Introduction
The year 1980, birth of a legend
In most publications about the
history of Flight Simulator you will find 1979 as the year of its first
release. Even the manual for version 2 (A2-FS2, issued in 1983 by
subLOGIC) states: "his (Bruce Artwick's) first FS1 program for the Apple
II was released in 1979". However, after a thorough search in
cooperation with Marc-André Handfield from Canada, we could only draw the
conclusion that the first release of A2-FS1
actually must have taken place in January 1980 and not in 1979!
We also know that FS1 for the
Apple II (A2-FS1) came first and that the (rather more crude) version
for the TRS-80 (T80-FS1) was released subsequently in March 1980, as
printed in the manual. Moreover the manually explicitly states that
T80-FS1 is an improved version of A2-FS1. We might of course be
wrong when subLOGIC used similar marketing strategies as Microsoft did
with the last few versions, like releasing FS2000 in October 1999 etc. But
for FS1 we decided to stay with the printed evidence.
So, at
least until further proof otherwise, I will for now take the year 1980 for the birth
year of Flight Simulator. If
you have evidence that we are wrong, please let us know (if possible with a copy of
the evidence). You can find my e-mail address on the
Contact page.
BTW: after
starting this website in 2001 I immediately started receiving many e-mails from
fellow flightsimmers who wanted to relive the old times, if possible
by trying them old versions hands-on. In order to fulfill their wishes
a companion website has been created by the name
The
Old Flight Simulator Vault.
This website provides downloads of many of the old FS versions, from FS1
(1980) to FS5 (1993), with matching emulators that run on your current day Pentium PC.
Instructions for installation and keyboard reference cards are available
too!!
Visit the
Old FS
Vault.
1980-2005: 25 years
of Flight Simulator
Whether it started in 1979 or
1980, it's fair to
speak of a Legend, when we talk about (Microsoft) Flight
Simulator. A legend that has been around since 25 years and
is reportedly the program in the public sector, of which the most copies are sold.
This website is dedicated to this legend and to its genius creator: Bruce
Artwick. But let's not forget the important role of subLOGIC and Microsoft as distributors.
This website
tried to describe the complete history of the development of Flight
Simulator and the special world that has sprung from it, starting 25 years ago with
the release of version A2-FS1 for the then popular Apple II, a few
months later followed
by a similar but graphically inferior version for the
Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80. Artwick's own firm subLOGIC not only did the the
development, but also the marketing and sales,
Microsoft wasn't yet in the picture until 1982, when the fist version for
the IBM PC was released! But first: how did it
look like in the old days? See below:
N.B. The animated
sequence above was made with the Apple version. This
animation is included to give an idea of how the first
version of Flight Simulator looked like in 1979/1980. It's not
a real video of the running simulation. It's just a
sequence of pictures, captured from the screen of an Apple
II emulator, running the second release of FS1 (with
"panel"). The actual frame rate is (was) much
better, in fact the Pentium used had to be slowed down a
factor of 1000 to be able to run the simulation at a
reasonable speed.
The early FS-1 world of 1980 is
6 x 6 squares "large" and flat, with paper thin
mountains as stage wings on one side. The airfield with
"hangar" is in one corner with one runway, another
airfield somewhere in the middle. The very first version already shows a
kind of panel with 2 round gauges for airspeed and altitude and a 3D
out-of-the window vies above. In fact the screen is a "bit" simpler, but not
really different from that of the current version.
 . Due to the poor graphical
resolution the TRS-80 version did not have the round gauges, but
just 2 rows with the essential flight- parameters in numbers.
For about a year I
searched the Internet, read FS-books and communicated by
e-mail with a lot of other FS-fans to unravel the fascinating
history of Flight Simulator. I met a lot of nice people, who
were very helpful with information, material and
encouragements. My thanks go to all of them; you can find their names
on the "Acknowledgements" page and where appropriate. My special
gratitude goes to Miguel Blaufuks, director of simFlight, who inspired me
to persevere and kindly offered to provide the necessary disk space and
bandwidth to house this website. Thank you all very much: without your
help and interest this would never have taken shape.
FS History posters and video
Poster-session
Although this website contains a lot of
pictures from the succeeding versions of FS, its main info is text.
To satisfy the more visually oriented people I offer you the
following videos. The first one is a sequence of posters from
the respective versions, showing information about the singular versions
in the form of a picture of the front of the box plus
two screenshots from the simulation. The poster-session was recently
renewed
for the Dutch FS Weekend in the Aviodrome on
April 16&17.
FS History videos
Then there are not one, but two new
videos about the Development of Flight Simulator. Both are the result of a
close cooperation between Josef Havlik (form the Czech Republic), Marcus
Thompson. (Milehigh
Productions, USA) and yours
truly. The original idea is by Marcus Thompson, the basic data were
derived (where else) from our own
The Old FS Vault and Josef Havlik created many special emulations
needed for creating the video clips of the separate versions. Marcus compiled the complete
movie and added the sound. To see or download Marcus's FS History movie:
For the above movie we tried
to keep the size as small as possible, at the cost of reducing the
resolution to 320x240. Not completely satisfied we decided to try to
create another movie without this constraint. In fact Josef
Havlik did most of the work. This version is still under development.
But the latest release can be downloaded from this website. It covers all
versions from FS1 for the Apple II (1980) to FS 9 aka FS 2004 (Century of
Flight, 2003). It includes some extra versions like FS II for the Atari
400/800, MSFS 2 for the Tandy PC, FS II for the Amiga and the peculiar FS
II for the MSX computer (with "torpedo attack"). Because of the higher resolution it has become a
very large file and will take some time when
downloaded over a slow line.
The other pages of this website
The other pages contain the
result of my quest in more detail. Most of the mist has been cleared
up, but I'm far from being finished yet. There are still a
lot of gaps to fill in and I need your help to do that. So
if you think you can help me with another piece of information,
a nice picture or a working copy of one of the earlier versions,
that is not yet covered, please don't
hesitate to contact me. And don't forget to come back to see
whether anything has been changed or added.
If you like my websites and think they're worth a link
on your own website, please use the following (transparent) logos with
their associated hyperlinks:
or
hyperlinks:
http://fshistory.simflight.com/
and
http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsvault/
Have fun,
Your webmaster: Jos Grupping, Overasselt, The Netherlands
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