GO FOURTH AND MULTIPLY

FLIGHT SIMULATOR 4.0, the sim that started a subculture.

- Tim Stone

Ten years after the Wright Brothers outwitted gravity at Kitty Hawk, the revolution they started went into overdrive when European militaries realised flying machines were useful for more than just reconnaissance. Microsoft Flight Simulator experienced a similar growth spurt a decade after its birth, but happily, in its case all-out war wasn’t the spur.

Flight Simulator 4.0 inadvertently turned a franchise into a hobby by throwing open the hangar doors to all and sundry. The 1989 release came with a simple tool that allowed users to tinker with airframes and flight characteristics. More significantly, it was designed with the kind of porous edges and friendly file formats that helped people to build tools for it.

Soon meddlers had access to a pair of powerful aircraft and scenery editors. Within a few months the sim’s high-detail landscape areas were multiplying furiously and being shadowed by all kinds of exotic cloud cleavers. There were bat-shaped Horten flying wings buzzing the tower at Meigs Field; low-flying supersonic SR-71 Blackbirds spooking invisible motorists on the Golden Gate Bridge; X-wing fighters barrelling down Broadway.