"Golden Age" of flight sims?

[LucShep]

 

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

The only thing I remember about computers in the 90s was that the idea of having one at home seemed completely useless. Remember there was no internet at least in the early 90s. No digital photos or music to store. They were too expensive for anything they might do for you. I didn’t have a home computer myself until 2003. 

1 hour ago, LucShep said:

Well, that's for you, because you didn't care.
It's like saying there was no TV before cable got to the mainstream, or there was no music before Spotify (or Napster/P2P file sharing! LOL)

You have no idea what you missed (because you did miss a great time), and that's it.
Millions of people were using computers in the 90s, gaming pretty heavily on it, and joining LAN parties/events (by the hundreds each) in their area every month by then.  

53 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Really no… Maybe one person I knew owned a PC. We did other things. Video games were for computer people. My home electronics enthusiasm in that era was audio and video. Computer games were simply not a big activity like you’re imagining, just look at the actual numbers. Not owning a computer actually put me in the majority back then. 

There, you made my point.  "me me me me"
The planet has a billions of people, and it had too then (I'm sure you noticed).

Remember the popular "Arcade Rooms"?  (you know, spaces filled with those gaming machine things, where you had to insert a coin to play the game?)
Those were quite a thing for a long time, in the 80s and early 90s.

PCs and consoles gradualy became big, also because they'd later present a kind of alternative to that too, right there at home for oneself, or in places where one could game with, or against, other people (the LAN parties/events).
A multimedia system, one you could game on, was not a thing reserved for geeks only - those were the hardcore enthusiasts, not the majority of market by then already.

Edited August 5, 2023 by LucShep

[Eugel]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

The only thing I remember about computers in the 90s was that the idea of having one at home seemed completely useless. Remember there was no internet at least in the early 90s. No digital photos or music to store. They were too expensive for anything they might do for you. I didn’t have a home computer myself until 2003. 

 

In the late 80s/early 90s, basically everyone I knew had a Commodore 64 or Amiga at home and I got my first "gaming" PC in 1994 and most of my friends had PCs by then as well.
Computers back then worked quite well without the internet...

Edited August 5, 2023 by Eugel

[SharpeXB]

36 minutes ago, LucShep said:

 

There, you made my point.  "me me me me"
The planet has a billions of people, and it had too then (I'm sure you noticed).

Remember the popular "Arcade Rooms"?  (you know, spaces filled with those gaming machine things, where you had to insert a coin to play the game?)
Those were quite a thing for a long time, in the 80s and early 90s.

PCs and consoles gradualy became big, also because they'd later present a kind of alternative to that too, right there at home for oneself, or in places where one could game with, or against, other people (the LAN parties/events).
A multimedia system, one you could game on, was not a thing reserved for geeks only - those were the hardcore enthusiasts, not the majority of market by then already.

 

Funny you keep assuming I’m too young to recall this era. I was in my 30s during the 90s. If I use my own experience as a yardstick it’s probably because I represent the norm. Yes I remember actual arcades. What’s interesting to note is those were equal in popularity until the mid 90s to PC and console gaming combined. If multimedia PCs were a majority of the home market that market was still small. In the 90s only 20-30% of households had home PCs. If the Golden Era is a term of nostalgia, sure. But it wasn’t an era of actual increased popularity compared to today.  

[Silver_Dragon]

My grain of sand...
My first simulator that passed through my fingers was Solo Flight back in 83-84 on ZX Spectrum+ when I was about 11 years old, this was followed by Figher Pilot and the first versions of Flight Simulator 4 I think.... plus some strategy games like Desert Rats, then came F-15 Strike Eagle / Gunship, Red Storm Rissing and Airborne Ranger on C=64 (I still have the original box and manuals in Spanish for some of these), this was followed by a whole panoply of simulators, like Ace of Aces and others. The F-19 Stealth Fighter, Fighter Bomber, F29 Retaliator, Their Finest Hour and wargames like Harpoon when I got a 386 PC around 87-88 that was ascending to a 486, Pentium, etc with mythical games like many of Microprose, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe by LucasArts (as well as others like X-Wing), Chuck Yeager's Air Combat by EA, Luftwaffe Commander, B-17, European Air War, Warbirds, Sable Ace, Jane's WWII Fighters, AV-8B Harrier Assault, Harrier Jump Jet, Tornado, Gunship! and other games of Fighting Steel, Eye of Beholder saga, Freelancer, Starlancer, Wing Commander, 688I, Fleet Command and a long etc until the appearance of IL-2, Falcon 4, Flanker, LOMAC, etc

