Hindsight

When I was attending middle school I lived in a suburb, spending my free weekends with friends who had computers or a console laying around. Eric had an old computer running Windows 3.1 and a bunch of DOS games, including a version of Flight Simulator. It looked like this:

That’s how I remember it. Nothing over 256 colors and barren, empty “landscapes”. Still, the sense of flight was there. And it was breathtaking. It was fun to change the settings: fly at night and glide around for an hour or two. I made no serious attempts to fly from one airport to another: I just took off from O’Hare International Airport (the simulator’s default, starting airport) and flew. An occasional tilt here and there, just for effect.

I received Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight as a gift on Thursday. I took a screenshot this evening while, again, flying aimlessly in my learjet:

Ahh, how the view has changed.