A brief history from my perspective pt II : 90's Moving to PC
Early home computer trends of 80's, like various models of Commodore, Amstrad and Sinclair, while having pretty decent graphical and audio abilities ofr their time, were still quite limited in memory, processing capability and speed. Therefore, fidelity and complexity of calculations for flight sims were very limited, to say the least. In combat flight sims, the combat was not between two coalitions, it was rather, between player, and enemy horde. Other battles happening elsewhere in the game world, friendly units doing their thing, ground untis actually behave like ground units etc. were beyond the scope that could be provided by such systems. There was no "game world" so to say, it was player, and what's happening around him. Terrain was rather bland, and mostly featureless. Sometimes even clouds only, as it was in Ace of Aces. By our day's definition, they lacked almost everything to be a combat simulator. They were still amazing, since they allowed some complexity and semblance of realism, the view through a cockpit, and ability to engage in dogfights and some degree of ground attacks, but were limited to that.
Early on, IBM PC system was more of a work oriented system. People who wanted a computer for entertainment and / or creativity would usually go for Amiga, Atari or Apple Macintosh instead. These latter systems had much better graphics and sound capabilities. Indeed, even Commodore 64 had some more "colorful" graphics, and somewhat nicer sounds so to say. Nevertheless, popular and pioneering flight sim titles that have seen release on other system, did get PC ports too. Yet, with EGA graphics of super low resolution and a color palette of about 16 different color posibilities, they didn't quite shine. Nor did they thunder or roar with "beep" saying PC speaker or early low fidelity sound cards (which weren't exactly cheap anyway). While the Macintosh systems had better capabilities than IBM PC in regards to graphics, it traditionally seemed not to be the gaming system ever, presumably due to it's price, which is limiting accesibility.
On the other hand, PC systems were already getting up some momentum with raw processing power and speed. And by the early 90's, they even had some decent sound graphics capabilities. Indeed from the end of 80's on, some really nice game titles started to appear on PC platform. Some non-textured 3D games started to pop up, and simulations without a doubt were among the genres which would benefit most from a 3D world. During this time, F-29 Retaliator was released. It was done by Digital Image Design, which would later be one of the big simulation houses of gaming market. It had 3D graphics with very few colors and no textures, was very simplistic and not necessarily realistic, but was so fun, even people who had no interest in sims could get hooked on. Although I did not had access to a computer and was a child when it was released, almost a decade later it was a popular passtime in my high school years in second half of 90's, where I was in computer programming branch. Although the game was ancient by then, some of the computers in schools lab weren't exactly top notch either, so we would secretly play it at school in 386, 486 and Pentium systems :).
During mid to late 90's, personal computers of IBM PC architecture got a sudden rise in both capability and availability. From their earlier standing as office machines, they made a leap into becoming the mainstream system for both homes and work, entertainment, multimedia, creativity and design and what not. They were all now well within PC repertoire.
With improved processing and memory capabilities and great speed at these, simulations quickly reaped the benefits : obvious eye candy visual improvements aside, we now had a war going on beside us, units from both sides firing guns, cannons, rockets, missiles and whatever else on each other, besides us. Terrain was now looking a bit more like proper terrain. There now were mountains, valleys etc, behind which we could hide from eyes, radars, missiles, or rather could crash into them... If they were good enough, they could give rise to a new kind of flight simuation pastime : low altitude, valley runs.
With increased abilities of computers, the gap between two schools of simulations widened. Some preferred to utilize increased computing capability to deliver better visuals and audio, others opted for utilizing it for more complex real time calculation of battlefield events, giving a more authentic, realistic experience, while usually having to forgo the visual part. Raw power that contemporary computers could provide were perhaps still short of being able to deliver both at the same time. Various titles by Novalogic and also the long running Jet Fighter series could be examples for fast, action packed, visually attractive types of sim that captured even lay person with only passing interest in aviation, providing lots of entertainment while lacking in depth and realism. On the other side of the coin, there were titles like F/A-18 Korea and Hind, which lacked sorely on visuals and sounds, yet were among the most complex and realistic available. Hind was also able to do something special : it could fly online with a different title, similar title from same developer : Apache Longbow. I have always dreamed that sims could be combined and flown in a multiplayer environment together. Novalogic could do a similar thing between it's F-22 Lightning 3, F-16 Multirole Figher and MiG-29 titles. This was to be fully realised only nowadays by DCS and, perhaps to some degree Falcon. Both F/A-18 and Hind modeled almost every weapon the aircraft could carry, and had pretty good flight physics modeling for their time. Falcon series by Microprose though, always had a special place, trying to combine both visual and realistic experience to the best in the realm of possibility. Finally towards the end of '98, Falcon 4.0 was released and was the cutting edge in both realism and graphics. Though, it was a very protracted development, and release was riddled by many bugs. Still, it proved to be so phenomenal a sim, it is still relevant in today's simming world with community developed versions. Falcon itself would be a story that could only be covered in multiple articles, to do it due justice. Late 90's saw other prominent sim houses releasing titles that made different combinations of survey and study elements. EF-2000 and later F-22 Air Dominance Fighter / Total Air War titles had 3d virtual cockpits with functional MFDs and avionics, very large maps with deep and tall terrain features, many types of both aerial, naval and ground threats and targets, in a living war environment. Sinlge player missions on F-22 Air Dominance Fighter required player to take off, fly for literally hours, if succeeded in mission goal than fly back and successfully land at a certain airbase. They would sometimes take 4-5 hours to complete. Another unique feature of that franchise were the AWACS missions, where player would command allied flights on a gods-eye map view, tasking them to escort allied assets or engage enemy air / ground units, and at any given time, player could jump into cockpit of any allied F-22. This unique strategic aspect captured me for countless hours back then!
