"Golden Age" of flight sims?

[SharpeXB]

4 minutes ago, Dragon1-1 said:

Most of all, you have a lot more customers. In the 90s, only a handful of geeks in the wealthiest countries had a computer at home that they could use for gaming.

Right, even in the US only about 30% of households in 1997 owned a PC. But I guess we’re talking about a % of those sales rather than a total number which no doubt today is greater. 

[MAXsenna]

I agree with both of you.
Don't forget that living standards has been improved and markets opened opened up in the two most populated countries in the world.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[SharpeXB]

10 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

Outside of DCS and Falcon 4, is there any other Study/Study Light Public Consumer License Combat Flight Sims? (I'll also Include IL2).

I hate bringing up this one but you forgot War Thunder which probably has millions of players. You’ll say WT isn’t a sim but it’s as much a sim as those games of the 90s were. There are mobile smartphone games which are seemingly as much or more sims today as that 1990 Falcon game. 

[SkateZilla]

31 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I hate bringing up this one but you forgot War Thunder which probably has millions of players. You’ll say WT isn’t a sim but it’s as much a sim as those games of the 90s were. There are mobile smartphone games which are seemingly as much or more sims today as that 1990 Falcon game. 

WT Doesnt really fit in the Sim Market, there's completely fictional and unrealistic aspects added to aircraft just for MP Balancing.

if I was to include WT, I'd have to include OverG, Ace Combat, and a bunch of other arcade 3rd person aircraft shooters..

75% of the high end hardware for Flight Simmers is designed to be used with DCS and IL2.

[SharpeXB]

12 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

WT Doesnt really fit in the Sim Market, there's completely fictional and unrealistic aspects added to aircraft just for MP Balancing.

if I was to include WT, I'd have to include OverG, Ace Combat, and a bunch of other arcade 3rd person aircraft shooters..

75% of the high end hardware for Flight Simmers is designed to be used with DCS and IL2.

Depends on how you define “simulator”. But really any game with airplanes, a 1st person cockpit view, maybe excluding overly gamey stuff like fixing your plane in mid air and pew pew where you shoot at each other is a “combat flight simulator” the fidelity is just all in degrees of accuracy. By the strict definition of today many of those old games wouldn’t be sims either. Remember the majority of players did IL-2 with invisible cockpits and icons all over the screen just like WT and WT has a sim mode like IL-2. So there’s no real difference between the two except degrees of fidelity. I’m playing Devils Advocate here and I agree with your definition of a “sim” today. But if we’re trying to decide on actual metrics then technically all those games are “combat flight simulations”. For example IL-2 Birds of Prey on a console is technically a combat flight simulator, it’s just a degree of accuracy different than DCS. 

Edited July 27, 2023 by SharpeXB

[SkateZilla]

I still think there was more available in the 90s.,

I was going to mention that the Simulation Market may be a bit more accessible today,

But seeing how many users have trouble getting stable performance in DCS most of the time, it's likely about the same as trying to find the right boot disk combo to run Falcon 4 w/ AWE32 and Joystick Drivers without losing all your HiMem.

Titles wise, DCS Teeeechnically counts as 1 title, w/ several products... 

In the 90s we had at least 3 dozen different titles spread out from a dozen or so developers, (Jane's/EA, Novalogic, Microprose, MPS Labs, Dynamics, Eagle Dynamics, Spectrum Holobyte, Atari, Looking Glass, Eidos, Empire, Sublogic, Sega, Taito)

Janes had a Dozen+ Titles alone, Spanning WWII to Modern, Sim Lite to Study Light, Fixed Wing, Rotary Wing
USNF/MF/USNF97, ATF/NATO/ATF Gold (Eventually Fighters Anthology), Longbow I / II / Gold (Eventually Longbow Anthology), WWII Fighters, USAF, IAF, F-15, F/A-18

Edited July 27, 2023 by SkateZilla

[SharpeXB]

26 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

Titles wise, DCS Teeeechnically counts as 1 title, w/ several products... 

yeah DCS is actually 64 games

although every DCS module is probably more work to do and costs as much to buy as an entire game did back then. 

[SkateZilla]

Falcon 3.0 was technically modular and released 2 aircraft after the Falcon.

[SkateZilla]

2 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Right, even in the US only about 30% of households in 1997 owned a PC. But I guess we’re talking about a % of those sales rather than a total number which no doubt today is greater. 

that didn't stop Falcon 3.0 from selling 1 Million Copies before Falcon 4.0 was announced.

in 1997 I had and built my own PC as a 14 yr old with money made from mowing lawns in 1 summer.

