Remember recently when I wrote that we all had our own first programming book? Even if that first wasn’t our “first”, we all remember the first one that resonated. For me it was the Llama Book, aka Learning Perl that made me fall in love with Larry Wall’s language, and programming more broadly.

Flight Simulator 98 was that “first” for me when it came to 3D gaming. We were still a few years away from the release of Train Simulator which would consume my life, so my formative experiences in computerised 3D space were from the cockpit and camera views of a Cessna, Learjet, and Boeing 737. First-person shooters were my first 3D games on account of my friends playing them, but I didn’t enjoy them (sorry, Doom fans). Flight Simulator 98 was the first in which I spent any real time, and remained my favourite even after trying 95 and 2000 back in the day.

I remember being enthralled by the box when I saw it at that Challenger department store in Funan Centre in Singapore. A “Flight” Simulator? Anywhere in the world? How did they store the whole world… on a disc!? Within a month I had a Logitech joystick, and was learning how to steer aircraft around Tokyo, New York City, and even Singapore. I cannot tell you just how much fun it was. Except I just did.

Over the years I got newer versions of Flight Simulator, and later X-Plane, but Flight Simulator 98 remains a staple. When the game stopped running on Windows, I ran it in a VM. Now I have it on my Dell Dimension 4100 with its scorchingly fast Pentium III and AGP Radeon 9600 XT graphics. I kid, but I would have loved that kit when I first fired that game up on my 200 MHz Pentium 1 tower:

I was a huge fan of simulation type games; basically anything starting with Sim or ending with Simulator. I loved exploring those procedurally generated and mapped worlds, to the point where I relish reliving that specific aesthetic even now. They were more 3D than what came before, but they still had that rasterised, textured charm.

Flight Simulator 98 came in a box, with a CD and a set of printed instructions. Most of us would consider this arrangement “normal” right up until App Stores and perma-subscriptions, and I’ll admit I do miss the thrill of walking home clutching a new treasure like that. It’s probably why I like physical music as well, but I digress.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the series also had additional printed material from Microsoft Press one could buy, including strategy guides and even a “pilot certified” book on instrument flight techniques. We may scoff at the blocky, low-resolution graphics today, but I knew people growing up who claimed to have used these flight simulators for training.

Above is my original boxed set of Flight Simulator 98, alongside my new (to me!) copy of Flight Simulator 98 Inside Moves, which a seller had alongside another one for Flight Simulator 2000. A lot of this is to do with tricks about getting the game configured (stabilised, one could say) which I already know like the back of my hand, but then it goes into way more detail than I would have expected. For example, now I have documentation for how to handle an engine failure in a dual-engined aircraft:

Once I manage to procure another joystick with a game port, I might spend a bit more time in it. Using the keyboard just isn’t the same!