Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulator programs for MS-DOS, Classic Mac OS and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented. As of November 2022, Microsoft Flight Simulator 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.
Orbiter is a space flight simulator program developed to simulate spaceflight using realistic Newtonian physics. The simulator was released on 27 November 2000; the latest edition, labeled "Orbiter 2016", was released on 30 August 2016, the first new version of the simulator since 2010. On 27 July 2021, Dr Schweiger announced to the Orbiter Community that Orbiter is being published under open source MIT license.
Active Worlds is an online virtual world, developed by ActiveWorlds Inc., a company based in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and launched on June 28, 1995. Users assign themselves a name, log into the Active Worlds universe, and explore 3D virtual worlds and environments that others have built. ActiveWorlds allows users to own worlds and universes, and develop custom 3D content. The browser has web browsing capabilities, as well as voice chat, and basic instant messaging features.
CryEngine is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. It has been used in all of their titles with the initial version being used in Far Cry, and continues to be updated to support new consoles and hardware for their games. It has also been used for many third-party games under Crytek's licensing scheme, including Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 and SNOW. Warhorse Studios uses a modified version of the engine for their medieval RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Ubisoft maintains an in-house, heavily modified version of CryEngine from the original Far Cry called the Dunia Engine, which is used in their later iterations of the Far Cry series.
Blockland is a sandbox game in which players build and play using Lego-like building blocks in singleplayer and multiplayer. It was created by American developer Eric "Badspot" Hartman, using the Torque Game Engine, and was originally released as freeware on November 15, 2004. The game is not endorsed by, or affiliated with, the Lego brand. However, at one point, Lego was in talks with Hartman about purchasing the game. Blockland was spotlighted on The Screen Savers on February 11, 2005, drastically increasing the user base overnight. It has also been featured on Shack News. Blockland was officially released on February 24, 2007. On December 16, 2013, Blockland was released on Steam after spending nearly a year on Steam Greenlight.
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.
Virtual Heroes, Inc. is a developer of serious games in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. It was founded in 2004.
RPG Maker, known in Japan as RPG Tsukūru, is a series of programs for the development of role-playing video games (RPGs) with story-driven elements, created by the Japanese group ASCII, succeeded by Enterbrain. The Japanese name, Tsukūru, is a pun mixing the Japanese word tsukuru (作る), means "make" or "create", with tsūru (ツール), the Japanese transcription of the English word "tool".
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.
Moonbase Alpha is a video game that provides a realistic simulation of life on a natural satellite, based on potential Moon base programs. It was made by the Army Game Studio, developers of America's Army, and Virtual Heroes, Inc. in conjunction with NASA Learning Technologies. The game was released on July 6, 2010, as a free download on Steam. At the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in 2010, the game won the top honors in the government category of the Serious Game Showcase & Challenge.
Outerra is a Slovak computer software company best known for its middleware 3D planetary graphics engine, called Outerra engine, in development since 2008. The engine renders high-quality terrain, terrain texturing, flora and water flow normal maps using relatively sparse and highly compressed data through fractal processing and other types of procedural generation. The game Anteworld uses real world data to create a virtual replica of planet Earth.
V-scale, Vscale, or V scale is a scale of model railroading utilizing self-defining three-dimensional models and a compatible graphics engine to create an alternative modeled world. Though it has not been classified or recognized by either the NMRA or MOROP, the term Vscale has gradually taken on widescale de facto use in railfan and model railroading circles. V-scale model railroading was created when Japanese game developer Artdink released A-Train in 1985, but it was not widely popularized until Microsoft released Microsoft Train Simulator and Australia's Auran/N3V Games released the successful family of Trainz railroad simulators, both in 2001. With the ability to enter into the cab of a modeled train consist in a modeled landscape and track system, the 'play' modes of the two simulators gradually established a following among rail enthusiasts.
Star Ruler is a space 4X / RTS hybrid developed and published by American company Blind Mind Studios.
Star Citizen is an in-development multiplayer, space trading and combat simulation game. The game is being developed and published by Cloud Imperium Games for Microsoft Windows. An extended retry of unrealized plans for Freelancer, Star Citizen is being led by director Chris Roberts. The game was announced via a private crowdfunding page in September 2012, and was later joined on October 18, 2012 by a successful Kickstarter campaign which drew in over US$2 million. Pre-production of the game began in 2010, with production starting in 2011.
Keen Software House is an independent video game developing company based in Prague, Czech Republic. The company was founded by Marek Rosa in 2010.
Take On Mars is a simulation video game for Windows, developed by Bohemia Interactive. The game was announced at E3 2013 and released in its alpha version on 1 August of that year. It is the second installment in the Take On series after Take On Helicopters. The user assumes control of a rover or lander in order to explore Mars. The spacecraft can be equipped with scientific instruments by the player in order to study the Martian surface and complete objectives. The game includes seven destinations for the player to visit: Asteroid Belt, Deimos moon, Gale crater, Kaiser crater, Lyot crater, Ptolemaeus crater, and Victoria crater; with Mars Yard located on earth as a testing ground. Each map is a perfect square with an area of 16km2 (6.2mi2) to be explored with various objectives. Not all locations however are encompassed in the bounding zone, since the craters on mars take up more than 16 km2.
IL-2 Sturmovik: Great Battles is a set of standalone video games and the third generation game in the IL-2 Sturmovik series of combat flight simulators. The two first modules were released in 2013 and 2016 and it was not before November 2017 that the series officially received its current name. In 2019, the first World War I and tank modules in the entire IL-2 Sturmovik series were released.
StarForge is a video game developed by CodeHatch for Microsoft Windows. It is a Voxel-based Sandbox game that allows for customization of guns and building of bases. It is a game about gathering resources, building bases, crafting and surviving on an alien planet. The game was released 18 September 2014. On January 27, 2017, after numerous allegations of the game being abandoned and being an outright scam, StarForge was made free to download and removed from sale on Steam.
SpaceEngine is an interactive 3D planetarium and astronomy software developed by Russian astronomer and programmer Vladimir Romanyuk. It creates a 1:1 scale three-dimensional planetarium representing the entire observable universe from a combination of real astronomical data and scientifically-accurate procedural generation algorithms. Users can travel through space in any direction or speed, and forwards or backwards in time. SpaceEngine is in beta status and up to version 0.9.8.0E, released in August 2017, it was and still is available as download for Microsoft Windows. Version 0.990 beta was the first paid edition, released in June 2019 on Steam. The program has full support for VR headsets.
VRChat is an online virtual world platform created by Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey and operated by VRChat, Inc. The platform allows users to interact with others with user-created 3D avatars and worlds. VRChat is designed primarily for use with virtual reality headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest series, SteamVR headsets, and Windows Mixed Reality, but is also usable without VR in a "desktop" mode designed for either a mouse and keyboard or gamepad.
