What sim impacted you the most?

[Azul]

for me "Novalogic F-16 Multirole Fighter" and "Jane's USAF"

[HOLLYWOOD]

I can ditto almost all of these.. Jane's were definitely top 5.. all of the Microsoft flight simulators I was really into. hmm.. Flanker and Flanker 2.0, f-22 lightning 3, JSF, some other good ones in there.

But I think the sim I played the most was A-10 Cuba by ParaSoft.. something about the movement and physics in that game just hooked me in.

The more I think about this, the more I go down a rabbit hole of remembering all the different 'sims' i've played over the years.. it's crazy how many options there were back then...

[avn-tech]

actually what got me into aircraft, was growing up on the approach end to McClellan AFB. All day long I would watch aircraft coming and  going from the base. Later I joined the USAf Reserves at the base (406 CLSS), and worked on A-10's, F-111, F-15's, F-4's, T-37's, B-52's & KC-135's.

Later I was accepted into the Army Warrent Officer pilot program, but the USAF Reserve's refused to release me and I lost my spot. I jumped to the Army as soon as I could and ended up as an operation specialist. I was assigned to Edwards AFB working flight test, and got to fly about 5-10 hrs a month.

Then recruited by LAPD and left active duty, and went into the guard as NCOIC of flight Ops at Los Alamitos. Then NCOIC of A2C2 (airspace command & control).

Then one day LAPD sent me to guard aircraft at the Van Nuys airshow after hours. While there I was talking to a C-130 load master, who told me they were looking for Flight Engineer's. Call to the unit, meet with the chief, and then lateral to the CA Air Guard as a C-130E Flight Engineer. Recalled to Active duty for 5 years (and loved every minute of it). Released back to my job at LAPD (22 1/2 years now), and the CA Air Guard as they phased out the C-130E's for C-130j'S. So I latered into Civil Engineering as a Generator Mechanic, and retired with 28 years of Service, with 15 years of Active Duty.

During this time, I started to collect warbirds (PT-19, L-5, BT-13, Yak-52 and one WW II fighter). This led me to doing movie props on the side and eventually to viper pits and flight sims. I also collect aircraft manuals and flight gear.

Currenty, I am working on several flight simulators (F-16B, F-16C,F-18, F-15, P-51 ad a-37B).

Laterrrrrrr
Avn-Tech

[Rufus]

What really did it for me was that I got to fly an A-10 full-up cockpit/sim at WPAFB during a tour when I was a college student...and the only one in that student crowd that actually knew a little bit about airplanes.  So I was "spoiled" rotten from the beginning by that A-10, even before I found out about Falcon or desktop simming.

After that experience that A-10, other military Trainers, and the Falcon series (once I discovered it) became the gold standards against which I measure every desktop sim - they all have strengths and weaknesses (including Falcon and BMS), but F4/BMS is the absolute best air combat sim out there and I've very little interest in any other one, as far as combat sims go.

OTOH - if you're looking to develop, design, or do simulated "flight test", you simply can't beat X Plane as a tool.

[Pekay]

Reading these posts sure do bring back a lot of great memories. Yup "Strike Commander" was the one that hooked me. My son and I would take turns trying to out-fly and out earn each other. Thanks for the trip down memory lane guys.

Pekay

[Cupra]

U.S. Navy Fighters

Same here. But not the version from Jane´s, it was the original version from EA. Jane´s made the remake (1:1 copy) 3 years later because EA called every flightsim Jane´s Still have the original Box, Handbook, Disc within 2m or range. This game started my sim life.

But in 1994 they had deck operations, cat officer and so on.. and for example DCS... nothing after more than 20 years time for developement 

[Sneakpeek]

Same with me - USNF and Tornado started it. Later ATF Gold - where you could virtually fly everything - the intro movie even suggested that X-31's would enter operational service and fly combat missions. Then, even later, I liked USAF a lot.