About Joystick I dont remember what mark was the first, a old 2 botom analogic, my fist Combat Joystick was a QuickShot II Deluxe Joystick Controller to C=64, and on PC a Quickshot Super Warrior after to move to a Logitech Sidewinder and others. X-35/36 was my first flight HOTAS, with X-45, X-52 and Thrustmaster Warthog. about pedals, Thrustmaster T-Flight and now a Thrustmaster TRP.

The "golden age" was that time when there was a lot of content due to the creation of big companies like Microprose, DID, SSI, Jane's, and a long etc. For me, the end of the eighties, until the beginning of 2010 when the decline of companies began and here we are still here.

 

Edited August 5, 2023 by Silver_Dragon

[SharpeXB]

13 minutes ago, Eugel said:

In the late 80s/early 90s, basically everyone I knew had a Commodore 64 or Amiga at home and I got my first "gaming" PC in 1994 and most of my friends had PCs by then as well.
Computers back then worked quite well without the internet...

 

If by that you’re trying to imply that “everyone” owned a PC back then, that simply wasn’t the case. In 1990s only about 20-30% of US households owned a computer. 
And it’s no wonder that the advent of the internet created more reasons to own one. 

Edited August 5, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Baldrick33]

Obviously simulations today are streets ahead of what we had in the nineties. I would still look back on that period as a golden era in terms of rate of progression,  both in software and hardware.

We also saw the demise of some of the key studios post nineties as they got swallowed up by the likes of Hasbro and Vivendi who saw no future in hardcore driving and flight sims which became a somewhat depressing time for fans of the genre, wondering where the next big titles would come from. It took some time for other studios to emerge but they are still thin on the ground.

The nineties saw regular blockbuster releases which pushed the driving and flight sims genres forward massively year on year. At the start of the nineties sound cards weren’t the norm, games would have to support the PC squeaker and CGA graphics, by the end we had accelerated graphics cards, the ubiquitous Soundblasters and CPUs many times more powerful. I don’t think we will ever see that rate of progress again, which is partly down to diminishing returns with hardware and also the investment from the big publishers.

[LucShep]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Funny you keep assuming I’m too young to recall this era. I was in my 30s during the 90s. If I use my own experience as a yardstick it’s probably because I represent the norm. Yes I remember actual arcades. What’s interesting to note is those were equal in popularity until the mid 90s to PC and console gaming combined. If multimedia PCs were a majority of the home market that market was still small. In the 90s only 20-30% of households had home PCs. If the Golden Era is a term of nostalgia, sure. But it wasn’t an era of actual increased popularity compared to today.  

Perhaps your own age is the problem. The perception of tech of the period, what you would prioritize time for, during those days, made it all pass by you unnoticed, underrated.
That's what me and others have been saying here all this time. 
This is not a criticism, mind you.

For example, I'm in my late 40s, never gave a hoot to smartphones or social-media (I still don't). Yet I see every 20s-something person unable to go through life without it.
A similar generational perspective, perhaps, as I guess they went through every major aspect involving such things, and participating in that progression.
And I didn't, don't even get what's the point.

What me and my friends felt during that period (but you didn't) for PCs and gaming (including flight sims), is a bit like this.... imagine if:

• ....all of a sudden DirectX13 or Vulkan-2 was a thing, ambitious sim-gaming studios were opening left and right, and unimaginable graphics (even for UE5 standards), sounds and gameplay were possible, all of a sudden.
• ...if the next supposed Nvidia, AMD or Intel GPUs were out in the next months, and had three or four times the VRAM and rasterization strenght, compared to the currrent ones they replace. Similarly for next gen CPUs of Intel and AMD, 2x or 3x the IPC and core-count. Or if 128GB of RAM was mainstream all of a sudden, within one year.

