Retro Flight sim thread
 

I'm not trying to organise things, honestly.

But if we could get some retro flight sim stuff together, that would be fine.

I'll start ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3XMm...eature=related

DOS F117A strategy guide.
 

Excellent stuff, well presented.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l76Jw...eature=related

Immediately we see , folk today have nothing to worry about when they complain about frame rates ... even back then it was a slide show.

I remember the good old days, when we had 'I remember the good old days' threads like this: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=21295 ;)

Does this mean I have to dig 'Fighter Pilot', and the Amstrad CPC 464 out again?
http://i958.photobucket.com/albums/a...k/IMG_0796.jpg

Yup - still got it, and it still works (or it did, a few months back). :grin:

More pics here: http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpos...8&postcount=44

Never forget European Air War.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eu1p-...eature=related

really old skool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY5mDKmS_xk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rndsUKy2Cs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhwmwewHqrs

I still have the Boxes for the Aces series, I will never throw them away.

I still remember the 6128 ;)

What abt this one on Comodore Amiga 500/1000 (at that time 500kB of ram was an expensive extension ! I still might hve my trusty Amiga somewhere :grin:

http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/...s_of_prey.html

Or TFX, the Father of EF2000 / F22 from DiD

http://www.classicamiga.com/content/view/3383/191/

This is where it all started for me. Was so immersive at the time!!! Ah, the ZX 81 ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvY4roVg7YQ

PPP

Oh my God!

That was my first flightsim ever! The F15 Fighter pilot on a Sinclair Spectrum ZX48 !!!!

28years ago!!!!

Nice one!

~S~

Gunship

ZX Spectrum :)

http://www.oldgames.sk/images/oldgam...unship-004.gif

Microsoft CFS1 was my first sim...couldn't run 2 or 3 on my PC. Haven't got it installed anymore but it was a boyhood dream come true for me when I installed it and bought my first flightstick. I was hooked then and still am!

TFX was my introduction to combat flight sims, and I thought that the graphics and realism were truly awesome. It also ran brilliantly on my i486DX2 with 12MB RAM and a 2MB S3 Virge. The next one that blew me away was Jane’s USAF, and I was bitterly disappointed when I could no longer run it after upgrading to XP.

Darn - I've been beaten! Only flight sim in this thread I haven't played! A friend had a ZX 81 before I got my ZX Spectrum 16k (later upgraded to 48k), don't remember he had any flight sims though...

Mmm, that screenie can't be from a Spectrum though? (too many colors)... Must be a C64 - or rather an Amiga?

I hope all you other nostalgic's here have tried dosbox?

http://www.dosbox.com/

Then a number of sites have all those old favorites as "abandonware" like:

http://www.abandonia.com/games/154/AcesOverEurope.htm

Played Aces over Europe not that long ago - worked fine with my Logitech G940 in dosbox!

And there are of course good Spectrum/C64 emulators for those that have not kept their old ones like me. Most games are available in .bin files (still have my fighter pilot cassette tape - but nothing to play it ;)). There are also wav-files with the old games that I tried, connect the real Spectrum with a cable to your modern PC and press play in media player instead of the real cassette player... Works like a charm and no tuning of the cassette head :)

A quick 1 minute guide to get you running the DOS classic "Aces over Europe" (works fine on my system in the sig). Darn that dynamix "Aces" suite was good stuff!

1. Go to http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1 and download the "Windows" executable (Win32 installer) at the top of the page
2. Install Dosbox
3. Go to http://www.abandonia.com/games/154/AcesOverEurope.htm and click the red "get it" image (two times). You will get "Aces over Europe.zip"
4. I recommend making a directory called "DOS" in the root of your favorite drive, D: in my case
4. Unpack "Aces over Europe.zip" to D:\DOS, rename the directory to "AOE" (Dos don't like long names)
5. Start Dosbox and write:
> mount c d:\dos
> c:
> cd aoe
> aoe
6. Click CTRL+F12 to increase CPU cycles to around 6000 (makes your old emulated dos machine a bit faster ;)) To decrease, use CTRL+F11
7. Happy hunting!

P.S I recommend putting the mount command in the dosbox conf file (acts like autoexec.bat ;))

DosBox is really neat (and works quite well as well)
There are still AOE & AOTP mods available... xP

This was where it was at..


http://youtu.be/7kEOubCNe4o

Ahh, we played that many nights on LAN in the basement of the university campus. Co-op raids with 8 guys assaulting Star Destroyers in A-wings and Y-wings :)

Oh my God, I remember this awesome, awesome sim. That one really felt like a sim. The manual was as far as I recall over 350 pages long and I always felt it only scrached the surface.

