How Long Have You Been Playing Flight Simulator Games?

[Feldgrun]

How long have you been playing flight sims (not just IL-2 GB)?

[Enceladus828]

17-19 years.

When I was in preschool my dad got IL-2 FB and Pacific Fighters when they were quite new and shortly after I walked by the computer and was curious what he was doing. He then showed me how to fly and within a year I was loading up the game and playing all by myself. When I was in Kindergarten there was a social for students and parents on the last day before winter break and we watched "The Polar Express". My dad happened to point out that the kid had a P-38, and I was probably the only one in my Kindergarten class and possibly the entire school who knew what a P-38 was.

My favourite out of the two was Pacific Fighters and then when my dad bought IL-2 1946 in 2008 that was even better.

[SYN_Ricky]

I started playing flight sims about 30 years ago when I bought an Amiga 500. Played most flight sims on that platform, my favourite being Their Finest Hour and Knights of the Sky. Moved then to PC and first game I bought for it was Flying Corps, then Red Baron II, European Air War, Mig Alley, Rowan's BoB and eventually the original Il-2. Bought Ciffs of Dover on release, switched to ROF and now here we are with Il-2 BOX. It has been an amazing journey

[BMA_FlyingShark]

Over 30 years ago I bought Microprose's "Gunship" fot the C 64.

 

When my C 64 got old I replaced it with a PlayStation, hell did I know back in those days that there where no realistic flight sims for that console as I thought it was just a computer to play games/sims on your TV.

So in 2006 I got fed up with video games, bought a PC and started seriously simming with Il2 1946.

 

Have a nice day.

 

 

 

[Drum]

Same, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, 386 Pentium's and beyond.  played the very first on-line multiplayer flight-sim called Air Warrior by Kesmai who hosted it on GEnie in 92 before the internet.  That cost $10 bucks an hour between the Data Pak connection and GEnie's services.  Ran a Luftwaffe Squad with 12 great guys for 5 years, IL-2 was only a dream then.  ?

[Hanu]

I guess the first I played (tried) was Spitfire Ace, but Project Stealth Fighter was the first I bought and played heck a lot of hours. Of course all Amiga games, Falcon was tremendous, but the first time I felt like flying was the original IL-2 Sturmovik. I think it was the first time you could feel the plane handling. It was the first time you could land a plane with certainty you are in control. It might have been hard on some planes, but it felt logical.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Hanu

[ZachariasX]

Starting with Sub Locic „Jet“ and the original MS Flight Simulator (that came on a bootable(!) 5 1/4 Floppy. AFAIR, MS Flight Simulator 2002 was the only one I skipped. Of all the more profilic combat sims, I only skipped the „Janes“ series. I still do remember the „Wow!“ effect when showing how to take off from Meigs Airfield in that blocky line art slide show when the original Flight Simulator came out. We didn‘t look at it as such. I always played sims on the PC.

 

We have come a long way.

[Vig]

This made me airsick.

[Eisenfaustus]

As a child in the early 2000s I played X-Wing vs TIE Fighter and Crimson skies. 
 

I also got IL2 and fooled a little around- yet without any knowledge about BFM and only experience in arcade games like crimson skies I wouldn‘t call what I did back then flying…

 

When I started warthunder in 2015 for the Tank combat I began flying out of curiosity (in arcade with mouse control). This time having access to the internet I learned proper air combat tactics and after that simming became my main hobby. 
 

I got a joystick, RoF, CLOD and then BoS. 

[PivoYvo]

I Started with the First Red Baron from Sierra. Good old Times.

[Gingerwelsh]

 

1984, Dragon 64. Block graphics, green on black.

Tape deck flight sim. Looks a bit like 'Tennis' graphics.

2 inch joystick.

TV monitor.

 

All still in cupboard waiting for its next flight.

 

..

[jeanba]

My first flight sim was "flight simulator 2" by Novalogic on Apple II+

I shot down dots reprensenting Fokker DrI in my frankenplane Cessna / Camel

[Retnek]

Started with a very basic flight-calculator using a friends C-64. It was just numbers on the screen - position, speed, height etc. The landscape was only numbers, too.  But it worked: fly to a position where ground height > flight level = crash. A kind of "link trainer" for IFR on pc. Forgot the name of that little program, but I was hooked.

