The early years

Well, I started back in 1986 or so with an Atari system, the then "brandnew" 16-bit system ST (partly even 32-bit, hence the name Sixteen Thirtytwo). It was also called The Poor Man's Mac, ran on the same processor as the early Mac's did, a Motorola 68000 CPU, 8 MHz clockspeed and featured basicly a black and white monitor running 640x400 pixels, or you could use a color monitor 320x200 pixels in 16 colors. Wow! Featuring a GUI, or graphic user interface, using pull-down menu´s and a mouse. Bill Gates at that time didn't see a future for this, he preferred a stoopid text interface, called DOS.

So, of course I illegally obtained a hacked version of Sublogic's Flight Simulator-II for Atari, one that crashed at random and at will. After a while I got a better version which didn't crash, but the important stuff was: I could fly on a computer! Best was to run it in black & white, because of the higher resolution. It took me quite some hours before I was able to decently land the standard airplane, a Cessna 182 Skylane model with retractable gear, but it was a lot of fun. So I bought some available scenery disks like Lake Huron and Chicago, and some others I managed to copy from others. Of course I tried the available Lear Jet as well, but it turned out there were a few flaws with it. Minimum speed full flaps was around 110 kts but at the given speed the bloody thing still flew around 200 kts, making landings a hard job even at O'Hare.

Back in 1986 this was the thing! San Francisco heading for the refuelling stop

In simple black & white, taking off from the famous Meigs Field with a Chicago skyscraper

There were of course a few flaws with FS-II: wind was only effective once your wheels were 1 inch off the asphalt. So you could set 70kts wind head-on, do a normal take-off roll and rotate at 60 kts and once in the air you'd be slowly blown back to where you started but in the air. Then increase speed to 80 and get down again and once your gear hit the ground you'd shoot forward with 80 kts again.

Click here for a more detailed description of the Hawaii Scenery Disk.

The next sim for Atari in 1990 was called Proflight, simulating a Tornado and made by HiSoft. This one had a bunch of goodies compared to FS-II, like better (more realistic) handling of stalls, wind, turbulence etc. I really learned a lot with this one. Clever programming made this sim operate a lot faster than the sluggish FS-II in more detailed scenery areas.

Again, running this in 640x400 BW instead of 320x200 16 colors made the details better

Then in 1992 Thalion launched Airbus-320 for Atari. Visually it was worth nothing (flat world, no scenery at all except for rivers, big cities were shown as big yellow spots) but it featured a big part of Europe with an accurate database of VOR's, NDB's and ILS systems together with hi-altitude maps by Jeppesen. Plus a bunch of approach plates for the major airports. Because you would start as a student, it had also the capabilities to work you up till fleet commodore. For each next rank you needed somany flights, an examination and every fourth flight was a check ride with some functions unavailable. Fuel quantity and calculation became important, and every landing was evaluated: are you landing on the marker, or beyond the marker, or 0.1 degrees or more off course, or beside the centerline? The best score you could get was 100% and for every meter beside the centerline, every 100ft beyond the TD point or every 0.1 degree off course the percentage would reduce. Get below 70% on average and you got demoted to a lower rank. The sim tought me that flying higher would be more economic but also was limited to the distance between two airports. It also featured VOR's that could not be received at 150nm distance when you were flying too low (something MS didn't manage to build into FS even in 1995). Besides, VOR's could have different ranges between 40 and 400nm, like in the real world. It also featured magnetic variation in the NDB readout according to the local variation. A bit later they came up with Airbus-320 USA, where you could fly on the US west coast or in the Northeast, but not between them. The Airbus itself had improved specs, making it able to fly at M.75 at last...

Another one running only in 320x200 pixels, 16 colors

And that's what they called EFCS... the huge advantage was a detailed NAV and ILS database

In 1998 I decided to turn to an Intel based machine, and, believe it or not, Windows. At the time Windows-98 had seen the light and compared to the Atari multitasking OS I usually ran it was a disaster, but hell...

So I tried MS-FS 95 and after two flights I gave up on the Microsoft product. Since they had taken over from BAO they had left all the flaws in it and only cranked up the graphics. Soaring in thermal winds was a disaster en VOR's always had DME and a max range of 70nm, even on the ground. Clouds were simply lighter or darker grey layers. Since MS wanted it to appeal to anyone, they also built in a "Land me" function, so every idiot could land a Boeing 737, which was a new bird added. Meanwhile Sierra had launched ProPilot-99. With a Voodoo card you could fly in puffy clouds. Wowiezowie! Propilot featured built-in ATC and landing lights which actually worked as landing lights. It also featured false glide-slope signals and to my knowledge it still is the only sim which could. With Propilot you could again choose between flying in Europe or in the USA, but NOT between. BTW, Propilot was also based on things Sublogic had created earlier...

At the same time Fly! was released. It needed some updates - things of 125 Mb and at the time only hi-speed modems were available and it took some time to download them - before it was really interesting, but then flying took on a new dimension. The system was open, so third parties could develop sceneries, aircraft and I recall in those years both Roger Wilco and PMDG built aircraft for Fly. It also featured the whole globe between 85S and 85N, so for the first time I could fly from Amsterdam to New York. The default jet was a Hawker-800 so I needed refuel stops at Kevlavik and Gander, but hell, I could fly intercontinental. Downloaded lots of third party aircraft, incl. a Dakota with turbo engines, a 747SP for real long range, or an ancient Texan to practise taildragger landings (and boy, they were hard). Fly featured torque effects and a lot more. After Fly came Fly-2000 and after that Fly-II. I bought Fly-II again and it featured a lot more, especially on scenery but also at last it featured helicopters. Of course the old Windows machine had been replaced by a newer one, faster CPU and more important, a better graphics card. Simulators need a lot of power. Unfortunately, FLy-II was terminated by Terminal Reality and I needed a follow up.

In the mean time, there was also F-22. This simulated a (then) new to be developed fighter by the US, in a Middle-east world. It was after Desert Storm, so Kuwait or Iraq were not available, but their rendering of airbases in Egypt, Saudi-Arabia and Ethiopia was pretty OK. You could fly training missions or combat. Training also incorporated electric or hydraulic failures, or tanker refuelling. Missions could be flown with a buddy on your wing or alone, your choice. It was another sim which taught me a lot.

Flight Gear was the next thing. Free, you had to download a lot but it looked promising. Unfortunately, I never managed to get a really decent working system here, and I tried two versions, so Flight Gear wasn't a real option. In 2008 an old Atari die-hard from the early years, who was also a die-hard flightsim fanatic, mentioned X-Plane to me. So I downloaded the demo version and got delighted. Ordered it in the USA and 3 days later it was delivered to my home. After about one year I learned of Vatsim and real-time life ATC and the rest is history...

Flying my favorite bird, a Boeing 757 in TNT livery out of Schiphol Amsterdam

This one runs on two 19" screens, each 1280x1024 pixels. Things have changed...

 

Page revised 31.10.2012