You know how you can tell the pilot in the room?
They will tell you.
Not so subtly waves from the corner.
I’m 52 and a professional airline pilot. So, naturally, I have been ‘playing’ flight simulators my whole life.
It started with Microsoft Flight Simulator (v2.0) with its glorious CGA graphics (I think I tried plugging the PC into my TV thinking it would be more colorful. Kids are stupid.)
My start in aviation came on the IBM PCjr. I wish I had the “Santa” list from the year he brought me the PCjr. I remember listing a dozen different PC “clones” and telling my Dad that I was hedging my bets—that Santa would bring me at least one PC.
Looking back on it now, Flight Simulator came out in 1984. I would have been ten. I can’t recall exactly what age I started “playing” it, but it wasn’t too far off from then. I already had an interest in airplanes, building models, watching rocket launches and obsessing over anything NASA (five-year space camp kid!) I didn’t have any family or friends who flew, so I taught myself so much through the manuals included with Flight Sim and MicroProse’s Solo Flight. I taught myself how to navigate and read the gauges, how to manage energy in the airplane, and how to scan the instruments.
I remember making makeshift rudder pedals using wood and the second IBM PCjr joystick. So rudimentary. Not too far off from the Boeing 737 I fly now. Ask any Airbus pilot. They will tell you.
After various versions of MS Flight Simulator and Solo Flight, I graduated to Aces of Europe, Aces of the Pacific, B-17 Flying Fortress: World War II Bombers in Action (another MicroProse game), A-10 Tank Killer, and A-6: Flight of the Intruder. My best friend in high school and I played these games for hours after school. While I went off to college to learn to fly, he joined the military to do the same. Our careers in aviation got the same start, on CGA graphics, but ended up at the same place: getting paid to fly. He flew various helicopters in the Army National Guard, and I flew civilian aircraft with various airlines.
There is no question that these “games” helped foster my interest in flying, and I would like to think they taught me some rules of the road.
As a professional pilot now, I have annual checkrides in full-motion simulators. Not a training event goes by that I don’t think, “I have been playing this game my whole life!”
I still play the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator, and I have much better equipment than those makeshift rudder pedals. It’s hard to go back to the earlier sims, as much as I try. The nostalgia is certainly there, but they are so basic! That being said, the manuals are still fantastic reads. The thought and research that went into them is impressive. Bit for bit, there’s probably more knowledge in the text than on the floppy disk the game came on.
I fly with many peers my age who say the same; they cut their teeth indoors on nice sunny days playing these games, nurturing a love of flying.