That was the whole 1990s for many of us who were into this. Progress was happening, real faaaaast!
Doesn't matter if 20-30% of households had PCs (I'd be far more inclined to believe it was 60-70% then). Being a part of the whole process during that time was super thrilling. 

"Nostalgia?" For sure.  
"Rose tinted glasses?"  hmm not sure if so, as things today are not all for the better.

Gaming today follows the easy buck, is quite timid in comparison, in regards to innovation. The "DLC this" and "Early Access that" also serves to excuse mistakes, to launch things prematurely, which maybe later will be fixed... or not. (but have your money already)
Even sim-racing (which used to be a big part of my life) is littered with that concept today, same content basically being thrown to them all different titles, for monetary reasons. 
DCS World is a rarity, and probably the sole exception in the whole scenario, even if the modularity of content is technically "Early Acess DLC".

Back then you had game-developers willing to risk it, do their own thing, as they wanted. And that thing was launched on Floppy-discs or CDs. And that was it. No 2nd chance.
Yet it worked.
Put that all into context and -as I hope one of my previous posts here with videos have shown- almost every new sim title, and new hardware, the constant innovations, it was absolutely mind blowing to experience then. 

Edited August 5, 2023 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

18 minutes ago, LucShep said:

Doesn't matter if 20-30% of households had PCs (I'd be far more inclined to believe it was 60-70% then)

No it really was like 20-30% in the US. And my point is that although it’s possible to look back fondly at the past, this genre of games were very likely not more popular or better selling in total numbers than today. Prove me wrong but that’s my point. 

[LucShep]

27 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

No it really was like 20-30% in the US. And my point is that although it’s possible to look back fondly at the past, this genre of games were very likely not more popular or better selling in total numbers than today. Prove me wrong but that’s my point. 

So what?
Being popular or selling numbers is irrelevant, especially during/after the pandemic era we lived in, when every Harry, Tom and Dick got a PC at scalper prices and got into sims.

"PSY - Gangnam style" was far more popular and sold more than "CCR - Fortunate Son" or "TYA - I'd Love to Change the World" ever were or did decades before.
Please don't tell me music is much much better today.

Edited August 5, 2023 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

14 minutes ago, LucShep said:

So what?
Being popular or selling numbers is irrelevant,

Define “Golden Era” then. How was this era “golden”?

15 minutes ago, LucShep said:

Please don't tell me music is much much better today.

Please don’t tell me games were better back then. 

[Eugel]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

If by that you’re trying to imply that “everyone” owned a PC back then

I´m not trying to imply anything, I´m just stating that my experience about computers in the early 90s seems to differ from yours. I don´t live in the US, so I can´t say anything about those 30%, maybe we had more computers in germany, I don´t know.

And I also think that that time was kind of a "golden era" for flight sims. Of course back then, neither software nor hardware were as sophisticated as they are today. But today, if you are interested in combat flight sims, you can choose between 1 or 2 sims (depending on your interest in WW2), add another 2 or 3 if you are willing to give up realism. Back then, you had dozens to choose from. There was more choice, more companies providing different experiences. Today, it´s either Ace Combat, War Thunder or DCS.
Back in the 90s, you got much more in between those.

[LucShep]

15 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Define “Golden Era” then. How was this era “golden”?

Please don’t tell me games were better back then. 

If you didn't live that gaming/simming era in its period, it's unlikely you'll understand why and how it was. 
Plenty to read in the previous posts throughout this thread. But you didn't get it already, I'm not sure you will. 

[SharpeXB]

30 minutes ago, Eugel said:

But today, if you are interested in combat flight sims, you can choose between 1 or 2 sims (depending on your interest in WW2), add another 2 or 3 if you are willing to give up realism.

