Microsoft Flight Simulator Version 5 for MS-DOS

 

The Flight Simulator Joins the Revolution in PC Gaming

The Microsoft Flight Simulator 5.1 for MS-DOS

Microsoft Flight Simulator 5
Flight Simulator 5 for MS-DOS was released in 1993. A whole lot changed since the last major release in 1989. Since then, the Intel 486 became the common processor found in desktop machines. The power of these CPU's made it possible to run GUI-based environments, like Windows 3.1, on a regular basis now. Through most of the early 90's though, desktop PC's were still regarded as boring spreadsheet machines. The computers that you did office work on and run applications like Lotus 123 and WordPerfect. However, the release of Doom caused a PC gaming revolution. This game single-handily brought PC's from the back of corporate office to the forefront of gaming. This revolution wasn't restricted to the first person shooter though. Microsoft was always known for pushing the technical boundaries of its flight simulator. Microsoft was usually the early adopter of new technologies, and their would be no exceptions here. Microsoft would embrace the latest and greatest that high-end desktop computers had to offer. 

The game engine was a total rewrite. The game used textures now. In order to show off these new textures, the game offered drivers for many of the popular SVGA (Super VGA) adapters of their day. For the PCEM emulator, I equipped my virtual computer with a S3 SVGA card with VESA extensions for high-resolution modes. I mentioned the VESA video standards in my NFS 1 article if you want a recap. The add-ons for the previous games were obsolete now. They would have looked out of place in the new game, as Flight Simulator 5 had building textures, giving the building models a more realistic look now. Because Flight Simulator 5 utilized SVGA adapters, the game ran in 256 colors now. A huge upgrade over the 16-color modes offered by both EGA and VGA video adapters. The flight models were improved as well. Each plane had its own custom cockpits now, along with a improved weather system. The AI planes were enhanced as well. The game had better graphics all-around. The game's enhancements wasn't restricted to visuals though. The new game could utilize the Creative Lab's SoundBlaster audio adapters if available. These adapters were capable of CD audio playback. Flight Simulator 5 incorporated the audio support to take advantage of this new standard. Their were custom sound effects now. As noted in the Wikipedia article, it took about a year for add-on developers to get use to the new development tools. Once they did though, they were creating new scenery and objects.

Daytime flying around Chicago now. The scenery, plane, sky, and buildings have textures now. The game is running in 256-color, SVGA mode using the S3 video adapter. The John Hancock Tower can actually be recognized now.

Like with the previous games, your at Chicago's Meigs Airport. The game featured dynamic scenery that changed, along with AI-controlled planes. The cockpit uses a bitmap texture as well now.

I realized that Airplane! isn't the best tool for flight instruction and learning.

The 5.1 update
Flight Simulator 5.1 was released on 1995. The game utilize scenery files that were collected from satellite images for the first time. Their were performance enhancements as well. The Flight Simulator was a very demanding game though, and these performance enhancements were welcomed. With that mentioned, by the release of 5.1, the Intel Pentium processor were becoming common in desktop machines. Not surprisingly, the Flight Simulator took advantage of these new processors. Their were weather add-ons as well, like fog and 3D clouds. As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, this was the last release of the flight simulator for MS-DOS. This was also the first version of the game that was released on CD-ROM. As with the previous version, developer tools were released as well. The FlightShop allowed developers to create any plane to their hearts content now. Their was a French program called "Airport", which allowed the developers to create their own airports. This was a welcomed add-on as the 5.1 universe had only 250 airports. Custom cockpits could be made as well using these developers tools. Soon, there was a active mod community supporting the new game and releasing their creations for others to use. Like with the previous mods, many of these mods could be purchased from print magazines and shipped on either floppy disk, and by this time, CD-ROM as well. However, many modders started to take advantage of the WWW (World-Wide Web) by this point. The internet though was still in it's infancy at this point. However, many realized that this would become the platform that would be embraced by mod developers.
PCEM
As with all the releases of the game so far, I tested this version under PCEM as well. The emulator was configured to emulate a multimedia PC with a Intel 486 DX4 processor running at 100MHz. Not a bad computer for its day. The emulator was also configured with 16MB's of RAM, along with a Creative Labs SoundBlaster 16 audio adapter, capable of CD-quality audio playback. I use the S3 864 SVGA video adapter with VESA extensions. I was running MS-DOS 6.22 on this retro configuration. This emulated PC would have been a very capable gaming computer back in 1995. Their was no performance issues with the game at all. The game ran how it would have expected to run back in the day. The emulator ran at full speed given the hardware that it was emulating in relation to my actual host. The emulated rig does not disappoint.

Night flying Chicago style in my Learjet!

The Learjet cockpit illuminated for night flying.
Articles of Interest:

PCEM - https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/

History of the Microsoft Flight Simulator - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Flight_Simulator#Flight_Simulator_5.0

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