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The once and future king, Microsoft Flight Simulator once again undeniably rules the genre. Nothing dulls this experience more than a flight game that doesn't immerse the player in a realistic environment at that point, you might as well play Ace Combat or GTA (not that there's anything wrong with the Ace Combat series). There are no boss fights, or spells to memorize, or inventory management - just the pure experience of soaring amongst the clouds in your own personal airplane. Many players enjoy flight games because they don't have stages or storylines. Unlike most games, where the challenge of the game is the focus, flight games are more about the experience. Updated on November 7, 2021, by Jeff Drake: Flight games (or sims) are an interesting type of game.
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Both old and new simulators now dot the landscape, and with both combat and civil aviation represented, there is truly something to be found for every taste The focus of these entries is realism, of the highest order, in both the graphics and the aircrafts represented on screen. This growth peaked sometime in the 1990s, but it still thrives thanks to a few dedicated developers and a huge modding community. RELATED: Best Farming/Simulation Games (According To Metacritic)Īs home computer technology quickly improved, and along with it the realism of control systems, the genre blossomed into one of the largest in the PC space.
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The early entries were extremely crude by today's standards, but realism was always at the core of the endeavors, and the seeds had been planted for a vibrant future. Suddenly, millions of would-be pilots could satisfy their curiosity and desire to be free of terra firma just by turning on their computers. One of the earliest tentpoles of PC gaming was the flight simulator genre, with the first acknowledged example, Sublogic FS1 for the Apple II and TSR-80 systems, debuting in 1979.
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