Before Flight Sim became the much popular pastime and ‘craze’ as we know it today, there was a very selective, and somewhat niche groups of enthusiasts that took control of their own aircraft in their own bedroom. As the years progressed, and computer hardware technology dramatically improved in such a short space of time, so did the software that utilized it – and Flight Simulator become a very popular title making its way into the family CD-ROM rack. With the increased level of hardware technology, the demands of ’simmers became greater, and add-ons were developed to compliment the Flight Sim packages. With the release of FS98 around the corner, people were getting excited and looking forward to the new features it yielded. Companies such as Just Flight developed add-ons to replace the standard scenery included with Flight Sim. I can remember purchasing the ‘Great Britain Part One’ scenery pack for FSFS95/FS98 – eager to install the package, ripping off the covering with excitement.
The Internet has greatly changed the way people can access add-ons; and the majority of add-ons today are freeware; developed by continence Flight Sim developers who enjoy what they do, and create add-ons for shear enjoyment. The Internet has also enabled for virtual jet design companies such as Project Open Sky, Lebor and MoTIS to open their doors and distribute their completed works. The main thing that the Internet has enabled is the huge amount of portal and news sites there are, for example Avsim.com, simFlight.com, FlightSim.Com, FlyAwaySimulation.com and many more of the other portal sites out there. With the Internet revolution, Flight Simulators became ever more popular – and add-ons for them were being designed in their thousands.
The release of FS2000 shed a new light on flight simulation. FS2000 introduced great new features such as: two new aircraft, worldwide 3D scenery graphics, over 20,000 airports, over 70,000 navigation waypoints, new cities with better details, new custom 3D objects, existing aircraft updated, GPS, improved weather system. As the release of FS2002 dawned, portal sites started to include screen shots of FS2002, FS2K related domains were all bought up, and the race for the Google listings for the keyword ‘fs2002′ had started. FS2002 opened up a whole new set of features for Flight Simulator, including: air traffic control, air traffic, autogenerated scenery (AutoGen), floatplane flying, virtual cockpits, enhanced visual effects.