A relatively unknown title, which never the less is one of my favorites, would be Joint Strike Fighter by Innerloop. While not quite a study sim, especially avionics wise, it had many strengths. Virtual cockpit, clickable MFDs, large and good looking terra firma with topography, shading and cities, flight model and landings that feel more authentic and demanding than most titles of era and perhaps most importantly dynamic campaigns. While textures were somewhere between low-res but nice and totally bland single color, 3D models themselves were pretty damn good and detailed. You lose too many pilots or aircraft, you lose the campaign, you miss too many important primary objectives, and may get overrun, you shoot down enemy AWACS, you're rid of it for next missions, you knock a SAM site out, good riddance for next missions. You chose the flight plan, therefore the target, and also the loadout yourself.
Then, there was the Jane's brand by Electronic Arts. They pumped out many sim titles pretty quick, and they were both of survey and study variety. They had ATF, USNF, USAF, Israeli Air Force series and Fighters Anthology on the multi aircraft side, while they also had Longbow, Longbow 2, F-15 and F/A-18E Super Hornet on the single aircraft, serious study side. Although I have missed most of Jane's titles, I was still aware that they have been an important part of simulation scene. Especially F/A-18 still had some active squadrons until very recently, and perhaps it still has. Still, with many other big names, Jane's brand faded into obscurity by aerly 2000s.
On civilian general aviation flight sims front, Microsoft Flight Simulator was always the most popular title, but had a few competition from titles like Flight Unlimited. Flight models and terrain were still mostly rudimentary, but systems modeling tended to be somewhat above most of contemporary combat flight sims.
Long in short, 90's were the times flight sims moved predominantly to DOS / Windows PC platform and it was a time when they were both abundant and colorful. And there have been many titles going for hardcore realism, as well as ones that go more for easy going, more accessible experience.
Titles like Longbow, F/A-18 and Falcon, have drawn the lines for community's expectations for ever more realistic titles.
Early on, IBM PC system was more of a work oriented system. People who wanted a computer for entertainment and / or creativity would usually go for Amiga, Atari or Apple Macintosh instead. These latter systems had much better graphics and sound capabilities. Indeed, even Commodore 64 had some more "colorful" graphics, and somewhat nicer sounds so to say. Nevertheless, popular and pioneering flight sim titles that have seen release on other system, did get PC ports too. Yet, with EGA graphics of super low resolution and a color palette of about 16 different color posibilities, they didn't quite shine. Nor did they thunder or roar with "beep" saying PC speaker or early low fidelity sound cards (which weren't exactly cheap anyway). While the Macintosh systems had better capabilities than IBM PC in regards to graphics, it traditionally seemed not to be the gaming system ever, presumably due to it's price, which is limiting accesibility.
On the other hand, PC systems were already getting up some momentum with raw processing power and speed. And by the early 90's, they even had some decent sound graphics capabilities. Indeed from the end of 80's on, some really nice game titles started to appear on PC platform. Some non-textured 3D games started to pop up, and simulations without a doubt were among the genres which would benefit most from a 3D world. During this time, F-29 Retaliator was released. It was done by Digital Image Design, which would later be one of the big simulation houses of gaming market. It had 3D graphics with very few colors and no textures, was very simplistic and not necessarily realistic, but was so fun, even people who had no interest in sims could get hooked on. Although I did not had access to a computer and was a child when it was released, almost a decade later it was a popular passtime in my high school years in second half of 90's, where I was in computer programming branch. Although the game was ancient by then, some of the computers in schools lab weren't exactly top notch either, so we would secretly play it at school in 386, 486 and Pentium systems :).
During mid to late 90's, personal computers of IBM PC architecture got a sudden rise in both capability and availability. From their earlier standing as office machines, they made a leap into becoming the mainstream system for both homes and work, entertainment, multimedia, creativity and design and what not. They were all now well within PC repertoire.