First sim was FS 2 on ATARI - on a b/w-screen. This one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwna7jBxCfc

We played it on friends colour-screens, too. But until today I remember it just black&white. It's a video made with an early Apple, but ATARI was as good then - that's my look&feel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmPHgojgpro

[jollyjack]

Old Commodore times, even had a portable with a small inbuilt screen. There was a 2D very simple game with ww1 twin planes.

 

Then much later on a win 98 i ran across a forgotten battles DVD.

 

20 years later i got interested again thanks my son in law seeing the old MS flightsim ..

and 2 years after that i bought IL2 Bos which had staggering problems on my then Asus PT series MB with an AMD GPU.

Alas i missed out on RoF totally; never knew it existed until now.

 

I decided to get me a more decent PC 2 years ago and also a move to 4k and a warthog set.

Still don't like VR after trying it briefly as being used to keyboard access.

Tried DCS and MS2020, but IL2 is a winner especally for the ME, which not too many find useful alss; it could be greatly improved still.

[jeanba]

I also remember my first "flight sim multiplayer" experience:

It was an Amiga AH64 simulator : my friend was controlling the pilot, I was controlling the "weapon system officer", or sort of (we shared the keyboeard, which could cause some problems when our arms crossed  )

[THERION]

It all started in 1991 with "RED BARON" by Dynamix on a Intel 386/33 MHz with 2MB RAM (Yeah!!!), no graphic card, no sound card.
I was completely amazed when I first started flying with my keyboard. I soon invested some money on a joystick, a fugly input device
because it didn't even deserve the title of a "joystick"... BUT it already had two (!) trim sliders and three (!!) buttons.

After a second investment for a cheap sound card, it was over with me and I was definitively hooked on flight sims. What an immersion!
And still on a 15" black/white monitor - how modest we were at the time, weren't we?

With my new 486/66 MHz with 4(!)MB RAM, still no graphic card, I completely lost my perception of costs and soon ordered a complete
ThrustMaster combo (Mark II FCS, WCS II, Rudder pedals) for 700 bucks!!! Of course, I had to smuggle this into our house, directly in my
cellar (nope, no man cave), a freezing and dark small room usually used to pile some emergency stock... another small step for a man, but
a giant leap for me! 

[Robli]

So far the poll shows that 85% of answers have been into flight sims for over 20 years.

I hope it means that younger players just don't see the poll on this forum and are hanging around on tiktok or whatever are these "cool places" nowadays, otherwise the future of this genre does not look very bright.

[Props]

First got started with MFSF and A-10 Tank Killer (I think that was it's name) in about '96 on my business laptop. Needless to say I could only get in about 5 minutes flying time before either program crashed, but I kept plugging away at it and even got me a joystick. Kind of slacked off due to frustration till about 2000 when I had my first desktop PC and started flying the MS Combat sim series. About that time I got me a better joystick and a set of rudder pedals (the old com port style setup!-). Somewhere around '03? I discovered IL-2 and never looked back 'cause it was so much better than anything else. I kept putzing about with MSFS and even X-plane for some years mainly while I was learning to fly in RL, but they always looked like crap and were not very friendly with my PC. Eventually started flying online a lot in IL-2.

 

Took a big break from flight simming from about late 2013 through to 2019 due to life changes and lack of funds, but life is pretty good now and I am definitely back to stay! IL-2 is still my favorite, but the new MSFS 2020 and DCS are welcome in my hangar too these days.

 

[Chief_Mouser]

European Air War long before I had anything more than dialup internet. I remember a sense of wonder in discovering that it was possible to have multiplayer worldwide in real time. 

[Alexmarine]

1 hour ago, Robli said:

 on this forum and are hanging around on tiktok or whatever are these "cool places" nowadays, 

 

If they are on tiktok you can be sure they don't know what a flight sim even is, on the other hand a popular service for game's communities nowadays is Discord, not just for Il-2 but also other sims communities there tends to attract the younger audiences interactions compared to the official forums

[Hanu]

22 minutes ago, Alexmarine said:

 

If they are on tiktok you can be sure they don't know what a flight sim even is, on the other hand a popular service for game's communities nowadays is Discord, not just for Il-2 but also other sims communities there tends to attract the younger audiences interactions compared to the official forums

 

I'd believe this is one quite good explanation that forums are for old-timers... For example boardgames, Fantasy Flight Games closed their forums completely some time ago as "conversations are on different platforms nowadays".