Realizing of course that DCS alone is like having 60 games. All the aircraft featured in those old games are replicated here. There may have been more titles then but there weren’t more sales or players. When you say “give up realism” that actually can’t be a strict criteria for defining a sim otherwise none of those old games would qualify. Frankly any game with an airplane and a cockpit view which isn’t a flying Mario Cart is technically a “flight sim”

30 minutes ago, Eugel said:

Today, it´s either Ace Combat, War Thunder or DCS.

And even though it’s not really my thing you have to include War Thunder in the genre with its 70 million players. That certainly dwarfs the 90s 

29 minutes ago, LucShep said:

But you didn't get it already, I'm not sure you will

I get it. The Golden Era existed as a matter of opinion but not as a fact. 

Edited August 5, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Slippa]

1 hour ago, SharpeXB said:

Realizing of course………

I get it. The Golden Era existed as a matter of opinion but not as a fact. 

 

I think Europeans must’ve had the best of it? In England, from the mid-eighties, probably more than half my classmates had either a Spectrum 48k, a Commodore 64, a CPC464 or similar. A lot probably had an Atari knocking about in a cupboard too. Gaming, or simming, or anything on a computer at home was still brand new. Innovations came at a rampant pace. The fun that could be had without an internet shouldn’t be underestimated either. Now, we have a million times better graphics and gameplay, etc… but it isn’t new. It won’t ever be again. We are spoilt now with what he have and isn’t it great.

[SharpeXB]

54 minutes ago, Slippa said:

I think Europeans must’ve had the best of it? In England, from the mid-eighties, probably more than half my classmates had either a Spectrum 48k, a Commodore 64, a CPC464 or similar. A lot probably had an Atari knocking about in a cupboard too. Gaming, or simming, or anything on a computer at home was still brand new. Innovations came at a rampant pace. The fun that could be had without an internet shouldn’t be underestimated either. Now, we have a million times better graphics and gameplay, etc… but it isn’t new. It won’t ever be again. We are spoilt now with what he have and isn’t it great.

Computer ownership was just the same there or lower than the US. It was impossible that PC gaming was more widespread then compared to today  

Edited August 6, 2023 by SharpeXB

[Slippa]

Just you seemed to have missed it.

 

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, Slippa said:

Just you seemed to have missed it.

 

Me and most of your class. The “half” your class in the mid 80s who owned a PC was more like 13%

[MAXsenna]

There's no point of arguing with Sharpy. He's probably correct about the numbers in the US. Remember they didn't even have cellphone coverage while "every" European had a cellphone back in the days. Even today watching US movies/series they still don't have coverage everywhere.
But you are all correct. The golden age was back in the 90s, but it's sort of better today.

"So understand
Don't waste your time always searching for those wasted years
Face up, make your stand
Realize you're living in the golden years"

Iron Maiden, 1986

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[Baldrick33]

Comparing old games like the original NASCAR by Papyrus to modern sims of course the simulation is much better, the simulation in modern more arcade titles like Forza is undoubtedly better too, simply due to the limitations imposed on developers in the early nineties.

The key thing is we saw a demise in the development of the more hardcore titles when the new publishers who bought Sierra had no interest in racing titles and the license for Nascar was acquired by EA for arcade rubbish and we had to wait for the rebirth of Papyrus as iRacing thanks to having a billionaire fan of the old series in John Henry. Normal market forces would never have given it to us. 

When I think of golden era it was for relatively hardcore titles for the time and I do think the nineties was the most active era for that. I don’t mean to sound snobbish but sales of Forza or War Thunder don’t really count, they are a different genre in my mind. The fact they are immeasurably better in every way to the old games is as irrelevant as saying a VW Golf is better than a Ferrari 308 because it can lap the Nurburgring faster, is more reliable, has space for a family and their luggage and is more fuel efficient. They are incomparable.

Edited August 6, 2023 by Baldrick33

[Slippa]

3 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

There's no point of arguing with Sharpy. He's probably correct about the numbers in the US…
 

Oh I’m not arguing, just joining the debate but I get what you mean. Sharpy likes definitive answers it seems… and graphs  all good.

For me it’s a little about perspective so as others have pointed out, there isn’t really a right or a wrong answer. Sort of. 
 

