Downloads ???
When I published the first version of
my Flight Simulator History website in October 2001, my mailbox
got flooded by a stream of nice replies. Many people wrote me
about their nostalgic feelings, about reliving old times, how they used
the multiplayer function to fly together in FS-clubs, squadrons and
virtual airlines and about the amazing developments that have taken place
in FS over time, while at the same time still feeling the old roots
connection.
Many credits went to Bruce Artwick and
his team of developers that throughout the years moved from subLOGIC to
BAO to Microsoft, but were able to create ever better versions while
maintaining backwards compatibility. With the reactions came a lot of
requests, of which the most frequent were: (3) when will you update your
central story and (2) when will you add the missing pages, but the most
frequent question asked was: (1) when do you open a download page.
As it seemed, many old flightsimmers
would love the opportunity to play once more with that old version they
started with and again experience that old feeling. While many young
simmers wanted to see the old stuff for themselves and try it hands-on.
There were however a few problems to be solved before I could start to
create a download service. To name a few: the availability of the versions
and suitable emulators, the necessary instruction material to get it up
and running, the amount of webserver space needed for the downloads and
last but not least the copyright issue.
Yes, this is the download site:
"The
Old Flight Simulator Vault",
available but still under construction. For more information
read below.
In the past few years I, with the help
of many people and some auctions on eBay and Amazon, have been able to
gather a quite complete set of all versions of FS that have ever been
released, either by subLOGIC or by Microsoft. The next hurdle was that
neither I nor you are in the possession any more of the original target
computers for which the versions were written. So I had to find suitable
programs to emulate the respective target machines on our modern day high-
end Pentiums running under Windows XP that don't even run plain MS-DOS
programs correctly any more.
With the help of some of my FS friends,
notably Hubert Born, Josef Havlik, Franc Brvar,
Matthew Wu, Sergio di Fusco, Dave Rovagnati, Marc-André Handfield, Brian Fillery
and others, I have been able to create
working environments for almost all versions, based on emulators. Recent
developments in some of these emulators, notably MESS and DOSbox have even
made it possible to reduce the number of different emulators. And from the
manuals of the emulators and the FS versions I have created documents that
guide you through installation and handling the old version. It's not all
polished yet and also not completely finished because there are still
developments with the emulators. But there are now working sets available
for most versions.
With respect to the copyright issue I
have tried to get in contact with Microsoft, that obtained all rights from
Bruce Artwick when they took over in 1996. Assuming that no reply may be
understood as "no objection", I have decided to continue on my path and
prepare the downloads. In order not to mix up things, they are housed on a
separate companion site, called
"The Old Flight
Simulator Vault". And finally Miguel Blaufuks once more came to
the rescue and offered the necessary disk space and download capacity on
the simFlight servers.
As I told you above it is not complete
yet, but in general you will find all versions from FS1 for the Apple II
(1979) to the last pure MS-DOS version FS 5.0a (1993). I suppose
they don't have any commercial value any more nowadays. Please be correct
and use these for your own individual use. I hope you understand
that I am not in the position to give any more support than the already
created additional documentation. I do appreciate however if you would
report problems with broken links, exceptional download times etc.
Be my guest at
"The Old Flight
Simulator Vault" and have fun!
Jos
Grupping |
