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Comment by ClassyJacket | Hacker News Reader

It was. The popular text adventure format at the time just doesn't work well in a flight simulator for some reason.

> read instruments

Your altimeter reads FL090, your compass reads 245. Airspeed is at 120 knots, pitch is 10 above the horizon. Engine is at 70% power.

You hear a kitten meow on guard.

> read instruments

Your altimeter reads FL090, your compass reads 245. Airspeed is at 70 knots, pitch is 20 above the horizon. Engine is at 70% power.

You hear a stall warning.

> yoke forward

> throttle max

Scary stuff, this could work!

Slap it onto a MUD engine, and you can have multiplayer air dogfights! :)

There are air traffic control simulators which are somewhat like this

The only flight sim I remember from those days was Sopwith, a 2D side-view game where you fly a Sopwith Camel through all sorts of crazy loops.

First 3D game I saw was Elite's wireframe spaceflight.

You don't need graphics for a simulator.

https://archive.org/details/msdos_747-400_Precision_Simulato...

This is actually correct. You don't need visual fidelity for a good simulation, nor physical fidelity. The important thing is that your mind and your body goes through the motions. You don't need to actually believe you're doing the thing, just practise the motions, cognitively and physically.

I read through Don Eyles apollo memoir Sunburst and Luminary- great book. In the book he describes their simulator for the lunar landing (essentially a test harness for the landing code) which consisted of inputs of coordinates and speeds, and gave printed output of thrust changes and expected position over time. Mind blowing for someone so used to visual representations.

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