Stealth Flight sims

F-117A Stealth Fighter has been referred to as "the mother of all sims" due to the many innovations it presented and the atmospheric way the sim is presented. It set standards of game-play which have probably never been exceeded.The sim was a major enhancement and re-release of F-19 (1988) by Sid Meier. F-117A runs very well on a 386 and is a "thinking person's sim" emphasising tactical thinking over reflexes.

F-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.

F22 Air Dominance Fighter by Digital Image Design was the most extensive attempt to recreate the modern air combat environment seen on a PC.

Total Air War (TAW) is an aptly-named product. More than a combat flight simulator, it offers a strategic component based on modern air warfare theories first applied in the 1991 Gulf War. In addition to a detailed simulation of the F-22 fighter, TAW simulates a near-future war in the Red Sea region (northeast Africa and Saudi Arabia). It does so many things so well, that the player could easily concentrate on any of several single aspects of the sim and still find a lot of depth and fun.