
Flight Simulator 4 from 1989 running on three immersive monitors (2017) - anyfoo
http://www.tinmith.net/wayne/blog/2017/06/immersive-flight-sim-4.htm
======
tinktank
I am constantly amazed at the clever ways people manage to extend, repurpose
and rearchitect software. This is incredibly clever in my opinion.

------
acqq
[2017] Also previously on HN, 70 comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14548162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14548162)

Still impressive.

Also, one of the comments there, from bluedino:

"I remember you could do this with DOS Doom using the -left and -right
parameters: you just needed three PC's that could run Doom AND a local area
network."

------
geocar
> it is not possible to have two processes on the same machine listening on
> the same port number.

This is not true.

One strategy is to use multicast[1].

Another strategy is to use SO_BROADCAST+SO_REUSEADDR[2].

[1]: [http://www.jarloo.com/c-udp-multicasting-
tutorial/](http://www.jarloo.com/c-udp-multicasting-tutorial/)

[2]: [http://hacked10bits.blogspot.com/2014/12/udp-binding-and-
por...](http://hacked10bits.blogspot.com/2014/12/udp-binding-and-port-reuse-
in-linux.html)

------
robarr
sometimes i find myself grumbling over some article where anybody doing a
little coding calls himself a hacker and thinking “in my days we use to code
our own (insert any now commercially o free available software) ..” but this
is hacking at its pure and best: radically transforming something with code.

------
yazr
What ever happened to FS (and flight simulators in general) ?

Is there a current commercial version? Did people just lose interest?

Or maybe the current 10 (20?) year old stuff is simply good enough

~~~
NikolaNovak
\- rights to FSX have been acquired by a company which has re-released Steam
edition, and made some minor improvements to the engine

\- Lockheed released its own version called Prepar3d:
[https://www.prepar3d.com/](https://www.prepar3d.com/)

\- X-plane 11 is largely understood to be the main competitor. FSX and X-plane
have different underlying modelling principles. You can easily start an
internet flame-war on which one is "better", but X-plane is actively developed
and improved

\- Aerofly FS2 is also a good "lighter alternative". Still a very solid sim,
but easier to get into. Very pretty graphics as well.

All three of these support basic and advanced joysticks. I've had Saitek Yoke,
Engine cluster, and Thrustmaster MFDs running in Aerofly in seconds.

From combat flight sim perspective, DCS suite is widely considered the current
best-of-breed, though Falcon 4.0 modded / enhanced variations are still widely
played. Tons of other "lighter" contenders as well.

~~~
exDM69
To further elaborate on this... Flight simulators as a _game_ genre has all
but disappeared. There used to be lots of flight simulator games, like F-15
Strike Eagle and Red Baron, etc. Every now and then there's an "arcade flight
simulator" game, but it doesn't seem to be popular with gamers and even less
so with simmers.

Flight simulators have become pretty hard core simulators these days. X-Plane
11 and P3D seem to be the most popular on simmer forums, with MS FSX (and
derivatives) still enjoying popularity.

Flight sims are a pretty deep rabbit hole and big investment. When you
purchase a simulator, it's just a platform for running 1st and 3rd party addon
aircraft and scenery. Some of these are fairly expensive (up to $100 or more
for a quality aircraft), and the investment in these is why people still fly
with FSX.

Combat flight sims are still around too, DCS:World is popular, but IL-2 series
and Rise of Flight have some players too. Falcon BMS is popular for hard core
fans of modern air warfare (with complex weapons systems that need a manual of
their own).

As much as I'd like to still be enjoying flight sims, it's too deep a rabbit
hole for me. It takes investment in hardware, software, education and
practice.

This explains also why it's not a mainstream activity. It's far beyond what a
casual gamer would find entertaining or interesting.

------
brachi
I love this kind of tinkering. It sure is a lot of fun, given enough time.

> I decided to try just fuzzing over the memory locations that did change to
> see which one would have an effect.

I've been thinking for a long time to do this in an automated way. But I guess
even if you can automate the fuzzy generation + screenshots, a person with a
lot of domain knowledge will need to check them.

~~~
matthewaveryusa
There's a program called cheatengine that does this! It is absolutely
fantastic imho and you can use it for way more than just 'cheating' at games.

[https://github.com/cheat-engine/cheat-engine](https://github.com/cheat-
engine/cheat-engine)

~~~
brachi
Thanks! I just read the page and I didn't know it came with so many tools. I
remember some people using it in games to actual 'cheats' like unlimited ammo,
life, and so on. Also I was delighted when I saw you could use it to disable
certain direct3d api calls that would make a game run very slow on integrated
graphics, hence increasing the performance dramatically.

------
nl
I had classes with Wayne at Uni. His group was the only one to get better
marks than me in this final year assignment for some subject where we had to
write our own webbrowser and server in C and TCL.

Ours was great, but theirs was better. I don't remember the details, but
theirs did something like implemented HTML tables. This was 1997, and tables
were still not supported in things like Lynx.

Anyway, good times, and Wayne is a smart guy.

------
mhd
A long time ago on some German computer show, they showed a flight sim hacker
who basically made his own immersive cockpit. He had a camera rigged to his
screen, right where the attitude indicator was, and this controlled servo
motors who elevated parts of the platform he was sitting on. Mind you, that
was way before Arduinos etc.

~~~
kaffeemitsahne
> _Mind you, that was way before Arduinos etc._

Maybe it was in the era of ubiquitous printer IO ports? There seems to be some
sort of "dark age" of low-level/analog computer output right between printer
ports and arduino/raspberri pi.

