A little personal Flight Sim history for you

[madsdad54]

-Started simming- Late 2000 with FS2000 Pro :mixedsmi:
-Discovered Flight Sim websites and the world of pay/freeware- early 2004 with FS9 :jump:
- First online flight-last week during RTW Race practice #3 :applause:
-First screenshots ever taken/posted- Yer lookin at em. (if I got it right) :redfire: Thanks to Milton and team as well as Cirrus for the subject matter.

[dcc]

all set for the race! glad you're on the team!

- dcc

[Gnoopey]

all set for the race! glad you're on the team!

- dcc

I'll second that one - glad to have ya :)

[JETninja]

A closet simmer till '04 huh? LOL! Newb! Joking! Welcome! Anyone that survived the sim called FS2K is Ok. (buggy thing it was too! I started with Fs98/CFS1)

[madsdad54]

Thanks guys. I'm looking forward to enjoying this hobby with others. Right now all I get are strange looks and yawns when I start talking about anything "flight sim". :sleep:

[fliger747]

I actually started out as a pilot in the early 70's.

After the advent of home computers in the mid 80's I tried out some of the early flight sims, when they were really just a wire frame of some instruments and a polygon for a runway. The first one that I found usefull was ATP something or another in the late 80's early 90's which I used for practicing flight drills when I checked out in the 737.

To be honest, most of the sims tended to be arcadish or just about unflyable. Not till the advant of USB did it seem that the flight control issues finallly became fully solved.

CFS2 was and remains a good sim, the first really modern one, one I still have and the one that was primarally responsable for my current interst in sims. CFC and then the Outhouse introduced me to the world of addon aircraft, and with the incredible works of many of the FS9 designers it has been all downhill.

As a professional pilot I use the sims a lot. Today I am going through many of the situations that I will see in the real 747-400 ($50 mil) sim in a few days. It also gives me a chance to check out approaches and layouts of field which I havent been to, or it has been a while.

Besides, I don't get to fly those warbirds much IRL.

[Col_GCO]

I started my simming with Fighter Ace 2.0 around 1999 (just after it came out). I flew in the free rooms and had tons of fun but then the Zone shut it down and was bought out by somebody. i went to cfs2 and started flying online about 2001. thats when i found the out-house and the world of MS addons. it was great until everybody quit the zone or just just plain :censored: all the time. i picked up fs2004 in the spring of 2004 ( i think thats right) and flew a lot then and never looked back......except the many times i've reinstalled cfs2 just to get some good combat in. :d

GCO

[madsdad54]

It's really interesting to hear how you guys got started. I always knew flight sim was there, but never was into computers enough to buy one and then get into flight sim. Once I got married and we bought a computer for internet and banking, I remembered always wanting flight sim and bought it. I was not as addicted in the beginning as I am now with knowing about add-ons.
Well, I am going to hijack my own thread and do some RTW race practice going through all the motions. I'll post in a few minutes when I decide a leg to fly.

[Henry]

started out with AOP and AOE
first ms sim fs95
and all the rest since
a wana be pilot:d
H

[madsdad54]

I have the baton (madsdad54 official practice model) SCFT-EGYP, P-38L

[PRB]

I've had several versions of MSFS in the past, but none of them kept my attention. I always wanted to go where the sim wouldn't let me! I didn't want to fly around Chicago or San Francisco forever, and the idea of buying addons in order to "addon" a couple of new places, well, my interest waned.

I was more interested in the combat sims anyway and played primarily with three of them. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, CFS2, and Jane's WWII Fighters. The last, Janes, was ahead of it's time, I tell you. VCs before there were VCs, and nice ones too, better than CFS2, that's for sure. And stunning scenery! Oh, and one more point about JWWF, it had wild animals, horses, foxes, etc, running across the snow covered ground -- something FS is announcing as "new" in FSX... :)

I skipped FS98, FS2000, and FS2002. When FS2004 came out I became interested again in FS. Was the entire planet available for FS2000 or FS2002? I don't know, but that was the selling point to me for FS2004. And it was pretty good resolution scenery at that! I was hooked.

And I messed with X-Plane for a while. I bought the Mars scenery. The whole planet! You can fly there in X-Planes!

- Paul


One more thing Janes WWII Fighters did better than FS9 does now: You know how, when you're flying in a real plane and you go through some couds? You get that sensation of incredible speed because the clouds flash past the window so fast? In FS you can't get that. The clouds fizzle away before you can get that close. Presumably it's a graphics engine issue. Well, JWWF did that beautifully! It was awesome! :)

[madsdad54]

WOW!, Sim crashed. This does not make me hopeful for the race. But I don't quit. I'll try again and this time, I won't take screenshots enroute which is where I had the trouble. I also don't think i'll take off from SCFT at night in the P-38.

