Merry Christmas to you and yours everyone!

This talk about Ice and the FA/18 this time of year, reminds me of Christmas 1999 while we were all anticipating the Jane's F/A18 release and pretty merry on the forums. To thicken the similarities...Matt Wagner was on the team for Jane's FA/18.
Here's a post of mine of an AAR on Combatsim playing F-15 while waiting for the F/A18 release...Wags posted a response. His reply was a couple posts down so I chopped the image:






So many options back then! A good time to be a flight simmer at Christmas time!

Happy Birthday cichlidfan! :

Thanks Force10.

We have come a long way, and I can only imagine where we will be when I turn 70 (eleven years from now).

I remember fondly Jane's F/A-18E - you are right, combat flight sims were a lot of fun back then !

it was because of F/A-18E that I found SimHQ - to fix a Windows XP bug that disabled the F/A-18 cockpit views.

.... and now I am eagerly waiting for VRS to make their F/A-18E (and hopefully soon to be released F/A-18F) compatible with P3D v4 ... almost 20 years later

Have a very merry Christmas everybody and a I hope all your wishes and hopes for the new year are fulfilled. Happy simming and a happy life to all

It is ... but you nearly have to buy it again full price: https://forums.vrsimulations.com/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=18502

100$ Bundle
-33$ Discount
+16$ extension for 1 year (Hornet + TacPack)
= 83$

Or if I have to purchase the Hornet and TacPack separately as my previous V3 buy was:

110$
-36$
+16$
= 90$

I agree that it is a bit expensive - understandable since it is their only source of income.

Oh boy... Jane's F/A-18.... my first serious sim. I loved doing carrier traps and how the tower would tell you off if you strayed from your assigned position in the stack....

However, I could not imagine gaming on 3-5 CRT monitors with 2-inch wide bezels

same for me - I learned a lot from flying it.

it was a lot of fun

Jane's F/A-18E, F-15E and Longbow 2 are some of my top memories in computer flight simulation.

Me too - It was also because of Jane's F/A-18 that I found SimHQ.

In my case it was because I didn't know where to find the laser spot painted by the ground based JTAC (Joint Terminal Air Controllers) on some CAS missions which was another awesome feature that this sim (Jane's F/A-18) also had (and has).

Someone here kindly pointed me that this was a (very) small 'x' symbol that shows on the HUD (which my eyes had failed to catch) if the HUD is pointed into the laser's pointer general direction and since then I never really left SimHQ

And by the way, Merry Christmas to you all

Jane's WWII was also a lot of fun - between 1995 and 2000 must have been the golden age of flight sims.

Spot on there Tom

How many do you think will say NOW is the golden age of flight sime in about 10-15 years' time??

Since I can only speak for myself, all I can say is:
- NOT me, that's for sure!

I don't know....I don't think that things are all that bad. It's not such an awful time to be involved in flight simming. For all the b&*%ing about DCS, they do make some nice stuff. They've priced me out of it, though. And the IL2 Stormovic series is doing well and it's very good. I just broke down and finally purchased BOS during the Christmas sale. Picked up a couple of collector planes, too. And 1C is updating Rise of Flight with the IL-2 engine. Should be good. And Cliffs of Dover is being kept up to date by the Fusion team and they're building a North Africa add on. Looking forward to that. And the BMS crowd at Falcon 4.0. Don't know how they are doing that with such an old sim.
If you like civilian flight sims, XPlanes 11 looks pretty damn good. I just can't get involved with something like that again. Put too much time and money in to FSX. But it does look great. And what's the other one, P3D? And I like what I saw with that bush pilot sim that's under construction. Keeping my eye on that.
People tend to look back on these old flight simulators like they do with their youth. Everything is recalled as being wonderful. We forget how it sucked not having money, when you couldn't get a date, had a hard time finding a job...etc. We dreamed of flight sims that look the way they do now. And now some are saying that Pacific Air War with it's pixels for airplanes was the best ever. Yeah, I'll take Il-2, thanks. I'm not into retro gaming.

