FS1 Flight Simulator - the Ancestor of MS Flight Sim 2020
49FS1 Flight Simulator
With Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 coming out in a couple of weeks, I thought this would be a good time to look back to the first home computer flight simulator that I heard of, SubLogic’s FS1 Flight Simulator, written by Bruce Artwick.
As I did the research for this episode, I learned a few things that I thought were pretty interesting and wanted to share with you.
First off, and most mind-blowing, the Sublogic flight sim ran on machines with just 16K of memory. A version of ported to the TRS-80 Model I and had to remove even more of the graphics, which were already very basic.
Second, the plane being simulated - which I assumed would be a Piper Cub or a Cessna - is actually a classic British airplane, the Sopwith Camel. Yes, the same airplane that famous World War I ace Snoopy flew against the Red Baron is the plane we’re flying here.
Thirdly, the performance of the sim is interesting. Although today we’re used to games that run at 30 frames per second, 60 frames per second, or even more, FS1 Flight Simulator is of course much slower than that. SubLogic didn’t describe their program in terms of frames, but described it as being able to draw “150 lines per second.” To give another example, the keyboard is read in a loop that runs between 3 to 5 times per second, and can only sample one key press per loop. So, there has to be a delay of about half a second between each key you press.
The controls are very simple - in terms of air control, you can adjust the rudders or the elevator, or add or remove throttle, and that’s about it. Th. There are also controls to shoot guns and drop bombs, along with a very difficult combat mode. There’s also a button that is treated as the landing gear control, but actually controls whether the simulation database is using high or low altitude data.
Originally shipped on cassette tape in 1979, the game was later updated to add some features such as crashing and more visual landmarks. In 1983, a sequel “Flight Simulator II was released. Eventually, this line of software would lead to the first Microsoft Flight Simulator for the IBM PC
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