MiGMan's Flight Sim Museum

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Frazer
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MiGMan's Flight Sim Museum

Post by Frazer » Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:32 pm

Last night I was looking for the old flight simulators I flew in my younger years and I found this interesting website.

The Flight Simulator Museum, all flight sims since 1980:
http://www.migman.com/1980_combat.htm

:D :idea: :D :idea: :D

It was so cool to see my first flight simulator I have ever flown, Strike Commander......it had a great story line and you had to fly missions for money.......AWESOME!
http://www.migman.com/ref/1990_combat/S ... ikeCom.htm
Anyone else who flew this sim?

Here are some youtube movies of Strike Commander:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... rch=Search

What sims did you fly?
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Tailhook
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Re: Flight Simulation Museum

Post by Tailhook » Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:55 pm

Frazer wrote:What sims did you fly?
First game I've played was F-14 Tomcat Alley on SegaCD. :D

Janes was the greatest after that. :)
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Post by Rhino » Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:03 pm

I remember playing "Jump Jet" and "Gun Ship" on our old 386 with the big a$$ floppy disks.

I also remember playing "Top Gun" when it was on the original Nintendo (NES).

I then remember playing the LucasArts sims (Battle of Britain, Thunderhawks 1942 which was a WW2 naval sim, and then Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe)

I also remember playing "Flight of the Intruder". From then it was the Janes Fighter Anthology series starting with Janes Navy Fighters.

Thanks for posting that Frazer, really brings back some memories!
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Lawndart
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Post by Lawndart » Thu Jan 24, 2008 4:15 pm

My dad had Flight Simulator 1 (!) and 2, but the first one that I really remember falling in love with was Falcon... the original!!! Around the same time, I also remember getting Flight Simulator 3 which was my first real venture to becoming a real life civilian pilot; although, Falcon was the best game ever! At the time, back in a day when most people hardly had home computers, my dad had a network at home (he worked as a network administrator/software developer - still does in fact) and me and my best friend flew 1-on-1's as early as 1987, on four color CGA graphics in the original Falcon. That's also my first exposure to formation flying! Despite the way the graphics appear by today's standards, I still think it looks awesome and at the time, even having a "color" monitor was considered unusual! That game changed my life... literally! I honestly don't know if I would have pursued my dreams if it hadn't been for that summer day back in 1987 when me and my dad went to "Egghead" (a computer store at the time) and we found a copy of Falcon, of course not knowing what its legacy would be decades later... (I still have the game in its original box exactly as seen below at home - even the stickers on the box are the same). :D

If I have to pick a few to comment on, here goes:

This is the first real memory I have of falling in love with any computer game!!! The year was 1987 and we flew formation and dogfights on my dad's LAN (very unusual at the time). I was ten years old when, to my mom's great despair, I became a computer addict at the ripe age of ten! (By 80's standards almost unheard of). :P
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A year later, I also remember this game distinctly. Mostly for its purple box and the manual(s) you used to get back in the early days. Each box would weigh a minimum of 5 lbs... That kind of "bathroom reading" is definitely hard to come by nowadays! ...I wish it wasn't. Btw, this fictional F-19 jet looks an awful lot like the jets in the movie "Stealth" doesn't it!
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Having owned every Falcon title ever released - when Falcon 3.0 first came out in 1991 it raised the bar far beyond anything seen before... and of course the manuals and training was second to none too. Spent at least a week in the bathroom for this one alone! I still have every add-on and book in their original boxes for the Falcon 3.0 series. While the game is outdated, the manuals are still kick-@ss! ;)
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A bonus with Falcon 3.0; anyone remember this book? I still have it stashed away somewhere at my mom's place. Very good book on ACM, BFM and energy management without being too hard to digest. Heck, I was learning this as a 13-year old at the time and thought nothing of it. :)
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We found MigMan's Flight Simulator Museum site a while back and have a link posted somewhere in the private forums. What impresses me (and scares me at the same time) is that I have either owned and/or played about half of all the titles listed dating back to the mid 80's. There are so many fond memories of games and their manuals I can't count them! Talk about a nostalgia trip here!!!

Simply awesome! :D


P.S. For fans of Microsoft Flight Simulator check this out: Flight Simulator History: Download the FS History video (120 Mb)

Brings back many memories... :cry: :cry: :D
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Ells
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Post by Ells » Thu Jan 24, 2008 4:41 pm

Wow, great find there Frazer.