There were computer part stores galore in 1997, and the most expensive part I bought was my $130 3Dfx Voodoo 3 Card in 1999, Followed by Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1 at 199.99.

Edited July 27, 2023 by SkateZilla

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

I still think that what the sims in the '90s managed to achieve given the limitations of the hardware back then was very very impressive. So not calling them "sims" is not given them enough credit imo.
If you look at Jane's Longbow and how it modelled the Longbow FCR, with target zones and hand-off to your wingmen, or if you look at how DID's "F-22 Air Dominance Fighter" modelled the systems and how stealth affects your overall mission in a tactical sense, I am very impressed...

[SharpeXB]

17 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

if you look at how DID's "F-22 Air Dominance Fighter" modelled the systems and how stealth affects your overall mission in a tactical sense

But see if that counts as a “simulator” then so does Ace Combat 7. That has sold 4 million copies, as much or more than the golden era games. 

[Yurgon]

52 minutes ago, SkateZilla said:

There were computer part stores galore in 1997, and the most expensive part I bought was my $130 3Dfx Voodoo 3 Card in 1999, Followed by Sound Blaster Live Platinum 5.1 at 199.99.

By the time my buddies and I got a driver's license, we could finally go to the nearest town that actually had computer stores. Around '94ish, maybe '95, must have been when I got the Thrustmaster F-16 FLCS for 249 German Mark, roughly 125 Euros. As soon as I could afford it, I then got the F-16 TQS (Throttle Quadrant System) for the exact same price, followed a couple months later by the RCS (Rudder Control System, the last generation of rudder pedals without toe brakes), again priced the same as the FLCS if my memory is correct.

Some of the big simulation titles of that era somehow escaped me, whereas the various X-Wing and TIE Fighter titles as well as the cinematic Wing Commander series (beginning with Wing Commander 3: The Heart of the Tiger) were just soooo much more enjoyable with stick and throttle compared to mouse and keyboard.

Some of the sims of the time like ATF (Advanced Tactical Fighters) weren't that realistic, but every title offered something new and fresh. It wasn't until Falcon 4.0 though that I was getting really hooked on flight sims. It was the coolest thing ever.

When we look back and talk about the golden age of flight sims in the 90s, we can debate market shares or sales numbers or revenue or simulation depth all day long. The thing is, that era offered the biggest variety in terms of products and companies for that genre ever. And with the year 2000, that golden age was simply over.

For a couple of years, there was almost a void, with Falcon SuperPak and BMS rising from the ashes of Microprose, Il-2 and RoF keeping the combat-themed flightsim genre afloat, but it wasn't until DCS: Black Shark that a rejuvenation happened that I would argue benefits us all to this day, including people who never touch DCS. Advances in graphics, head-tracking, VR, weather simulation, coop or adversarial multiplayer, and then the absolutely stunning HOTAS and other peripherals that we can spend our money on - flight simming has never been as much fun as it is today, at least as far as I'm concerned.

And of course DCS offers a variety of aircraft that, in this depth of simulation and fidelity, is simply unequaled: from WWII to modern day, props, jets, helicopters, single-engine, multi-engine, a flight model that doesn't just stop being a flight model beyond the normal flight envelope, and soon to come cargo aircraft... meanwhile the competitors don't sit idly by, they all have their strengths, the 2024 version of the big civilian flight sim looks really promising, BMS now supports VR, Il-2 is still going...

I also find it noteworthy that DCS has long been open to third parties, and other sims are similarly open and inviting. Instead of having two dozen competing simulators, we may have only about a handful, but these offer a variety of aircraft that is simply unparalleled, and that is in no small part due to the amazing contributions of the various third parties.

I'd argue this is actually the platinum age of flight simulations.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Yurgon

[SharpeXB]

I think what we’re seeing here is that the 90s era players grew up and wanted more sophisticated realistic games. So what they define as a “simulator” has changed. The market delivered and there are indeed games today that meet that standard but fewer of them.
Today those kiddo games would be War Thunder which has 70 million players. That’s probably more than all the golden era games combined. 

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

I'd pick Jane's US Navy Fighters any day of the week over War Thunder. I have no first-hand experience with the latter, but I have seen some gameplay footage and it looks like something that we used to play at the Arcade, just with fancier graphics.

[SharpeXB]

2 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

I'd pick Jane's US Navy Fighters any day of the week over War Thunder. I have no first-hand experience with the latter, but I have seen some gameplay footage and it looks like something that we used to play at the Arcade, just with fancier graphics.