The problem is, it's JUST ed making modern combat sims at their level, and 777 working the WWII side (DCS WWII is still basically an expensive tech demo). Combat Air Patrol 2 is doing OK, but feels like a watered down Strike fighters right now. Gone are the Janes series, Combat Flight Simulator, Nova logic offerings, and the strike fighters series. Everything else is mods and updates to older platforms without new theaters or officially content.


Civilian sims I'll grant you, but even then back in "the day" we had Flight SImulator, X-plane, and Fly!

And yet, we still have ridiculous platform fracturing. It's face-palmingly frustrating that ED's reputation scared away VRS from bringing their outstanding Super Bug to the platform that needs it the most right now, instead having to all but break a civilian sim to find a place to build it. And even then you're left to deal with a decade old engine and a mod (FSX at war) if you want to use it in a semblance of a campaign. I don't count the 25 different variations of FSX currently on the market as their own platforms, either (Sorry P3D)

In the "golden age" you never had to go back to decade old software to fly a 5th gen fighter over the gulf, a B-17 over Nazi Germany, or even a Sabre over Korea. Expect a rich historic campaign and/or an engaging dynamic campaign on top of all that.

Keep in mind, these were the efforts of top publishers in industry: EA, Micropose, Microsoft, were behind all these titles.

Right now we're left with a bunch of fractured, misguided, poorly coordinated platforms with poorly planned and incomplete content, largely reflective of the development houses making them.

This isn't a "golden age", it's the era of flight sim life-support.

Well, I didn't get to participate in that so THIS is the golden age for me. Even if I were able to fly back then, I doubt gaming on 3x 15" CRT monitors is the same as flying on 3x 27" LCDs with touchscreen support and TrackIR I would agree there was more variety then (Jane's), but was there anything back then with the same fidelity as DCS A10C or Falcon BMS as it stands today? I feel that if you compared Falcon 4.0 at it's peak and Falcon BMS now, you can see a big difference between the two sims. Fully-clickable 3D cockpit for one.... no need for switching between 2D pit for cockpit work and 3D pit for SA!!

So while you probably had more choices back then (and printed manuals!!), I would say you have more fidelity and immersion now. Am I wrong?

I had a 14' CRT then a Sony 17' for many years - and it was awesome and flight sims looked realistic and gorgeous and I was mightily happy with them - that is what made those years the golden age of flight sims.

Civilian flight sims have been on a roll since 2004 with no end in sight - it keeps getting better and better and now with 64bits it finally can expand into military flight sims.

VRS did not feel that a DCS license was in their interest since in FSX-P3D world they are their own boss and can do whatever they want at the pace they feel that they can be confortable with, I admit I lost track of DCS progress, but who knows ? they might one day decide that there is also a market for them in it.

I would say flight sims are in good shape in the WWII/WWI and civil aspects. With civil there are two platforms and a third being developed. IL-2 BoS seems to be doing fairly well. Modern it gets a bit more iffy, as there is just DCS and Falcon. I think enough people will find some enjoyment in at least one of those platforms though.

The survey sim is in the worst state, because outside of Flaming Cliffs there really is nothing. Even regular flight shooters are practically dead. Ace Combat 7 is coming out soon, but the last proper entry came out over a decade ago. Even HAWK 2 is about 6 years old. In the late 90s to early 2000s there were numerous entries for both of these genres, with Jane's covering the survey sims and lots of Japanese developers putting out flight shooters on the console.

I'm looking into Combat Air Patrol 2, but it seems like development is fairly slow on that? I'd like to support them but I don't want to put money into an indie project that will never see the light of day as a proper release. I've done that a few times with poor results...

Oh, nothing against CRTs at all... IIRC, I had a 19" 'flat' CRT My issue was more for multi-monitor gaming and the CRT's 2-inch bezels so around 4 inches total!! Ugh!