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A History of Military Flight Simulations on the PC
by Len "Viking 1" Hjalmarson The Early Years... cont. In 1985 Steven Jobs was fired from his job as CEO of Apple Computers. The Strike Eagle line was born in the same year when F-15 Strike Eagle I was released by Microprose in a port for the PC. The code was a whopping 53K. In spite of the slim code and 16 color graphics, the marketing machine was beginning to work overtime. Ads for Strike Eagle appeared in the major gaming journals, reading much like they do today: "Power on the afterburners and feel the g forces slam against your seat in this sophisticated simulation of the F15 Strike Eagle. From the realistic electronic cockpit, you can drop M-82 bombs on a Libyan oil refinery or fire air-to-air missiles at a Syrian fighter. Other games may have some of the action, but only F15 Strike Eagle captures the true-to-life experience of today’s combat jet pilot. " Whew. |
This article is copyright ThrustMaster and Leonard Hjalmarson. It may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without permission. In 1986 A.C.E. (Air Combat Emulator) was published by Cascade Games, billed as "the Ultimate Jet Combat Simulator." In reality the simulations up to this point were point and shoot type affairs. It was difficult to develop any sense of situational awareness, and sometimes even difficult to tell when you hit something. Damage models were almost non-existent, and avionics and weapon systems really weren’t simulated at all. Physics and flight, however, were concerns, and the challenge was to create anything remotely recognizable as a flight model in a few kilobytes of code. The average PC at this time ran at 12 MHz and had 64-128k of total memory. Email MiGMan with your experiences or any information related to this sim. |
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The contents of this website are copyright © 1998 - 2007 by MiGMan |
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