SubscribeSince the dawn of PC gaming, flight sims have pushed the envelope, defining many fundamentals we now accept as core to the entire spectrum of gaming. Above any other genre, they have always demanded the fastest hardware. Reproducing the complex dynamics of flight and replicating sophisticated avionics is a huge design challenge even for NASA and aerospace companies. That a convincing sim can exist on PC hardware today is a wonder, but words can’t describe what a miracle it was on a 8Mhz 286 in 1982. Flight sims rock because we love the taste of knowing something is the very best it can be.
Graphics were crude and focused where it mattered. We needed crisp displays to show detailed instruments. Rendering the first 3D worlds with horizon-spanning draw distances was limited to a few perspective lines. Indeed, the jump to SVGA in the late 90s was a momentous step for flight sims, not so much because the terrain looked better, but because the avionics were more detailed and readable. Flight simmers look down more than up.
Hand in hand with the early technology wins, flight sims helped define the culture and meaning of what it is to be a PC gamer. A good sim’s complexity demanded weeks to master, dozens or even hundreds of keys to remember, 300 page manuals, and with all that, a sense held by the virtual pilot that they really were more sophisticated, more serious, more skilled than a mushroom hopping console gamer. We played sims because, forgive me for stating the obvious — they were simulations of things we could never do in our real lives. One felt that one really could fly, say, a real F-16, as long as it had a 101 keyboard in the cockpit… This was serious stuff, for serious gamers.