Military Flight Simulations in the 1980’s and before

AboutThis sim may look primitive today , but bear in mind the the CPU speeds in 1989 were 8MHz, computers had 640k of RAM and there was no dedicated video hardware. To put it in perspective, a standard PC only 10 years later ran at 3,000 MHz with 1,000,000 k of RAM and a video card that is probably more powerful than the host PC!.

AboutOne of the first sims with air to air refueling. "One of the first sims with air to air refueling. I remember being in afterburner which ate up fuel at an enormous rate. The tanks were little pyramids that shot dots at you as you tried to strafe them." Rob Henderson reported: "A.C.E. Air Combat Emulator by Cascade on the Spectrum 128k. Was a multi-role combat aircraft called the A.W.A.T. (All Weather All Terrain) Combat Aircraft. This could be played as a 2 player sim, with a pilot and weapons systems officer."

AboutSequel to the very popular ACE and one of the first to feature head-to-head multiplayer. "There was no take-off or landing, you just needed to overfly your base and you got re-armed etc. I do remember it getting quite slow at times - especially if alot of missiles were in flight! It was good as a two player, but not a patch on the original."

AboutSimulation of the De Havilland Mosquito fighter-bomber.

AboutThe PC port of this game didn't look as good as the arcade machines, but bear in mind that these were the days of 386 25 Mhz processors and 2 MEG RAM! Although this was definitely an arcade game rather than a sim, it is worth a mention because it had a pretty good moving cockpit in the arcades and probably got many people interested the flight sim genre. Anyway the fact remains that if you tell someone that you're into Flight Simulators there is a pretty good chance they'll say "Oh, yeah, you mean like: Afterburner!". It is an iconic game.

AboutA scrolling game from the 1970's.

AboutAir Strike USA was published by Digital Integration and released on on the PC in 1985. Really an arcade game rather than a flight simulator it is mainly of interest because the Publisher / Design Team Digital Integration went on to produce some of the finest PC Flight Sims ever to grace screens worldwide. From humble origins grew one of the giants in air combat sim development.

AboutOne of the earliest and most addictive real time strategy games, it also had a flight simulation element. A classic sim in it's time which integrated many of the elements of addictive gameplay.

AboutAllowed you to fly the Westland Lynx in a ground Attack role and may have been the first sim to feature 3D terrain with rolling hills?

AboutTotal content. One mission. But an important one.

AboutDelta Wing by Creative Sparks was released in 1984 for the Sinclair Spectrum. It included a special two player version that you play with two Spectrums, two interfaces and two TVs.

AboutThe original code for this flight sim weighs in at a hefty 53 K. That is NOT a misprint, not 53Mb or 53 Gb. To put it in perspective, that is the size of an email. This was one of the first sims published by Microprose and launched many a lif-long fascination with flight and flight simulation.

AboutIn 1989 F-15 Strike Eagle II had one of the richest and most interactive sim environments ever seen.The world was full of activity from enemy fighters and ships. Who can forget "Director Mode", which let you sit back and watch as the sim followed the action. Pour a cup of coffee, grab a donut and watch the action unfold!

AboutThe simple graphics of this sim belie the amount of information it presented to the pilot in real time, a milestone achievement for flight sims of the era. I first played it in the 1980's on an Atari ST. I used to fly on instruments most of the time and play with the comprehensive information available on the 3 Multi-Function Displays. It was the first flight sim with a dynamic battlefield.

AboutAn obscure sim, this was Gilman Louie's Falcon project before the 'original' Falcon.

AboutF-19 Stealth Fighter was the first version of the wildly successful release "F-117A Stealth Fighter". The smoothly profiled aircraft you can see on the box was based on aerospace industry observer's best guesses about what the mysterious 'Stealth Fighter' actually looked like. Bear in mind that the F-117 was flying in secrecy for about 10 years before the general public got a look at it! Quite a remarkable achievement. The Atari version had digitised sounds, I distinctly remember the "click" of the recon camera. The manual was probably the largest and most informative we had ever seen for a flight sim. Playing this sim on my Atari ST prompted me to get back into scale modelling, so I went out and bought a 1/72 scale F-117 model, which although more accurate in general shape than the F-19 guesses, still wasn't quite right, being too short and stubby.

AboutReleased in 1988 by Electronic Arts, F/A-18 Interceptor was written by Bob Dinnerman who founded the enormously successful Jetfighter series.

