Blackhawks, great!)
4. F-19 (sneaking around at low level, I loved that one)
5. F-15 III (my first Easter Egg: Godzilla in Tokio)
6. Harrier Jump Jet (first with gouraud shading)
7. F-14 (sim and flight group management in one game)
8. Falcon 3.0 (to complicated for me...)
9. Red Baron 3D (greatest single player ever)
10. TFX (great sim but awful music)
11. Joint Strike Fighter by Eidos (first functional 3D-Cockpit I think)
12. Tornado by DigitalIntgration(mindblowing)
13. Typhoon aka EF2000 (one of the last attempts to create story driven simulations)
14. Strike Commander (one of my all time favorites!)
15. Pacific Commander (went right into the trashcan a few hours.)
16. European Air War (never seen so many planes at one time in the air, breathtaking air battles)
17. B-17 + Mighty 8th. (didn't find it entertaining to bomb my beloved hometown... )
18. ATAC (drug enforcement - was not my scenario)
19. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (Horton 229 - a dream!)
20. Gunship 2000 + Adons (still hoping for a remake of this great helo sim)
21. Gunship! (last game of microprose, hit the market as buggy as CloD in 2011)
22. Commache by Novalogic (voxels - I don't like them)
23. Janes World War II Fiighters (Mindblowing!)
24. Janes USAF (cool missons decent graphics for its time, tastes like a "recruiting software")
25. Apache by DigitalIntegration (used the graphics engine of Tornado)
26. Enemy Engaged Comanche/Apache vs Hokum (dynamic campaigns! One of the best Helo-Sims ever)
27. A-10 over Cuba by Sierra (first sims that needs windows if i recall right)
28. Jet Fighter II and III by Velocity (popcorn entertainment...)
29. Commanche 4 (great fun, nice visual effect)
30. Lock On
31. Il-2 + all Adons of course
32. DCS Black Shark (as all DCS stuff more a technical feasibility study..)
33. DCS A-10
34. BoS
35. Cliffs+TF