But you realize for the purpose of this discussion they’re the same genre of game. 
Oh I had to search some game footage for Jane’s USNF. It features an F-4 Phantom blowing up a bridge by gun strafing it —-> arcade!

 

[Raven (Elysian Angel)]

3 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

It features an F-4 Phantom blowing up a bridge by gun strafing it —-> arcade!

By your definition DCS is arcade then as well...
DCS also uses hitpoints for ground units, and that F-4 dropped a GBU-10 on that bridge before running in again to strafe it to finish it off.

[SharpeXB]

29 minutes ago, Raven (Elysian Angel) said:

By your definition DCS is arcade then as well...
DCS also uses hitpoints for ground units, and that F-4 dropped a GBU-10 on that bridge before running in again to strafe it to finish it off.

Ok so all these games are basically the same genre. That’s my point. Every flying game in the 90s wasn’t a sim and every game today besides DCS isn’t an arcade game. 

[freehand]

The Golden age is not today for sure it has been and gone.

It is obvious to every one except you apparently.  

Edited July 27, 2023 by freehand

[SharpeXB]

57 minutes ago, freehand said:

The Golden age is not today for sure it has been and gone.

It is obvious to every one except you apparently.  

 

I’ll take today’s sims over the golden age games any day. 

[Dragon1-1]

The "golden age" was a time of rapid development in the genre, so it seemed exciting. Just like what we're seeing with AI now, every new improvement is a big deal, and the steps are clear and easy to see, so there's a perception of progress. Today, we're still making progress, but it's a lot less perceptible because so much had been done before. So, people might thing progress had slowed down. To some extent it did, because as sims became more mature the amount of work needed to be done increased, but at the same time, there's simply not a whole lot big innovations to implement. Those that are left are the hardest ones, because low hanging fruit were long picked.

That said, flying games as a whole had definitely seen better days. Aside from War Thunder, Ace Combat 7 and Project Wingman, can you name any decent modern flight games? Back in the day there were dozens, with a range of realism levels and singleplayer stories. Today, you've got Ace Combat 7, an Ace Combat tribute, and a multiplayer game with no point to it besides military hardware duking it out. Seen as games, only one of the hardcore simulators makes a good game (that being the other sim, due to originating in a time when SP was the main thing), the others are clunky at best. So I'd say, we had a golden age that came and went, for flight games. DCS is unparalleled as a simulator, but as a game, there are several improvements that could be made, mostly to UI (and stop breaking the damn triggers, please).

[Mars Exulte]

On 7/24/2023 at 2:32 PM, LucShep said:

And still... the cost. 
Do the inflation conversion math as much as you want on harware prices, but there is no way you can convince yourself that a decently good CPU, MOBO, RAM, GPU and PSU had the prices then that we pay today.

 We can do the math, and it is what it is. Electronics have never been cheaper than they are now, even allowing for Nvidia screwing everyone hardcore.

 Our first PC back in 89/90 (I couldn't read yet, and that was one of incentives for me to learn) was a 386 that cost $3,000 or $4,000 (I don't remember which). I just built a full scale high end DCS VR machine for $2,000 and change. We don't even have to consider ''inflation'' the raw numbers themselves are lower. When you factor in inflation, it just gets even more exaggerated.

 Yeah, there was less variety in machines and software but tech was always advancing and every few years your old machine wouldn't run the new games anymore. So yeah, there was still a high and a low end. If anything the rate of technological advancement was so much higher your machine's lifespan was considerably lower.

 

 My last machine lasted about 6 years before I got rid of it (I-7-6700k and 1080ti), it was STILL playing everything at Max settings, it just wasn't high end VR suited so I easily could have got several more years out of it. In between 1990 and 1995 your machine would be completely useless for anything but legacy software and running a printer, and you'd have to upgrade the entire mess again because technology had already tripled or quadrupled by then in capability. Now we're quibbling over 20-30% every 2-3 years MAYBE, and it takes 5-8 years to actually double, ever slowing down. So not only were the individual components considerably more expensive, but their life expectancy was much lower.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Mars Exulte

[LucShep]

On 8/4/2023 at 10:46 PM, Mars Exulte said:

 We can do the math, and it is what it is. Electronics have never been cheaper than they are now, even allowing for Nvidia screwing everyone hardcore.