~~~
mhd
Or the various interfaces of the home computers. The BeBox was an interesting
twist on this with its "GeekPort".

------
mysterydip
This is great, and gives me hope of someday doing the same for my favorite DOS
game EarthSiege (where the mech you piloted had four camera views)

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perl4ever
"In 1989, computers only supported a single small display"

Macs supported more than one display at that point, I think.

~~~
jchw
Technically, you could even do dual monitors with IBM PC, by having both a CGA
card and a MDA/Hercules card. Obviously, the utility was limited, but
apparently people did it.

~~~
sllabres
Obviously, the utility was limited, but apparently people did it.

For graphics yes. But around that time all Borland (C, Pascal) products
supported debugging with to monitors (VGA+Hercules). And I used a little TSR
for years that transferred the contents of the main VGA Screen to Hercules via
'PtrScr' key, which was handy too. All text mode of course.

~~~
jchw
Definitely not saying it was useless, just that the utility was limited
because of the usual limitations of MDA; that is, it's definitely not the same
as what people would think of as a dual-head setup today.

That said, I literally was born after Windows 3.0. So... I never personally
dealt with such a setup. Maybe some day, as a matter of exploring older
computers, I will get a chance to actually run such a setup and see what it
was like.

~~~
jungler
It was definitely a thing to run multiple screens in a "one-per-task" kind of
setup - the real difference is that hardly anything back then networked or
multitasked, and so you had to design the workflow you wanted to use
specifically around the idea of using all your displays. In the context of any
specific application(coding, document editing, CAD etc.) the possibility of a
custom tailored solution existed - it just wasn't the highest priority most of
the time. You could get a lot of multitasking mileage out of more antiquated
technologies like printed documents and pens in tandem with your computer.
"Code review" meant literally printing it out and going over it with
highlighters like an exam grader. I'm sure it still does in some shops.

------
mseidl
Flight Sim 4 was the first fight simulator I played. Talk about a blast from
the past.

~~~
cortesoft
Yeah, I got a huge rush of nostalgia. It was so cool, I remember learning so
much about how planes worked trying to figure that game out.

------
leowoo91
That looks very similar to multiplayer game design. Here, side monitors are
acting like spectators and getting dead reckoning after player
synchronization.

------
dfsegoat
Thanks for this: MS FS was literally the first PC game I ever tried to play on
my grandfathers 386 - and I failed miserably for years.

------
1stcity3rdcoast
Beautiful stuff. I am so glad people continue to explore and keep alive
technology from the years when I was growing up.

------
auslander
Descent ! 1995 and there in nothing close to it today in 6 degrees of freedom
6DOF flying.

------
thewizardofaus
Wow a fellow Aussie! Good read.

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digitalmarks
This is awesome.

------
paradoxparalax
When I remember those softwares from the 90s, I almost (but not) think that
software has not improved as much since.

Hardware improves much faster. Actually Software could always and can always
be done without computers, like the old punch holes in the cards and Ada
Lovelace's writings.

Still today, of course, Anything that can get done with real physical logic
gates can get done with paper and pencil. Just takes longer, Result is the
same.

Examples of great software that dropped my jaw back in the 90's:

\- Microsoft Flight Simulator (Instead of becoming better and more famous, is
almost forgotten)

\- Bryce 4 (mind-blowing back then, wonder if still alive)

\- :at request - Simcity ( I had never play, but my sister was addicted)

-:at sister's request - Empire Earth ( not sure that old, it's like Age of Empires)

\- Myth: The Fallen Lords (best video-game ever made, for me, it is the
saddening story you can hear about software death)

~~~
brandonhall
I'd add SimCity in there as well. Groundbreaking when it was made.

~~~
egeozcan
If you played SimCity to create the perfect city, there's still nothing with a
similar engaging dynamic.

BUT, if you played it like a city-painter, I recommend Cities: Skylines as an
evolution. You can also mod it and the language of choice is C#. Just look at
the mods, the community is (was?) amazing.

~~~
ascagnel_
C:S is great if you want to plan a city, but its simulation elements are
sorely lacking. I'd love to see the original design doc for SC2013 (fully
agent-based, with histories) get made; that'd probably be the best you can get
for a simulation engine.

------
Scoundreller
> It is amazing how low-res 640x350 is when displayed on a large 1920x1080
> display, although you didn't notice it as much on a 14 inch CRT, which is
> smaller than many laptops these days

Yes and No. Screens are measured diagonally, not by square inches. A 14"
screen could be 14"x0.1".

~~~
mrunkel
I don't understand what you're trying to say?

A 14 inch CRT was also measured diagonally.

~~~
mrob
The wider the aspect ratio, the smaller the area with the same diagonal
measurement. A 14" 4:3 monitor (like the old CRTs) is about 94"^2, but a 14"
16:9 monitor is only about 84"^2.

~~~
pdpi
Sure, but a 15" 16:9 display is a bit over 96 sq.in.

The original didn't say that a 14" CRT has the same area as a 14" laptop —
just that it was "smaller than many laptops these days".