[madsdad54]

2nd try, I have the baton KGVL (home) this time to KORL, P-38L

[madsdad54]

fl250
duenna green
ete1:00

[madsdad54]

ete 45 min
GS379

[madsdad54]

duenna dumped me. Pressing on and will try the FA route on arrival. We train like we fight....right?

[madsdad54]

ETE 30 Min
GS 369
194 NM out

[madsdad54]

ETE 15 min
GS 370
100 NM to go
Last post before landing

[madsdad54]

I don't know guys... If anyone is still following this thread and is interested, on descent to KORL, cut the otto to prepare for the approach and lost my D**n joystick control. Checked within the sim and seemed fine, confirmed otto was off. I then unplugged my joystick(worked before) and got a blue screen of death for pete's sake. Maybe my computer can't handle this... I still ain't giving up though. More self imposed practice to follow tomorrow.

[dcc]

stick with it! :d

- dcc

[Gnoopey]

snipped ... Was the entire planet available for FS2000 or FS2002? I don't know, but that was the selling point to me for FS2004. And it was pretty good resolution scenery at that! I was hooked.



Yes, the whole planet was always available in every flightsim version AFAIR. I'm sure about that for CFS2 (7.5), FS2002 (8) and FS2004 (9). It is not there in CFS3!

Myself I'd got FS3,4,5 - missed FS98 and FS2000 and also CFS - since CFS2, I'm back into it and got soon 'hooked' when I stumbled over avhistory.org and got involved there as an 'air file fiddler'.

I'd missed Jane's WW2F and EAW but had had the superb stuff from Lucasfilms 'Their Finest Hour' (TFH) and 'Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe' (SWOTL) as well as stuff like Microprose's Fleet Defender, Dynamix 'Red Baron', Spectrum Holobyte's 'Falcon AT', Origin's 'Strike Commander' and SCTACOPS as well as the whole set of their SciFi 'Wing Commander' series and also the LucasArts 'Tie Fighter' etc. in between after FS5 :)

[Milton Shupe]

I don't know guys... If anyone is still following this thread and is interested, on descent to KORL, cut the otto to prepare for the approach and lost my D**n joystick control. Checked within the sim and seemed fine, confirmed otto was off. I then unplugged my joystick(worked before) and got a blue screen of death for pete's sake. Maybe my computer can't handle this... I still ain't giving up though. More self imposed practice to follow tomorrow.

Go to the System/Device Manager/USB Cointrollers, then right click USB Hub and select Power Management. Uncheck "Allow Computer to turn off this device to save power". This may help.

If not, then ensure when you are on AP, that at least every 5 minutes or so, move the yoke/joystck/pedals to tell the USB you are still active.

[AussieMan]

I got started in Flight simming with Flight Simulator by SubLogic for the old Commodore 64. Then Flight Simulator II for the Commodore 64/Amiga 128. After that Sublogic was purchased by Micro$oft.

After updating to a 486 in 1994 I started with Flight Sim 5.0 and have all versions since then.

Pat :australia

[Willy]

I think the title on my first was "Hellcat Ace" by Microprose for the Commodore 64. Then GunShip back in the 80's.

I didn't mess with any kind of flight games again for about a decade. After I retired from the Navy and got a new computor as I had started college, I got in on a game beta test for Interplay and needed a joystick. Bought a cheap Logitech that came with a curious CD for some online game called "Warbirds".

That rekindled my interest from childhood on WWII aircraft, then I found out about the upcoming release of CFS 1. Bought it as soon as it hit the shelves, found the old CFC website and yall been stuck with me ever since.... :d

[fliger747]

Back to the Joystick issue:

Are you using a wireless? I have a SAITEK wireless that i use on the road, and after about five min it needs to be waken up. Usually if I press a button, such as trim or view it will wake up. Disconcerting to have it go to sleep on you!

T.

[Thomas English]

I really have injoyed reading all the posts with everyone saying how they got their start in FSims. I remember playing with a wire frame FS on a Tandy TRS 80 back in the mid 80's. We thought that was loads of fun. The next time I picked one up was in the early 90's I think it was MSFS 5.
I fooled around with Flight Unlimited, thought the ground sceanery was way more realistic. Then it was FS95, FS98, FS2000, and now FS2004.
Oh yea there was also CFS2 and 3. I almost forgot one of my all time favorite sims was Fighter Duel put out by Phillips Media back in my 486 days.It was the most realistic thing going in WWII sims in my opinion back then. A photo realistic intrument panel and the sounds where very good. I would like to get Fighter Duel working again for nostalga sake. last time I tried it did not work well on a newer PC.