AboutFalcon was created for the Atari ST, IBM PC and Commodore Amiga and Apple Mac by Gilman Louie's Spectrum Holobyte team in 1987. In Falcon you piloted the F-16A Falcon on 12 preset missions. Falcon was my initiation into hard-core simming and like many others, I've only looked back since to check six.

AboutFighter Pilot was the first combat flight simulation from the British developer Digital Integration. The game earned the distinction of being the first attempt at simulating the undoubtedly complex F-15 Eagle interceptor. Not a very impressive attempt by today’s standards, but in 1983 the coding was fairly complex and the result quite respectable. There were a number of successive versions created for several platforms over a period of a few years, which makes it harder to determine the release date of the original, but it was probably in 1983. - MiGMan thanks Marc Pajak for the overview.

About"This is a real-time flight and landing simulator for a small plane similar to a Cessna. You're approaching the air strip, and must use your instruments and the view from your cockpit to land safely. You control pitch (angle with the ground), yaw (angle about the plane's vertical axis), and power with your joystick. You may choose flying conditions and decide whether or not to use your instruments. Overall, this is an excellent and convincing simulation." - Synopsis courtesy of Digital Antic Project.

AboutIn Gunship there were no external views available, just a cockpit with a bedazzling array of engine sensors and weapons displays. Engine start left, Engine start right then drop the clutch to start the rotors spinning. Collective up and the rotor blades bite savagely into the air. With a leap and whoops, you're airborne! 1987 had never been more exciting!

About"The enemy aircraft are single-color players, which change size and shape with their distance and orientation. It can be difficult to determine the enemy's intentions at long range due to the lack of color and definition of the enemy aircraft. It can also be difficult to tell that the enemy is firing at you until it is too late."

AboutThe program was entirely written in Spectrum's BASIC.

About"Interdictor marked the studios first release in 1989 and is credited as the first flight simulator to be released for the Acorn Archimedes. Interdictor put you at the controls of a fighter plane heading towards enemy lines, your mission was to push the enemy away from their location by taking over its airfields one by one and eventually destroying their headquarters. Beyond rewarding the player for their mastery of the flight controls, strategic elements were included involving details like demolishing bridges to prevent supply trucks from crossing and keeping an eye out for ships moving up-river with supplies to repair them. The depth of the game was unparalleled at the time and was critically acclaimed for being ‘as near to the real thing as you could get’. British publication The Micro User stated ‘The realism is stunning’." - from guildford.games/developers/simis

AboutMichael Woodley developed the scenery for Flight Simulator II. He recalls: "The game 'Jet' was developed by Charles Guy using Bruce Artwick's technology. He adapted it for the IBM-PC. I don't recall any version of it for any other platform but that was years ago so it may have slipped my memory. It had the interesting feature of being able to run Scenery Disks developed for Flight Simulator." My readers found several cross-platform editions, check out the exhibit for more info.

AboutFirst in a long line of popular combat flight sims on the PC.

AboutHarrier sim from 1987.

About"lthough the graphics were wire frame and there were practically no ground graphics, the attention to detail, complexity, flight modelling and combat were unbelievable. I think the programmer had been a Lightning pilot."

AboutNight Raider was released by Acme Software in 1988 (Europe). The same year it was imported and released to the US by Epyx as Dive Bomber.

AboutMiGMan thanks Francisco J. Campos for the screenshots.

About"Skychase was a simple dogfight simulator where you flew against a computer or another human player using a split screen, like Topgun."

AboutArcade shooter with a fictional Jet Fighter shooting alien spaceships and tanks. Notable for it's cockpit viewpoint and that it ran smoothly on an Apple ][. In 1985 this represented a high watermark on a home computer or console. The glory days! Can they ever return?

AboutSuper Huey II added extra missions to 1985’s "Super Huey". Renegade, Brush Fire, Gulf of Terror, Arctic Rescue and Oil Blaze.

AboutTheir Finest Hour : Battle of Britain was developed by Lawrence Holland for LucasArts in 1989. George Lucas had been a fan of World War 2 movies since childhood, and the famous dogfight scenes in Star Wars were directly inspired by these films, even down to the gun turret in the Millenium Falcon which was based on the B-17 Flying Fortress.

About"Thunderchopper was available for the PC and Apple II. I've played both. Thunderchopper can actually load Flight Simulator scenery disks! It's also one of the first chopper sims that had rescue scenarios (well, maybe except Super Huey Helicopter Simulator.)" - Kuo-Sheng "Kasey" Chang.

AboutTomahawk was released in 1985 and was one of the earliest attempts to model an Apache Gunship on a personal computer.

AboutFeatured a Split Screen, 2 player mode.