Civil Flight Simulations in the 1980’s and before

AboutReleased in 1987, this sim must have been one of the first to support head to head play via a modem. For it's time it looked outstanding with 3 dimensional polygon choppers and scenery.

About 747 was a civil flight sim created for the Atom computer, running in 12K of RAM ( !!!) in 1981. To give you an idea, 12k is about the size of a small web page these days. Or a few pages of text.

AboutAcro Jet was released in 1985 on the Sinclair Spectrum, Commodore Amiga and PC.

AboutA multiplayer flight simulator board game from 1965.

AboutAviator was developed by Geoff Crammond, creator of the 'Grand Prix' games, Stunt Car Racer, and Sentinel, for the BBC MicroComputer in 1983.

AboutFlight Instruction, Formation flying, Aerobatics, Pylon racing, this sim had it all! Despite the clunky looking graphics by today's standards, Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer was an ambitious attempt to teach the basics of flight on a personal computer. Edward Lerner developed and programmed it to showcase 14 different flyable aircraft. This exhibit contains AUDIO content.

AboutFlight Simulator 1 was one of the first flight sims released for personal computers. A whole generation of flight sim fans were hooked for life on the wire frame graphics and the "dogfighting" in the Sopwith Camel. The graphical splendour rested mainly in the mind of the player - but it was a beginning! This was my very first exposure to flying on a personal computer and I was hooked!

AboutMichael Woodley reported: "At the time, there were three 6502 versions of FSII. There was one for the Apple II, one for the Commodore 64 and one for the Atari 800. When the the Atari ST and Amiga were introduced (which ran the Motorolla 68000 processor), new versions were released for those machines, for the Tandy and for the MacIntosh through Microsoft. The versions of FSII for the 6502 processor DID have solid filled graphics not just wireframe."

AboutIFR was a flight sim released on the Commodore 64 in 1983 "I think you could say it turned a liability into a virtue when it called itself an IFR simulator, since it had no out the window graphics at all! It's about as IFR as you can get. It's been a long time since I flew it but I still recall it was a rather strange experience. You followed yourself on a grid, and controlled your position by taking different headings. The idea was to fly at different altitudes, slip through narrow openings, make 90 degree turns to snake your way through, and land at different "airports" (which were just locations on the grid) by landing completely blind, with descent rate at touchdown determining whether it was a landing or a crash." - Ed Brooks.

AboutThe first talking ATC in a sim? Jim Bailey, Yellow Springs, Ohio wrote and published a sim for CP/M back in 1987 called "Instrument Flight". "There was also an interpreter which you could create your own scripts for to provide ATC guidance. Not a canned script, but rather the ability to request vectors on the fly and get an intercept to the localizer or request the full approach on your own. It hollered at you if you were off your altitude!"

About"This is where it all started, looking at three dials and flying at night on a crummy TV!!!" - Julian Sallows.

About"... we hunched around an old IRIS 2400 Turbo playing this amazing flight simulator game from Silicon Graphics, Inc.". Modern personal computers in the 90's (were) now as powerful as graphics workstations of the 80's."

About"One of the earliest sims, SoloFlight hails from the days when the Commodore Amiga reigned king of the graphics world! The most famous thing about it was the speech synthesis, in the form of flight control guiding you through the flying, telling you to pull up your flaps, etc. and taking you through your landing routine."

AboutType in a flight sim from a magazine article? Yes, that was computer flight simulation in the early 1980s.