Your first flight Sim?

[bluepilot76]

I have been simming on and off all of my life, since we first got an acorn electron, when I was about 4 I think.

Aunty took me to the computer game section, and there was a game called "Bandits at 3oclock" the cover showed a scene of heros flying biplanes over flanders, and I thought that was what the game would be like. Very excited. I must say I was a bit dissapointed with the game, but stuck with it. (actually, Rise of Flight was pretty much what I was expecting)

 

Next was (also on the Acorn Electron), called something like "Terror on the flight deck" Another extremely dramatic front cover with 3 steely eyed flight deck crew wrestling with the controls through a thunderstorm. I think they might have had an engine failure as well. Basically you had to take off a 737 then you would get a blue screen, like a radar display, and would have to fly a procedure. If you were good, and I was VERY good after I found that my dad couldnt do it, and spent like a year practicing secretly and then amazed him, anyway if you were VERY good, because it was hard, especially if you were like 6, then the blue screen would give way to a view of a runway and PAPIs. through the remainder of the approach if anything went out of spec, you were back to the blue screen (or death Im not sure). Actually that sim was kind of amazing. quite realistic in some ways like the procedure you had to fly. and speed control on the ILS.

 

Then I had an Spectrum 48k. There was a BRILLIANT simulator for an F4 phantom. very small runway, quite accurate flight dynamics as I remember. The sound was really cool, it had a whistling whining jet noise. I used to do cross countrys and red arrows aerobatic displays. the graphics consisted of a white line for the horizon and either an enemy plane (a delta shape) or a runway. SPent hundreds of hours on that.

 

Fighter Bomber; Amazing graphics. slightly disspointing realism. still years of my life wasted on that. The Spectrum becoming red hot on my la untill one day just went pop.

 

Next highlights were Flight of The Intruder, Chuck Yeagers Flight Sim, a break through uni, then Falcon 4. Lost a girlfriend because of that- too distracted apparently. All the rest, I still fly so dont count.

 

I think with DCS A-10C and Rise of Flight, I am in flight sim nirvana. Anybody else want to share there happy memories?

[Focha]

Hi there.

 

I've been simming all of my life too. I was too young to remember some of the sims, but one of those that marked me the most was MicroProse's "F-15 Strike Eagle II". Another one was "Hind" from Digital Integration. Then followed Jane's simulators, etc.

It's remarkable what was achieved in 20 years of evolution. It is interesting to see people protest against some aspects when 15 years ago there was nothing compared with the new simulators of today.

I still remember to see monochrome lines representing mountains, horizon, lines representing aircrafts... Oh well. Thank scientists for evolution. :P

[Tone71]

There's a nostalgia thread here:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=70631

 

And a great nostalgic story here:

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=64631

 

Can't remember my first sim but I've played (in no particular order): Skychase, F29 Retaliator, F19 Stealth Fighter, Fighter Bomber, Flight of the Intruder, F15 Strike Eagle, F16 Falcon, IL2 (all the way up to 1946 edition), Knights of the Sky, FS2004, Lock-on and Flaming Cliffs, Thunderhawk, Commanche 4, Superhuey, Battle of Britain...

Most of these were for the Atari ST, some on PC. Not sure I had any for my Atari 800XL!

Edited April 20, 2011 by Tone71
Remembered some more.

[Krippz]

I have fond memories of picking up Janes F-15E for the first time. I didn't know much of what was going on (I was 14@ the time) but just the sheer thrill of operating in the theater was worth it for me. I've learned though over the years to not take any flight sims for granted and to enjoy them all; we are certainly a niche genre but what a lucky bunch we are.

[Pigmachine]

First one I think was Stealth Fighter on the C-64. First one on PC (I were slow on getting a PC for myself) That i really liked was F15E III. Played it in coopmode at a friends place, retired at least 5 pilots each on that one.

 

I remember drooling over the amiga sim .. Interceptor? While I myself had an Atari

[LordWolf]

|I've started with F22 taw, and i still love it!

[KillaALF]

Gunship on the C64, on PC it was Falcon 3.0

[ec-swr]

Air Warrior III 1997

 

[Impact]

F29 Retaliator.

 

Was about 7 years old, and just slammed the skies full of missiles with unlimited ammo. I always chose pacific theatre, and as I couldnt read english at that moment, I just destroyed all this buildings that looked like nuclear plants.

 

And then I just ejected without reason.

 

I was a pretty random kid.

[bumfire]

If i forgo the computers before my amiga a500, if i forget about them then the first decent sim I flew was FA18 Interceptor circa 1986

[Wags]

MiG Alley Ace on the Apple 1.

[Phantom88]

Janes F/A-18E SuperHornet "The Fist Of The Fleet" started it all for me. :)

[EtherealN]

Falcon on the Amiga 500.

 

[159th_Viper]

Does Airwolf on the Commodore 64 count?

 

:P

 

Serious simming commenced with LockOn Flaming Cliffs 2006.

[Cedaway]

1942: Pacific Air War by Microprose. (Sprites included!!!)

or

F-117 Nighthawk - Stealth Fighter

 

Don't remember witch is the first one

[Speed]

The first flight "sim" I flew was Janes USNF 97 and Janes ATF Gold. I followed that with Longbow 2. But the first game I played that I really consider, today, to be a true flight sim (for its time) was Janes F-15. Longbow 2 was a hell of a fun game, but it didn't have a clickable pit, which I consider the minimum requirement to be placed in the "sim" catagory. I actually got it running on my win XP laptop and flew it for a several months two+ years ago till Blackshark + computer crash killed that.