I personally disliked this idea so much that I have to run through reddit and discords or whatever those are to get some information, (which is not even official normally) that FFG games are not on my list anymore.

[madcowz]

Does anyone remember the Red Arrows Flight Sim for the Spectrum? Released 1985 by Database Software. Graphics were, er typical of the period.

 

[AndyJWest]

 

 

Note also 'Tomahawk' in the background of the first photo. Not sure which I got first. Still have them both, along with the Amstrad.

 

 

[Gambit21]

Jet DOS game - 1985.

I used to play the "Iron Eagle" soundtrack over my Walkman lol.

 

 

[SYN_Vander]

1 hour ago, AndyJWest said:

 

 

Note also 'Tomahawk' in the background of the first photo. Not sure which I got first. Still have them both, along with the Amstrad.

 

 

 

Yup, my first flight sim as well, but then on C64. Tomahawk came out later; I wonder how the DCS Apache stacks up against that classic!  

[No_85_Gramps]

Microprose F15 Strike Eagle, 1984-85, on an Atari 400.

[Cloyd]

10 hours ago, Drum said:

Same, Commodore 64, Amiga 500, 386 Pentium's and beyond.  played the very first on-line multiplayer flight-sim called Air Warrior by Kesmai who hosted it on GEnie in 92 before the internet.  That cost $10 bucks an hour between the Data Pak connection and GEnie's services.  Ran a Luftwaffe Squad with 12 great guys for 5 years, IL-2 was only a dream then.  ?

Hey Drum,

 

I was an Air Warrior too, starting in '94 I think. My sister worked for one of the ISPs that hosted it, so I had a free account. It was great fun and I became seriously addicted. ?

I got burned out on online play though, as the experience and play degraded over the years. That's why I'm an SP only guy now. (I was Cloyd back then too.)

[IckyATLAS]

Flight Sim on a friend's Apple II, then Flight Simulator on Mackintosh and then basically all of them on PC, helos, WWI, WWII and jets until IL2 from Maddox came, and then only IL2 games ever since, and the newest Flight Simulator which I rarely fly. I had also DCS but finally uninstalled it as jets are not my cup of tea.

[Drum]

2 hours ago, Cloyd said:

Hey Drum,

 

I was an Air Warrior too, starting in '94 I think. My sister worked for one of the ISPs that hosted it, so I had a free account. It was great fun and I became seriously addicted. ?

I got burned out on online play though, as the experience and play degraded over the years. That's why I'm an SP only guy now. (I was Cloyd back then too.)

Seriously addicted doesn't properly describe it, LOL!  Yes, good times indeed, you'll remember Blue Barron, DoKtor GonZo, Centurion and the like well then.  Once the ISP's got involved, (Delphi and the others I can't recall) you're right the experience and play slowly degraded.  I moved onto WarBirds then shortly after that quit on-line altogether, until the last few weeks.  Give the Combat Box server a try if you haven't already, it uses SRS radio and is pretty much like playing off-line but with much more deadly enemy then the AI.  ? The SRS radio lets you hear what's happening with the other flights around you, highly recommended.

Edited January 20, 2022 by Drum

[Drum]

Comparing those old graphics with todays must make the younger guys wonder what we saw in them, but when you consider we had nothing to compare them with other then boardgames like Avalon Hill's "Air Force and Dauntless" for example, our imaginations still remained the primary "graphic card" of that day.  The computer was more of an enhanced 3D aid to our board gaming mentalities and provided a new and exciting method of tracking our plane's climb, altitude, bank and speeds while our Mark I imaginations still filled in the rest of the experience.  If that makes any sense...

 

Edited January 20, 2022 by Drum

[56RAF_Roblex]

First flight sim would have been Spitfire on the BBC Micro but my first experience of an online combat flight sim was Air Warrior in the late 80s/early 90s.  You could play against hundreds of other platers and it was wireframe and played over modems ?   I think my modem was 2400 baud. 

 

I also played a VR flight sim around 1992.   It was huge arcade machine at Thorpe Park that let you fly a biplane with a headset on.