We’ll need another thread to discuss ‘best song mentioning Golden Years’ but I’ve won that one already. Or Zzzjjavid has (Bowie). Keeps ringing round my head reading this lot.

[Eugel]

9 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

And even though it’s not really my thing you have to include War Thunder in the genre with its 70 million players. That certainly dwarfs the 90s 

It might have 70 million registered accounts, but nowhere near that number of players. Can´t compare free to play accounts to sold copies. I have two friends who have tried DCS, one has played for 8 minutes, the other one for 18. I wouldn´t count them as DCS players. Queue up for a simulator battle in WT and you´d be lucky if there are a 100 people playing.

Jane´s Longbow franchise sold 1.2 million copies. Would be interesting to compare that to the sold Apache modules in DCS.

[Peter5on]

6 hours ago, Baldrick33 said:

NASCAR by Papyrus

I was playing this a lot and guess what? I was driving it with the joystick I had assist turned on and was turning the steering wheel with the twist (rudder) on the stick. And i was doing full races on daytona and talladega, because driving in circles were calming, and that v8 roar mmm... delicious back then.

[SharpeXB]

5 hours ago, Eugel said:

Jane´s Longbow franchise sold 1.2 million copies. Would be interesting to compare that to the sold Apache modules in DCS.

Realize those numbers are for the game and its sequel over their lifetime. DCS Apache has only been selling for about two years. Given the facts about the size of the market today, it’s very hard to imagine that 90s era games outsold the same modern genre as a whole. Games today are so much more expensive to make, it would follow that they must also sell that many more copies to fund themselves. 

[MiG21bisFishbedL]

I'm not sure one should define a golden age by sales values from our perspective as consumers and the enjoyers of video games. After all, in the early 1980s, North America saw (what was at the time) record sales of video games only before the entire market collapsed. A lot of money was exchanged, but there was a lot of crap out there.

To pick out a golden age, you need to really sort of balance not just the popularity of a particular genre, but also the variety and quality of what is on offer. In that regard, we've got the potential to be in one, currently. But, it's also key to remember that you will rarely ever recognize a golden age while living in that time. Our natural negativity bias does a really good job of ensuring that.

But, the facts are that DCS has not only provided multiple Falcon 4.0 study sim experiences for a number of airframes spanning almost a century of flight, but also unified them into a piece of software in which all of these aircraft experiences can coexist in a single ecosystem. That, itself, is pretty damn remarkable. We also have a number of other sims, like the IL-2 series, to select from. We have good offerings all around and an even greater ability to form and mold communities around them.

But, is it perfect? Of course not. Is it truly golden? That, I can't say. I'm but one person, one perspective. But, it's still pretty good. ED would do an immense amount to preserve this momentum by maintaining their current price point for content and simply continuing to support DCS World.

If and when MAC drops, we'll have to see what impact that my have. I can imagine it'll probably be positive.

[Dragon1-1]

1 hour ago, MiG21bisFishbedL said:

But, the facts are that DCS has not only provided multiple Falcon 4.0 study sim experiences for a number of airframes spanning almost a century of flight, but also unified them into a piece of software in which all of these aircraft experiences can coexist in a single ecosystem. That, itself, is pretty damn remarkable. We also have a number of other sims, like the IL-2 series, to select from. We have good offerings all around and an even greater ability to form and mold communities around them.

And yet, it has not provided a comparable dynamic campaign for any of them. The closest thing we've got is an official campaign which is largely hacked together as an experiment. DCS also has greatly inferior (and in fact, highly problematic) AI, which only recently started getting better. There's no real ecosystem in DCS, just a bunch of modules with widely differing quality standards and, often, functionality (for instance, the same radio sometimes works completely differently on two different modules). The other WWII sim is at least consistent, but it has many of the same problems its first iteration had, mostly because the devs don't recognize them as problems. There's not enough competition to result in a speedy fix to either sim. That is why we're not in a "golden age". It's probably made worse by flying games being a niche, as opposed to a mainstream thing they used to be.