[Succellus]

My first sim was.... Atari River Raid :D OK, not much of a sim.

It was the mighty all framewire Fly Solo for Commodore 64, my first just because i bought it.

The first i played was F15 Strike eagle for comodore 64 also, but i didn t even had a PC.

 

Second game was F14 tomcat still commodore 64.

 

Then i acquired an awesome for its time 486 DX 33 and many came, the one i am very fond is the F14 Fleet Defenfer.

But my all time hearty game is EF2000 V2. (I also had the V1)

Edited April 20, 2011 by Succellus

[Rusty_M]

some sim on the Sinclair Spectrum, then F14 Fleet Defender by MicroProse but I didn't play that until about 1995 or 1996

[Pigmachine]

Does Airwolf on the Commodore 64 count?

 

:P

 

Serious simming commenced with LockOn Flaming Cliffs 2006.

 

I'd have to say Falcon 4:AF beat you to it with one year, I understand that you are partial in this subject, but the campaign engine made the outdated GFX a minor thing. Glad to see that you didn't include LOMAC as the first serious sim, it was pretty fun.. but lacked the 'being there' thing that Falcon had.

 

I used Allied force instead of the other mods, since it was what brought new member back to the community (including me), without choosing which other mod you wanted to play around with and spend hours configuring.

[Mustang]

This thread reminds of a similar one from a few weeks back, spyros has a great collection here (most of which i have played) :)

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=70631

[EtherealN]

Glad to see that you didn't include LOMAC as the first serious sim, it was pretty fun.. but lacked the 'being there' thing that Falcon had.

 

Wow, now that's a bit subjective, isn't it? To me, Falcon had very little "being there", and depending on what you simulate and how you use it, even LOMAC 1.12 can be used in a serious manner. This whole thing with "being there" - also known as immersion - is not some tangible quality that one product has and another hasn't. All depends on the person.

 

I do have an original Falcon 3 box full of floppies though. That was a good Falcon. :D

[BTTW-DratsaB]

F16 combat pilot on the C64. I hadn't a breeze what the heck I was doing, but it was fun to randomly press buttons and see what might happen. :joystick:

[shagrat]

EF 2000 TactCom

 

Hmm, must have been an ASCII based C64 Boeing 727 "Landing Simulator" you simply had an approach to a "runway" looked a bit like:

 

..../||||\....

.../ . | . \...

../ .. | .. \..

./ ... | ... \.

-------------

...and when you crash landed it was a line right below saying: You crashed! Try again y/n?

 

Wow, that was the 80ies

 

Soon came A.C.E. then there was the PC (i386) when Red Baron and Interceptor or Jet was worlds apart from former C64 stuff...

 

The first "real" Flight Sim that I would nowadays call Flight Sim was most definitely EF2000

 

DID made a difference! First "virtual" 3-D cockpit, full blown avionics, accurate weapons, LGBs with laser targeting, good KI, all these things what made a flight sim "feel" like you are actually in the pit!

 

I quickly developed a tactic against the enemy fighters where I fired a S225 (LRAAM - a stealth missile that never made it to production due to budget issues as far as I know) and when it was about a mile to the target I launched an AMRAAM that immediately caught the bandits attention so he turned away from the threat, thus exposing his side or better hot back to the passive seeker of the S225.

 

With the TactCom add on (later adopted for Win95 as Super EF2000) it was the first Sim to integrate operational, tactical and strategic layers influencing campaign results.

 

http://www.combatsim.com/archive/htm/htm_arc4/tactcom.htm

 

Graphics for that time were bombasto-fantastico-wow and still this Sim will gain one of the all-time-top places in the reign of flight sims. DID Total Air War was good but never reached the feeling EF2000 had when rushing through a fjord on your way to the hi-lo-hi LGB drop onto the EWR Station in northern Norway.

 

TOWER: "Oslo Gardemoen... you are cleared for take off!" :thumbup:

Edited April 21, 2011 by shagrat
the usual typo

[Snoopy]

I dont remember the name but is was a C124 F-14 sim....late 80s

[bluepilot76]

Wow! Amazed how many sims passed me by! I thought I had them all, but now you remind me, how could I have forgotten F16 Combat Pilot, I LOVED that- So Real! In retrospect my favorite things about that sim were, that you started in a hanger, and you could taxi back in at the end and get rearmed I think (A BIT LIKE DCS A10C!), Im sure you could get bombed if you werent in the hanger too? or was that just part of my private fantasy. Also it had crossed runways and some sort of campaign. I will now admit that I had a Martin Baker ejection seat from a Buccanear in my bedroom, bought it from a scrapyard for 16pounds. I used to sit on there, and if I was in a dogfight, hold my breath, to simulate blacking out with the G-forces. Brilliant!

 

The ejector seat came useful as I got older, good for parties where you would put your mates on it and tell them not, under any circumstances, to pull the handle. Of course then you would pull it. Lots of laughs! Even the girls liked to come into the bedroom to see the Ejector seat! Top Gun era, so they all new what it was...

 

I remember seeing the Tornado simulator and wanting it badly, but I think I couldn't afford it, or it was out of specs for my system. That has been the story of my simming life untill I bought DCS A10C, after a couple of goes I googled. "Gaming laptop", bought one, and have never looked back since (all of 6 weeks ago!)

 

Thanks for sharing people, have brought back many happy memories!