My very first flight sim was FS1, a guy at work had it and brought it in and I got hooked from there. Man those graphics were awesome back then lol
Of course this was just when color monitors came in after being used to green and amber ones (showing my age now lol).

My list going back to what I can remember:
FS1, 2, 3, and up and up to FSX
US Navy Fighters (had the F22 and I fell in love)
F22 ADF
F22:L3 (my old squad, the Thrillseekers)
I then got into BF2 and always flew in that, then BF2142
Then Lomac
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Post by Lawndart » Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:07 pm

Ells wrote:Of course this was just when color monitors came in after being used to green and amber ones.
Second that! The first portable "notebook" we had (that's before they were even called notebooks) used an amber screen. Btw, compared to the new Macbook Air this beast was easily about twenty times as thick and weighed around 20 lbs if not more... definitely earning its name: "PORTABLE!" :lol:

We also used to have a Panasonic with a 9" (!) green CRT monitor in a suitcase-type case (pictured below). I believe it was called "luggable". Literally - it really was a piece of luggage... the kind you'd put on the floor too. It even had a handle on it to carry this notebook predecessor as a bag; however, you'd probably get back problems if you ever tired! :wink:

Here's a picture of it!
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Lots more Computer nostalgia to be found at: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/


@Frazer, I remember playing Strike Commander too and that intro was "the bomb" at the time. The graphics, when it first was released were Crysis-like by today's standards. I never grew to like the game too much, but I do remember how great it looked and that intro was rockstar! 8)
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Post by Lawndart » Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:21 pm

Don't mean to go too far OT here (from Flight Sim history), but since we're taking a trip down memory lane - anyone remember any of these computers!!? :D

Man, this brings back some memories... you had to break out the ol' tape player to fire up the games up and if it failed after 5 minutes of squealing loading noise, you'd simply start over and patiently wait again! A virtue lost by today's "ADHD kids"! :P
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I don't think I know many people from my generation who hasn't owned or at least played on one of these over at their friends house while their parents were frantically trying to get you to come home for dinner! (The 80's equivalent of the modern "xBox/PS-babysitter"). :lol:
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Post by Frazer » Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:40 pm

Lets say 20 years.....and graphics will look better than reality :lol:
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Post by Tailhook » Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:55 pm

Frazer wrote:Lets say 20 years.....and graphics will look better than reality :lol:
true dat. :D 8)

My room will look like the simulators at NAS Patuxent. w00t :roll: :lol:
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Post by Metro » Fri Jan 25, 2008 12:59 am

ok guys, you are making me feel really old :( .
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Post by Cobra » Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:08 am

I can beat you all...

1985 on my Dads Apple II playing this little beauty..

http://www.migman.com/ref/1980_combat/F15_1/F15_1.htm

Microproses first flight sim- Strike Eagle One

53k of code! Lol

Lawndart you roll of flight sims closely follows my own. Microprose did damn good software for it's time. I spent many happy hours on my IBM XT clone playing F-19 and Falcon's One through Three. But that first one I will never forget.
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Post by Ells » Fri Jan 25, 2008 4:20 am

Yep, I remember those LD, they should have put wheels on that thing lol

Well I had a Commodore Vic-20 (the one before the 64) and I had a ZX Spectrum, in fact I think my first flight sim was on that called Aces or something, can't remember now.

I used to build PC's and the first processor I ever put in a PC was an Intel 8086, then a 186, 286, 386, 486, pentium, PII, PIII then I left.
I think AMD processors really starting coming into our shop around the Intel 386 mark (must have been about 1993'ish)

So for Ops Sys, for me it was:
DOS 3.0, 3.1, 4.1, 5 (and I seem to remember there was a 6 floating about, but most people had gone to Windows 3.11 by then)
Then Windows 386 runtime (came with MS Word)
Windows 3.0, 3.11, NT, 98, ME, 2000, XP and now Vista

Ah the good old days of no blue screens lol
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Post by Luse » Fri Jan 25, 2008 6:50 am

First For me, was F-22 i couldn't get past the training, but i loved every minute of the crashes, then the little scene where the doctors are working on you... good times
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Post by necigrad » Fri Jan 25, 2008 12:05 pm

http://www.migman.com/ref/1980_civil/FSI/TRS80.htm

That was the first one I played. I played it on the IBM PC 5150 though. It was the first game we bought after upgrading from the TRS80. And I've gotta say, transfering 1000's of lines of BASICA code sucks.
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