[Macworld]

Post your comments for Flying through time here

[Lisamacnewton]

Darn. You make me want to go out and play the old arcade version of "Red Baron". It was eerily similar to "Flight Simulator 1". Now THAT was a fun game!
I tried to explain exactly what you were writing about to my parents (67 and 70 respectively). One yawned and the other one just couldn't wrap her head around the power we have today! Hey, as long as I fix her Mac, life is good...

[Ians]

I really loved FA 18 Hornet by GraphSim a fantastic flightsim, not quite the flight model of X-Plane, but you still had to learn to fly, if only they could update it for Intel Macs

[DavidJ]

I started with MSFS 4, went through FLY! II and now fly X-Plane, which is great, and very deep (you can build a plane from scratch, down to the airfoil shapes, and download hundreds of planes built by others at www.xplane.org.
CAT III's VIRTUAL WINGS PRO was a beautiful and serious simulator from europe (Germany?) which was excellent as well, sorely missed...
http://www.avsim.com...tualwings.shtml

[griffman]

Virtual Wings III was a nice program indeed. The other one I left off the list (really, I just looked at the SubLogic/Microsoft versions on older Macs) was Elite, which is an expensive high-end IFR simulator. At one time, it was available for the Mac, but no longer.

-rob.

[Schneb]

Boy, those brought back some real memories. I had each one of those and was amazed at each progression. I remember when I flew around the Statue of Liberty using Flight Simulator 4, then, doing a circular pattern and eventually flying into her face.

[MorrisTheCat]

Ians said:

I really loved FA 18 Hornet by GraphSim a fantastic flightsim, not quite the flight model of X-Plane, but you still had to learn to fly, if only they could update it for Intel Macs

Ah yes, I logged many an hour on F/A-18 Hornet. That was a great game for its time. I miss it, but I have to say that looking at the screenshots of the current X-Plane are making me consider getting this. It looks incredible.
I would still like to fly something where I can drop some bombs though! ; )

[Rhywun]

Your last paragraph makes me want to run out and get a Mac Pro. Now. Something tells me my 1st gen MacIntel can't handle this.... Not that I'd be doing this sort of thing every day but lately I'm using a sweet AMD Opteron PC at work and now I have a need for speed.

[MacGod]

Don't forget the all-time best Mac flight simulator (albeit a military one): Chuck Yeager's Air Combat. Nothing like flying WW2, Korean War or Vietman War planes while Chuck Yeager gives you advice.

[griffman]

"I would still like to fly something where I can drop some bombs though! ; ) "

X-Plane will let you drop bombs and fire missiles. There's a whole military side to the thing; tons of military aircraft available with bombs, missiles and guns. I haven't done much with them, but they're out there.

-rob.

[griffman]

"Something tells me my 1st gen MacIntel can't handle this...."

Depends on what machine it is, and how much you're expecting. X-Plane does a pretty good job with changing variables (view distance and detail) to make the game run acceptably on many Macs.

-rob.

[John_Dewar]

I love X-Plane but since I installed boot camp I got re-addicted to Flight Simulator X. The missions feature is just way too much fun. Also, flying from the virtual cockpit is still a smoother experience in FSX, even though X-Plane's VC is prettier. And FSX's autogen scenery is less taxing on my MacBook Pro than the sort of fakey satellite imagery X-Plane uses, plus I like having seasons. But weather is better in X-Plane and all of the custom designs are fun. Of course the trouble with trying to do work while flying around is that flying is no fun without the rudder pedals, joystick and yoke, and they get in the way of the mouse and keyboard and desk chair.
I loved MSFS 4 and F/A-18, but my very favorite of all time was "Hellcats over the Pacific"

[Spark]

Rob,
You state in the article that you run X-plane in Window XP using VMware fusion (if I read it right). Do you find that the application runs better in XP virtualization than it does natively on the Mac?

[griffman]

Sorry, that's not what I intended to write if that's how it came out :). I run X-Plane natively in OS X, but during the writing of this article, I had the old Mac flight sims running in emulators in Windows XP in Fusion.

-rob.