Comanche is a series of simulation games published by NovaLogic, later THQ Nordic after their acquisition. The goal of each of these games is to fly military missions in a RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopter, which was in development and prototyping at the time of release.
Flight Unlimited is a 1995 aerobatic flight simulator video game developed and published by LookingGlass Technologies. It allows players to pilot reproductions of real-world aircraft and to perform aerobatic maneuvers. They may fly freely, race through floating rings against a timer or take lessons from a virtual flight instructor. The instructor teaches basic and advanced techniques, ranging from rudder turns to maneuvers such as the tailslide, Lomcovák and Immelmann turn.
Flight Unlimited II is a 1997 flight simulator video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Eidos Interactive. The player controls one of five planes in the airspace of the San Francisco Bay Area, which is shared with up to 600 artificially intelligent aircraft directed by real-time air traffic control. The game eschews the aerobatics focus of its predecessor, Flight Unlimited, in favor of general civilian aviation. As such, new physics code and an engine were developed, the former because the programmer of Flight Unlimited's computational fluid dynamics system, Seamus Blackley, had left the company.
Chuck Yeager's Air Combat is a 1991 combat flight simulation video game by Electronic Arts. Chuck Yeager was a technical consultant in the game and his digitized voice is featured in the game, giving encouragement and praise before and after missions. The game is characterized for its balance of an action laden gameplay which focuses on classical dog fights and a simple yet realistic flight model.
Combat flight simulators are vehicle simulation games, amateur flight simulation computer programs used to simulate military aircraft and their operations. These are distinct from dedicated flight simulators used for professional pilot and military flight training which consist of realistic physical recreations of the actual aircraft cockpit, often with a full-motion platform.
Star Wars: X-Wing is a space simulation video game, the first of the X-Wing combat flight simulation games series. The player's character flies starfighters, including the X-wing, for the Rebel Alliance. The narrative precedes and parallels the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
Flight Unlimited III is a 1999 flight simulator video game developed by Looking Glass Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It allows players to pilot simulations of real-world commercial and civilian aircraft in and around Seattle, Washington. Players can fly freely or engage in "Challenge" missions, such as thwarting a theft or locating Bigfoot. The development team built on the general aviation gameplay of Flight Unlimited II, with more detailed physics and terrain, more planes, and a real-time weather system. Roughly half of Flight Unlimited II's team returned to work on the sequel, supported by new hires.
A-10 Cuba! is a flight simulator computer game developed by Parsoft Interactive and published by Activision in 1996 for Windows and Mac. The game was a sequel to the Mac-exclusive A-10 Attack!. A third game in the series, titled A-10 Gulf!, was slated for release in 1997, but later cancelled.
Inside Mac Games (IMG) started in 1993 as an electronic magazine about video games for the Mac. It was distributed on floppy disk, then CD-ROM, and eventually became a website.
Microsoft Flight Simulator began as a set of articles on computer graphics, written by Bruce Artwick throughout 1976, about flight simulation using 3-D graphics. When the editor of the magazine told Artwick that subscribers were interested in purchasing such a program, Artwick founded Sublogic Corporation to commercialize his ideas. At first the new company sold flight simulators through mail order, but that changed in January 1979 with the release of Flight Simulator (FS) for the Apple II. They soon followed this up with versions for other systems and from there it evolved into a long-running series of computer flight simulators.
Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) is a 2006 flight simulation video game originally developed by Aces Game Studio and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Microsoft Windows. It is the sequel to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 and the tenth installment of the Microsoft Flight Simulator series, which was first released in 1982. It is built on an upgraded graphics rendering engine, showcasing DirectX 10 features in Windows Vista and was marketed by Microsoft as the most important technological milestone in the series at the time. FSX is the first version in the series to be released on DVD media.
