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Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of amateur flight simulator programs for Microsoft Windows operating systems, and earlier for MS-DOS and Classic Mac OS. It is one of the longest-running, best-known, and most comprehensive home flight simulator programs on the market. It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented. At 39 years old, it is the longest-running software product line for Microsoft, predating Windows by three years. Microsoft Flight Simulator is one of the longest-running PC video game series of all time.
Microsoft Train Simulator is a 2001 train simulator for Microsoft Windows, released in May 31, 2001 and developed by UK-based Kuju Entertainment. It sold one million units worldwide by 2005.
A train simulator is a computer based simulation of rail transport operations. They are generally large complicated software packages modeling a 3D virtual reality world implemented both as commercial trainers, and consumer computer game software with 'play modes' which lets the user interact by stepping inside the virtual world. Because of the near view modeling, often at speed, train simulator software is generally far more complicated and difficult software to write and implement than flight simulator programs.
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.
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.
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.
A-10 Attack! is a combat flight simulation video game for the Apple Macintosh computer released by Parsoft Interactive in 1995. The game features an A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft that takes part in a variety of missions in West Germany during a hypothetical limited conventional attack by the Warsaw Pact. A-10 boasted one of the most detailed flight models of any game of its era, a physics model that extended to solid-body interactions with the ground and complete aerodynamics for every object in the game, including ordnance. Macworld rated it "Best Flight Simulator" in a review of Mac simulations.
Inside Mac Games (IMG) started in 1993 as an electronic magazine about Apple Macintosh computer gaming distributed by floppy disk, eventually becoming 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.
UNIGINE is a proprietary cross-platform game engine developed by UNIGINE Company, used in simulators, virtual reality systems, serious games and visualization. UNIGINE can support large open worlds including entire planets. It has an advanced 3D renderer that supports OpenGL 4 and DirectX 11. UNIGINE SDK releases an update every three to four months.
Microsoft Flight Simulator X 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.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight is a flight simulation video game released in 2003, and is part of the Microsoft Flight Simulator video game series. It is the last version to support Windows 98/9x series of operating systems.
Sector3 Studios is a Swedish video game developer and publisher founded in 2003 that develops racing simulators for Windows PC. The company has its headquarters in Lidköping. The company originally started as a modding team for the Image Space Incorporated game F1 2002, releasing a mod based on the 2002 season of the FIA GT championship, essentially the precursor to its first commercial game.
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 flight simulator computer 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.
Asobo Studio SAS is a French video game developer based in Bordeaux and founded in 2002. The studio is most known for developing video game adaptations of several Pixar movies, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and the 2020 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Amateur flight simulation 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 amateur use. A popular type of amateur flight simulators 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.
Owlchemy Labs is a video game developer based in Austin, Texas. The company was founded in 2010 by Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduate Alex Schwartz. Owlchemy is best known for its virtual reality video games Job Simulator and Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality. In May 2017, the studio was acquired by Google.
Microsoft Flight Simulator is an amateur flight simulator developed by Asobo Studio and published by Xbox Game Studios. It is an entry in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series which began in 1982, and was preceded by Microsoft Flight Simulator X in 2006. The game is a return of the series after a 14-year absence, with development beginning six years prior to its release. It was released on August 18, 2020, for Microsoft Windows, with a virtual reality (VR) version released in December of the same year—the first in the series to see a VR release. It is also the first game in the series to have a console release, with it being released on the Xbox Series X and Series S on July 27, 2021.
References
- "ParSoft Interactive launches new flight simulator", Business Wire, 2 August 1996
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