So it wasn't just me then?, brought a few memories back, I had an Amstrad CPC 464, and my first flight sims were Harrier Attack (
) and an airliner type sim where you had to fly over a mountain range and IIRC you had the option of adding bad weather in the form of fog (the screen changed colour to beige lol).
When I got my Atari ST that really was the start of things, Falcon by Mirrorsoft/Spectrum Holobyte, Gunship in fact I used to love all the Microprose sim's the manuals were great, and I never got bored of being shot down and captured by the soviets and having my picture appear in Pravada in F19.
Happy Days
(BTW who remembers when codemasters was a budget publisher selling tapes for £1.99 and the dreaded syntax error message meant you had to start a load all over again lol)