With improved processing and memory capabilities and great speed at these, simulations quickly reaped the benefits : obvious eye candy visual improvements aside, we now had a war going on beside us, units from both sides firing guns, cannons, rockets, missiles and whatever else on each other, besides us. Terrain was now looking a bit more like proper terrain. There now were mountains, valleys etc, behind which we could hide from eyes, radars, missiles, or rather could crash into them... If they were good enough, they could give rise to a new kind of flight simuation pastime : low altitude, valley runs.
With increased abilities of computers, the gap between two schools of simulations widened. Some preferred to utilize increased computing capability to deliver better visuals and audio, others opted for utilizing it for more complex real time calculation of battlefield events, giving a more authentic, realistic experience, while usually having to forgo the visual part. Raw power that contemporary computers could provide were perhaps still short of being able to deliver both at the same time. Various titles by Novalogic and also the long running Jet Fighter series could be examples for fast, action packed, visually attractive types of sim that captured even lay person with only passing interest in aviation, providing lots of entertainment while lacking in depth and realism. On the other side of the coin, there were titles like F/A-18 Korea and Hind, which lacked sorely on visuals and sounds, yet were among the most complex and realistic available. Hind was also able to do something special : it could fly online with a different title, similar title from same developer : Apache Longbow. I have always dreamed that sims could be combined and flown in a multiplayer environment together. Novalogic could do a similar thing between it's F-22 Lightning 3, F-16 Multirole Figher and MiG-29 titles. This was to be fully realised only nowadays by DCS and, perhaps to some degree Falcon. Both F/A-18 and Hind modeled almost every weapon the aircraft could carry, and had pretty good flight physics modeling for their time. Falcon series by Microprose though, always had a special place, trying to combine both visual and realistic experience to the best in the realm of possibility. Finally towards the end of '98, Falcon 4.0 was released and was the cutting edge in both realism and graphics. Though, it was a very protracted development, and release was riddled by many bugs. Still, it proved to be so phenomenal a sim, it is still relevant in today's simming world with community developed versions. Falcon itself would be a story that could only be covered in multiple articles, to do it due justice. Late 90's saw other prominent sim houses releasing titles that made different combinations of survey and study elements. EF-2000 and later F-22 Air Dominance Fighter / Total Air War titles had 3d virtual cockpits with functional MFDs and avionics, very large maps with deep and tall terrain features, many types of both aerial, naval and ground threats and targets, in a living war environment. Sinlge player missions on F-22 Air Dominance Fighter required player to take off, fly for literally hours, if succeeded in mission goal than fly back and successfully land at a certain airbase. They would sometimes take 4-5 hours to complete. Another unique feature of that franchise were the AWACS missions, where player would command allied flights on a gods-eye map view, tasking them to escort allied assets or engage enemy air / ground units, and at any given time, player could jump into cockpit of any allied F-22. This unique strategic aspect captured me for countless hours back then!
A relatively unknown title, which never the less is one of my favorites, would be Joint Strike Fighter by Innerloop. While not quite a study sim, especially avionics wise, it had many strengths. Virtual cockpit, clickable MFDs, large and good looking terra firma with topography, shading and cities, flight model and landings that feel more authentic and demanding than most titles of era and perhaps most importantly dynamic campaigns. While textures were somewhere between low-res but nice and totally bland single color, 3D models themselves were pretty damn good and detailed. You lose too many pilots or aircraft, you lose the campaign, you miss too many important primary objectives, and may get overrun, you shoot down enemy AWACS, you're rid of it for next missions, you knock a SAM site out, good riddance for next missions. You chose the flight plan, therefore the target, and also the loadout yourself.
Then, there was the Jane's brand by Electronic Arts. They pumped out many sim titles pretty quick, and they were both of survey and study variety. They had ATF, USNF, USAF, Israeli Air Force series and Fighters Anthology on the multi aircraft side, while they also had Longbow, Longbow 2, F-15 and F/A-18E Super Hornet on the single aircraft, serious study side. Although I have missed most of Jane's titles, I was still aware that they have been an important part of simulation scene. Especially F/A-18 still had some active squadrons until very recently, and perhaps it still has. Still, with many other big names, Jane's brand faded into obscurity by aerly 2000s.
On civilian general aviation flight sims front, Microsoft Flight Simulator was always the most popular title, but had a few competition from titles like Flight Unlimited. Flight models and terrain were still mostly rudimentary, but systems modeling tended to be somewhat above most of contemporary combat flight sims.
Long in short, 90's were the times flight sims moved predominantly to DOS / Windows PC platform and it was a time when they were both abundant and colorful. And there have been many titles going for hardcore realism, as well as ones that go more for easy going, more accessible experience.
Titles like Longbow, F/A-18 and Falcon, have drawn the lines for community's expectations for ever more realistic titles.
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