Edited January 20, 2022 by 56RAF_Roblex

[SYN_Ricky]

9 hours ago, Drum said:

Comparing those old graphics with todays must make the younger guys wonder what we saw in them, but when you consider we had nothing to compare them with other then boardgames like Avalon Hill's "Air Force and Dauntless" for example, our imaginations still remained the primary "graphic card" of that day.  The computer was more of an enhanced 3D aid to our board gaming mentalities and provided a new and exciting method of tracking our plane's climb, altitude, bank and speeds while our Mark I imaginations still filled in the rest of the experience.  If that makes any sense...

 

I do play several recent air combat boardgames/wargames, the descendants of those AH/SPI games, and my imagination still gets carried away pushing cardboard counters on a board and resolving combat on tables. Then I'll jump on my PC to get that first hand experience

[Feathered_IV]

Since Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.  My elder sister was going out with this guy, but my dad would not let her go round to his house by herself.  However it was considered okay if I went along too.  He had a computer with SWotL installed.  And while they kissed and canoodled on the front porch, I would be inside -  intercepting B-17s in an Me-163 Komet...

 

It was a great summer.  When they broke up I was devastated.  

Edited January 21, 2022 by Feathered_IV

[THERION]

8 minutes ago, Feathered_IV said:

Since Secret Wings of the Luftwaffe.  My elder sister was going out with this guy, but my dad would not let her go round to his house by herself.  However it was considered okay if I went along too.  He had a computer with SWotL installed.  And while they kissed and canoodled on the front porch, I would be inside -  intercepting B-17s in an Me-163 Komet...

 

It was a great summer.  When they broke up I was devastated.  

 

Hey, weren't you supposed to watch over your sister??? Instead, you played SWOTL... ts ts ts. Not very serious, mate... but I would have done the same 

[easterling77]

First game I got hands on was Dogfight from Microprose and it was all I needed for a very Long Time.

I loved the different settings especially Vietnam and middle east.

 

Therafter I went to CFS from Microsoft, IL2 1946, Lock On and after a long Time of, I reentered flight Sims in 2019 with the BoX series and what can I say, I love it.

 

And now I'm thinking about to try a little bit of DCS (but with its steep learning curve it will be more than "a little bit")  to close the circle to my beginning.

Edited January 30, 2022 by easterling77

[Odovacer]

Lucas Film Games Finest Hour was my first in 1990. Then Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe.  Nighthawk 117A, F15 Strike Eagle III, A10 Warthog, Red Baron and RB 3D. Falcon 3.0 (my favourite of all time and what I consider my first true flight sim and my first HOTAS setup with the first Thrustmaster Warthog system in the wooden box), The Janes series - IDF? Tried Falcon 4.0 but it was riddled with flaws at the time and I dropped it in disappointment. Pretty much stayed out of flight sims after that as I always seemed to be behind in the hardware. That and first person shooters came along . My jump back in was Rise of Flight and I was blown away by how far war sims had come. I'm back baby!! Can't fight for beans but I'm back!

[Avimimus]

Swotl, then Red Baron I, then Eurofighter 2000... and Janes' ATF/Fighters Anthology & IAF - those were the formative ones I remember most strongly.

 

I did have A-10 Warthog from Dynamix as well. But none of the others really stuck. Red Baron II/3d has some nice features but also lost a lot of the features I liked in the original. It took me a long time to track down Aces Over Europe/Aces Of The Pacific, similarly I missed TFX. I couldn't really get that far into Falcon 4.0 or Flanker.

 

I suppose the exception would be Innerloop's JSF - that left an impression on me. After that it was Il-2 and Flaming Cliffs/DCS (although it is a bit lacking in AI assets and modelling of countermeasures). I did enjoy SFP1 but not WOE/WOV as much... partly because the default planesets prevented me from really simulating a third world conflict (which was fun with mods in SFP1).

[KG100_Brannon]

Started out with CFS 1 and 2 before discovering IL2 Sturmovik.

[Majpalmer]

My first flight sim was "Jet," Sublogic, 1985. I played it on my first PC. a Leading Edge, which was from Korea. 

[messsucher]

I count Blue Max as the first combat flying game, no matter how arcade it was. Just required some imagination to be immersed ?

 

 

Their Finest Hour was the first "real" simulator, at that time definitely considered as an flight simulator. Still remember the glorious take-off feeling. I developed winning tactics for Bf 110, just do tight horizontal circle all the time and quickly snipe anything coming to range. You could rack effortlessly kills as much as you  had ammo, which 110 had the most.