5 ms·
Nice work! I still have fond memories years ago of the first time I managed to get twin graphics cards working properly with FS so I could have the instrumentat
by cyberferret 9y ago
Nice work! I still have fond memories years ago of the first time I managed to get twin graphics cards working properly with FS so I could have the instrumentation on my PC screen and the outside world projected on the wall in my office in front of me.
Sigh, I still have drawers full of CDs of Flight Sim expansions etc. sitting around. Terribly sad that Microsoft canned the entire team and the project will not move forward any more, after so many decades. I still have really vivid memory of seeing FS1 run for the first time on an IBM PC monochromatic green screen - achieving the impossible even before graphic cards were a thing!
- bitwize 9y agoGraphic cards were definitely a thing back then... unless FS1 rendered to ANSI art?!
- mdorazio 9y agoNo, they were not. Flight Simulator 1 was released for PC in the early 1980s (see 1), and even earlier for Apple II. Consumer graphics cards were not widely adopted until quite a bit later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Flight_Simulator_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Flight_Si...
- erik 9y agoI'm sure this is just arguing about definitions, but the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA)[1] was a graphics card. I don't know what else you could call it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter
- mdorazio 9y agoOk, that's fair. The CGA is technically a graphics card. I personally don't consider the true graphics card era to have started until VGA became a thing in the late 1980s.
- rhizome 9y agoA simple way to think about it is that IBM-PC monochrome never had addressable pixels like Apple et al monochrome did.
- pdkl95 9y agoIBM's MDA cards didn't support direct pixel addressing, which is one of the reasons I had a Hercules Graphics Card (original from 1982). I spent way too much time trying to get various games to work with SIMCGA. Not only did it cause a massive slowdown (single-digit fps - or worse - was common) as it copied writes to VGA addresses into Hercules address space, the conversion from (e.g.) 320x200@16 onto a display that only supported 720x348@1 created usually required dropping/doubling lines at non-integer ratios, skewing the aspect ratio, and other nasty hacks[1]. I was very happy, years later, when I finally upgrade to a Trident TVGA9000B. [1] http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-To4gB6TtJJs/Uwa-qlr0_rI/AAAAAAAAA9Y/XjMsZE95l6M/s1600/maniac_001.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-To4gB6TtJJs/Uwa-qlr0_rI/AAAAAAAAA9...
- taneq 9y agoI think the distinction you want is that CGA was a graphics card but later things that made graphics faster were graphics accelerators. These days a graphics output without at least some hardware acceleration is unthinkable.
- aidenn0 9y agoIIRC the MDA was on a multifunction card. My first PC clone was a 286 with an HGA though, so can't say for sure.
- erik 9y agoYou're right in that the original IBM PC shipped with optional CGA graphics. Searching around I'm finding conflicting information on Flight Simulator 1's use of the black & white 640×200 CGA mode and support for a colour mode targeting NTSC composite output. Maybe the original release supported both?
- cyberferret 9y agoNo, I am pretty sure this was pre-CGA... I worked for an IBM dealer back then, shipping the original IBM PC. I recall it being a BIG deal when FS ran on the old 80x25 green screen monitor. This was before even the Hercules display adapter that let you manipulate things at the pixel level. IIRC the Microsoft engineers were one of the first to do pixel level animation on essentially a text display system. I may be remembering incorrectly, but I am fairly sure my recollection is right, as that was quite a defining moment in computing for me.
- Narishma 9y agoThe original IBM PC from day 1 shipped with either a text-only monochome display adapter (MDA) or the color graphics adapter (CGA) with the corresponding monitor. So graphics cards were certainly a thing from the beginning.
- cyberferret 9y agoThanks for clearing that up. I seem to remember that we had MDA only versions coming through the workshop in the early days, but I believe that was because the CGA version (or the associated monitor) was quite a premium priced option here in Australia at the time - or perhaps they weren't readily available from the US? Whichever the reason - I know that it was a while before we saw a CGA version come through.
- microcolonel 9y agoYeah, I'm certain that lots of people bought FSX, so it always puzzled me that they didn't do anything about it as the years went by. Granted, FSX was truly crippled by terrible performance, and it really hasn't aged well. It doesn't even run all that well on today's hardware, more than a decade later. That said, maybe DTG will do something with it.
- smacktoward 9y agoThe legend around Flight Simulator was always that there was one and exactly one reason why Microsoft sold it: because Bill Gates thought it was cool. Gates stepped down from his day-to-day responsibilities at MS in June of 2008. The entire Flight Simulator team was laid off in January of 2009.
- cyberferret 9y agoProbably why the Excel team built a mini flight simulator right within the spreadsheet itself?!? :) [0] [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gYb5GUs0dM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gYb5GUs0dM
- Andrenid 9y agoI remember that blowing our minds when we first saw it. I miss all the Easter eggs in software. These days people just add the Konami code JS to their web site or app then pat themselves on the back for being original.
- aidenn0 9y agoIn the pre-win95 era, I think more MS programs had easter eggs than lacked them. Both solitare and minesweeper had cheat-codes (I used the latter to defeat my sister's high-score of 14s on small, getting a 2s. She was ufrious, erased all the high-scores and spent days getting her score back down to that).
- com2kid 9y ago
- garaetjjte 9y ago>and the project will not move forward any more, after so many decades. Lockheed Martin licensed ESP from Microsoft and develops it as Prepar3D.