Jane's Attack Squadron is a 2002 combat flight simulator developed by Looking Glass Studios and Mad Doc Software and published by Xicat Interactive. Based on World War II, the game allows players to pilot fifteen reproductions of that era's military aircraft and to carry out missions for the Axis or Allies. Although it contains dogfights, the game focuses largely on air-to-ground combat, hence the title.
Fighter Squadron: The Screamin' Demons over Europe (SDOE) is a World War II themed combat flight simulator released for Windows 95/98 in March 1999. The game was developed by Parsoft Interactive and released by Activision, following their successful partnership on A-10 Cuba! of 1996. The game featured nine flyable aircraft and three theatres with multiple missions for each combination, as well as network play with up to sixteen players.
Hellcats over the Pacific is a combat flight simulation game for the Macintosh computer. It was written by Parsoft Interactive and released by Graphic Simulations in 1991. Hellcats was a major release for the Mac platform, one of the first 3D games to be able to drive a 640 x 480 x 8-bit display at reasonable frame rates in an era when the PC clone's VGA at 320 x 240 x 4-bit was the standard. The graphics engine was combined with a simple Mac interface, a set of randomized missions, and a number of technical features that greatly enhanced the game's playability and made it a lasting favorite into the mid-1990s. The original game was followed with a missions disk in 1992, Hellcats: Missions at Leyte Gulf, which greatly increased the visual detail and added many more objects to the game.
Parsoft Interactive, or simply Parsoft, was a computer game company known for their series of technically advanced combat flight simulators. The name comes from Eric Parker, founder and chief developer. Their first release was Hellcats Over the Pacific on the Apple Macintosh in 1991, which they followed in 1992 with Missions at Leyte Gulf, an expansion pack. In 1995 they released A-10 Attack! to critical acclaim on the Mac, following that up with A-10 Cuba in 1996. Partnering with Activision, A-10 Cuba was also released as a stand-alone game for Microsoft Windows, and this partnership led to the Windows-only 1999 release of Fighter Squadron: The Screamin' Demons Over Europe (SDoE). The pressure of the SDoE release led to the programmers going their separate ways, and by 2002 the company was dissolved.
In video games, first-person is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character, or from the inside of a device or vehicle controlled by the player character. It is one of two perspectives used in the vast majority of video games, with the other being third-person, the graphical perspective from outside of any character ; some games such as interactive fiction do not belong to either format.
Microsoft Flight Simulator, commonly known as Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.0 or FS5, is a flight simulator video game. It was released in late 1993 for the MS-DOS. A port for PC-98 was released in 1994. It was the last game in the series for DOS and the last game to appear on a non-Microsoft platform. An updated version, 5.1, was released in 1995. In November 1995, Microsoft acquired the Bruce Artwick Organization (BAO) from Bruce Artwick. Employees were moved to Redmond, Washington, and development of the series continued in-house at Microsoft.
A flight simulation video game refers to the simulation of various aspects of flight or the flight environment for purposes other than flight training or aircraft development. A significant community of simulation enthusiasts is supported by several commercial software packages, as well as commercial and homebuilt hardware. Open-source software that is used by the aerospace industry like FlightGear, whose flight dynamics engine (JSBSim) is used in a 2015 NASA benchmark to judge new simulation code to space industry standards, is also available for private use. A popular type of flight simulators video games are combat flight simulators, which simulate combat air operations from the pilot and crew's point of view. Combat flight simulation titles are more numerous than civilian flight simulators due to variety of subject matter available and market demand.
Graphsim Entertainment was founded in 1991 as Graphic Simulations Corp. to develop and publish simulation games. Graphsim's first product was Hellcats Over the Pacific for the Macintosh. It was released in 1991 and developed by Parsoft Interactive.
Hellcat Ace is a 1982 combat flight simulator video game written by Sid Meier for Atari 8-bit computers and published by MicroProse as their first program. The game was an immediate hit and led Meier to write several new releases for the Atari home computers. Ports of Hellcat Ace were released for the Commodore 64 in 1983 and IBM PC compatibles in 1984.
