It all started quite some time ago. Jeez, it’s going on 30 years now and I was there; I’ve been with Flight Simulator since the beginning.

“A dinosaur!” you may say…”Someone who remembers monitors before colour!”

Well, no on the first and yes on the second. My first acquaintance with Flight Simulator was on an Apple II Europlus which had a monochromatic (grey) monitor about the size of a matchbox. It had two floppy disc drives – remember them?! – and not the cutsey 3.5 inch jobbies; full-on, 5 inch floppy discs which needed a turntable to use them. (Remember vinyl records? You get my drift)

And FS didn’t really do a lot back then in 1981: you pushed a button or two, a few bits of wireframe scenery moved around a bit, a couple of needles moved up and down and you didn’t really know you were ‘flying’ until the big “CRASH” message appeared on the screen. You didn’t really fly it, it flew you ! 

And I was hooked!

And I have experienced every incarnation of Flight Simulator since then. Now, it has to be said, I didn’t actually own a copy of FS until version 5 and I didn’t own a computer (486DX/2 66mHz processor and about a thimbleful of RAM -  a high speed idiot in other words!) until version 5.1! But yeah, I’ve seen ‘em all; hell, I’ve ‘flown’ ‘em all!

I’m not going to bore you with the product history, move your mouse over to the right and find a history page on the blogroll; I was still zipping around in FS2000 until about a year ago until I decided to wedge some extra RAM into my laptop and head for the skies of FS 2004.

And for now…that’s where I’m staying.