What did the manual say about the Tornado? A smart plane for dumb bombs, it was great fun lofting bombs at a target, breaking away and escaping sams at mach 1.2 at treetop level :grin:

Plus, didn't this one have a fully dynamic campaign?

Chuck Yeager's Air combat
 

I remember spending hours on this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnUtoh-u4gA

EAW wasn't too bad, but I was off it in a month.

I found MSFT CFS2 and was caught in that web for several years. I began to move to IL2 after about a year of CFS2.

The IL2 was awesome in comparison, but the CFS2 had the best mission builder of any air combat sim... even today it is the best. When the COD begins to release more information on scripting in the FMB the COD might be better.

Yet, with scripting I doubt it will be simple enough for most users. If the devs built a good GUI for it with presets that would make a huge difference. That way most people could use it well enough, and the experts could have their way as well.

Wow, never knew there where mods for AoE! And lots of them! Finally something to do when waiting for the release patch ;)

/mazex

don't forget about the old Jane's stuff!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFg-EZ19_Z8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ANDYe0pnX0

I used to play this as a kid:

[youtube]Qchb6A07QsU[/youtube]

Never played flying games again until Wings of Prey, some 4 months back, wich made me play IL 1946 and now CloD.

European Airwar
 

Yay Microprose! They used to be boxed with 3.5 inch AND 5.25 inch floppies!
AND A DECENT PRINTED MANUAL!:grin:

Wave Off
 

I remember that Aces of the Pacific had a Deck Officer who monitored your approach to the carrier and signalled too high too low go around etc. It was a good idea. I still play IL-2 '46 and thought that this was a good idea gone missing. I still have my old games.

Heavy Bombers
 

The 4-engined British and American heavies are definitely what are missing from the current sims. It seems that a B24 is on the way for IL-2 '46, (if nothing goes wrong). I sure hope Cliffs of Dover has an intended development cycle which will include them. Without the bombers, the strategic aspect of the air war is entirely absent. A bit disappointing, in my opinion.

The sims I spent most hours on:

Microprose Gunship ZX Spectrum (no Spectrum footage this is from Commodore 64 version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eThVlWL_Gw

Microprose F19 Stealth Fighter on ZX Spectrum and later the Commodore Amiga (again no Spectrum footage, this is from Amiga version I think)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFmKDSmG5wk

I bought an Amiga some years later and became hooked on Falcon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO7kMwR8pmA

I bought a PC and bought Falcon for that and spent a lot of time in DI's Tornado, loved the terrain following computer and the laser guided bombing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzpd4lbfOo0

Also played a lot of A10 Cuba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2v2Lqqcqmc

EF2000 really grabbed my attention though and played this solidly single player and multiplayer using a null modem cable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj9CpmTZUqg

That took me up to games like Falcon 4.0, Su27 Flanker, Flanker 2, Lock On etc etc. There were plenty of other great sims like Knights of the Sky from Microprose, Activision's 'Bomber' on the ZX Spectrum, F18 Interceptor, F22 but those video's above are from the games that really stand out for me as I spent so much time playing them. When I think back to some of my first sims like Microprose Gunship with its wire frame hills and basic flight control and compare it to something like IL-2 or DCS:A10 Warthog with my TrackIR and HOTAS its amazing how far we've come. I remember reading an article when I had my Spectrum that showed a military spec simulator used by the US Airforce and its solid textured wireframes and higher poly count and thinking how far asway it was from what I was playing and now we have self shading cockpits and dynamic lighting lol.

There used to be a BBS service in the UK called the 'Head2Head BBS' or H2H which ran regular ladder competitions for Falcon 3.0 and its add-ons. I used to spend hours reading the AAR's :)

And nobody posts SWotL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eosVhMLr1A

These amongst others gave me hours of fun on PC (can't remember anything from sinclair ZX80/81, amiga or c64).
But nowadays they mostly remind me of how old I am.

I can't remember having colours in this one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27szyA9mZ8Q

cursed a lot in this one at some obstacles :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrimsHqRlfY

I am sure that for many it's hard to believe that Falcon 3 was just followed by Falcon 4, the one that we see today :grin:

Perso I never really appreciated A10 Warthog and quickly jumped to EF2000 as soon as it was released.

Funny F3 Vid : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebSVSuaKWuM

Regarding Flight Simulator I never liked this sim as early as the 1st episode: too much complicated info for such basic FM. If I rember well you could land nose down a 172 without prob !