 Our first PC back in 89/90 (I couldn't read yet, and that was one of incentives for me to learn) was a 386 that cost $3,000 or $4,000 (I don't remember which). I just built a full scale high end DCS VR machine for $2,000 and change. We don't even have to consider ''inflation'' the raw numbers themselves are lower. When you factor in inflation, it just gets even more exaggerated.

 

1989/1990 was not the most graceful period for hardware prices, but you did have a broad second-hand market (I got a 386 system in 1991 for roughly 300$!).

That was a severely inflated price for a 386 system. For that price it must have been a complete system that also included a VGA 256-color monitor, and printer, I suspect?
Remember, computers at that time included everything - monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. Often with printers thrown in the mix because "ah yes you need this too" - and people paid more than necessary.

Try adding a high-end OLED monitor, keyboard and mouse and other peripherals, and the latest HP or Epson printer/scanner to your current system (which, looking at those listed specs, I seriously doubt was 2.000$ only, unless if some of those were used parts). 
See then how much it goes for.

 

On 8/4/2023 at 10:46 PM, Mars Exulte said:

 Yeah, there was less variety in machines and software but tech was always advancing and every few years your old machine wouldn't run the new games anymore. So yeah, there was still a high and a low end. If anything the rate of technological advancement was so much higher your machine's lifespan was considerably lower.

In late 1980s perhaps, but not in late 1990s to early 2000s. You actually had as much, if not more, competicion in hardware market, compared to today.

You had four players in the GPU market alone - 3DFX, Matrox, Nvidia and ATI. 
At one point you had the 3DFX Voodoo3, the Matrox G400, the Riva TNT2 Ultra, and the ATI Rage 128. All trading blows in different aspects, with big benefits in pricing.
It was never as bad as has been in recent years for GPUs .

Intel dominated the CPU market with the Pentium I, II and III products but AMD had the K7 and K75 Athlons in 1999. Again, all trading blows for whatever market segment. 

Brand new graphics-cards and processors galore, same for motherboards, for the different segments of the market with varied range prices.
Also, you usually didn't need fancy or exhotic aftermarket coolers, cases with loads of fans, or even ubber PSUs at that point, like you do need now for gaming.
That only exhisted for the hardcore enthusiast or overclocker, not for gaming/sims.

Obsolescence was severely quick, yes, but upgrade paths would been seen, a bit like today.
Your average gaming PC build would play any new games released on the market for well over 18 months. The only real exception I recall was Falcon 4.0 - that was really harsh on hardware for years, like "Crysis" in its day (or maybe like DCS sometimes has been!). 

Also, there was a thing called "launch price", which was the highest you would see (inflated for early adopters onto the latest trend, of course).
Prices on everything hardware would gradually decrease in following months. That was the norm, exactly because the competition and progress was fierce, and how the market persisted, which benefited all.
For example, you could buy a brand new Pentium II and an Nvidia RIVA TNT2 Ultra for about a 2/3 of the launch price, just four months after their launch on the market, like I did. Same thing for motherboards, memory, or even CRT monitors.

That was a benefit we don't have today, nearly a quarter of century later.
How much is still that Intel i9 13900K or Nvidia RTX4090 launched a year ago?  hmmm, right.

 

On 8/4/2023 at 10:46 PM, Mars Exulte said:

 My last machine lasted about 6 years before I got rid of it (I-7-6700k and 1080ti), it was STILL playing everything at Max settings, it just wasn't high end VR suited so I easily could have got several more years out of it.

Now we're quibbling over 20-30% every 2-3 years MAYBE, and it takes 5-8 years to actually double, ever slowing down. So not only were the individual components considerably more expensive, but their life expectancy was much lower.

Intel in the 2010s is actually proof of stagnation in hardware, for processors in this case. Because there simply was no competicion, progress was minimal - that's why those 22nm, 32nm and 14nm(+++...) Intel processors lasted for so long.  That's really what a "dark age" in hardware is (and was). Something that has started to happen in the GPU market as well (with Nvidia domination).

That said, I'm not sure how that system of yours would run DCS while "STILL playing everything at Max settings"....   maybe at 30FPS?
I had Intel Xeon W3690 OC@4.5Ghz, 24GB DDR3 1600 RAM, GTX1070 8GB, that's not a slow system in 2018, when DCS 2.5 got out. At times I could see it struggling, at 1080P.
Max settings were definitely not usable.

Edited August 5, 2023 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

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. 

Edited August 5, 2023 by SharpeXB

[LucShep]

9 minutes 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. 

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.  

Edited August 5, 2023 by LucShep

[SharpeXB]

35 minutes 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.  

 

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.