This is an article I've wanted to write for some time but for one reason or another, it just ended up not happening. However, I've now managed to lock the door and superglue myself to the office chair, so this time I have no excuse! I also have the dog looking on expectedly...so I can't disappoint!

With that said, let me begin.

Being passionate enthusiasts of flight simulation, we all have our favourite modern flight simulator; be it FSX, X-Plane, P3D, FS2004, you name it... we have one. It's our go-to world, and we love it! When we're not working, walking the dog, or being told what to do, we're flying high.

That's now, but what about before... at the beginning? What brought us all into this fascinating world of flight simulation?

We all have our own story about how it all began, so indulge me if you will, so that I may share with you my own little journey of how I fell in love with flight simulation.

It was Christmas 1990 and I was 15 years old, a mere nipper. Excitement filled the air, in anticipation of the presents we would soon receive; something traditionally done after returning from Mass. After pouring my mother a generous glass of sherry (anything to speed up the process), we settled down in our usual positions eager for the unwrapping to begin.

On this particular year, I had a sneaking suspicion that my big present was going to be something very special, mainly due to the guilt my parents felt from the previous year (an electronic encyclopedia, whilst useful, isn't exactly...fun).

After my dad had rather animatedly passed around a few presents (his usual job at this time, performed exceptionally well this year due to alcohol levels), he knelt behind the chair and brought out a rather large wrapped box.

'To Dominic,' he read, 'love from mummy and daddy'

Encyclopedia forgotten, and the love for my parents restored, I took the present and started to unwrap the box. Letters began to emerge as I tore at the paper - first an 'A', then a 'T', then another 'A' - until in front of me I saw the magic words...Atari STe Discovery Pack!

I could hardly contain my excitement. Thanking my parents (and secretly God), I rushed upstairs only to be told to come back down as there was one more present for me to unwrap.

Sitting back down again, a bit impatiently this time, my dad passed me the present. It was the size of a book but was rather heavy. I was intrigued as to what it might be. I unwrapped it and as I did, a reddish box came into view and the words...

F19 Stealth Fighter

I looked at the screen shots on the back and was blown away. They were all fully 3D, (not just wireframe), with masses of detail and colour. Well...16 to be exact. By modern standards, they were basic to say the least, but for a 15 year old kid in 1990, they were jaw dropping!

I thanked my parents, more than a few times, and once again rushed upstairs.

Hastily clearing a space where my trusty ZX Specrum 128+ had been (nicknamed 'The Toaster' due to the hot heat-sink on the side), I carefully took the Atari STe out of its box. Inside was a manual, a collection of disks (I was now entering the modern era of computing) and most importantly of all...a mouse! After setting it all up and connecting it to my 13 inch colour TV, I turned on the power.

A few moments later, and not a minute too soon, I was looking at Atari's famous GEM desktop (similar to Apple's early OS), which, compared to my Spectrum's tape loader screen, looked space age. However...I hadn't turned this fabulous machine on just to marvel at a green screen. No sirree! I was here to play games and one game in particular... F19 Stealth Fighter.

I slid the red game sleeve back and opened the weighty black box. Inside was a manual, a keyboard reference chart/overlay, and three disks. The manual was particularly impressive as it was almost 200 pages thick.

After reading the loading instructions, I inserted disk 1 and double clicked on the icon. A menu came into view asking me to select my preferred control method (keyboard), and once done, I was rewarded with an impressive introduction to Microprose's F19 Stealth Fighter.

With the copy protection out of the way (simple aircraft identification), and a new pilot created, I was ready to choose my 'Region of the World' and 'Level of Conflict'. For the region, there was a choice of four: Libya, Persian Gulf, North Cape and Central Europe. Being European, and living in the last year of the Cold War, there was only one logical choice to make so I selected the latter. For the Level of Conflict, I had three options: Cold War, Limited War or Conventional War. As I wanted my mission to reflect the current climate, I decided on the Cold War setting.

Task completed, I was promptly taken to the mission planner.

Laid out in front of me was, to my young eyes, a highly authentic map of Central Europe, complete with radar sites, air bases and missile ranges. As well as the incredible map detail, I could also review my mission objectives.

Having read through my orders, the next step was to arm my aircraft. This took me to another menu screen, this time with a silhouette of the F19, and it was here that I could decide on my weaponry. A total of four different weapons (from a large inventory at the bottom of the screen) could be selected for each mission. For this particular operation, the loadout consisted of: MK82 bombs (both Snake Eye and Slick), a 135MM camera, plus a bunch of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. Not a bad selection for ground targets. It was later when I would learn that the AGM-650 Maverick made for a better choice.

With everything now set, I was ready to begin my mission.

A momentary blank screen rewarded me with a view I will always remember; instead of the limited colours and low resolution wireframe graphics my dear old Spectrum had kindly provided me with over the years, a far more impressive image now came into view. In front of me was a totally believable cockpit of an F19 Stealth Fighter!

When looking at the image above it, of course, looks incredibly dated, but you have to realise that this was pretty much the cutting edge of computer home entertainment back then (especially on the 16-bit Atari ST).

Apart from their incredibly realistic simulators of the time, another area in which Microprose excelled in was their software documentation. F19 was no exception, and one of their most useful/handy pieces of documentation was the Keyboard Overlay, complete with all the commands needed to enjoy the game.

With this placed over my computer keyboard, I was finally ready to take to the skies.

After engaging full throttle and releasing the brakes, I gradually gained speed, with the engine roaring in the background. Of course, all this roaring was simply my imagination going wild. The reality was that it sounded more like a 50cc moped! A few moments later though, I was airborne and on my way to my primary target.

In order to maintain the correct altitude and heading, I selected the very basic autopilot. With the aircraft now pointing in the right direction (whoops), I decided to have a look at the external camera view.

Again, compared to today, it is indeed primitive, but there is full 3D on offer (filled too), plus plenty of other animated objects, most notably NATO and Soviet aircraft. When you consider that this was on a machine running at 8 MHz and with only 512K of memory...it really is quite something! To put it into perspective, how big was your last JPG file from your camera or phone?

As I continued on my way, mountains came into view, or more appropriately, textured 3D triangles. To clear them I would have to gain height, but this would leave me vulnerable to the SAM missile sites dotted around the area. The only alternative would be to disengage the autopilot and manually fly around them. This I carefully did and after a few tentative minutes of stick flying, I was back on target.

A few moments later, my primary target, the tank farm at Liberec, came into view on the MFD. At just under 50 km away, it was close, but not that close, so I took a few moments to familiarize myself with the keyboard commands needed to complete the task in front of me.

With my MK82 Slicks selected (how I wish I had the long distance Mavericks), and with my finger poised to open the bay doors, I watched the distance meter slowly count down. As I reached the final few kilometres to the target, I opened the doors, the tracking beam beeping wildly in response to my increased radar footprint.

Heartbeat racing, I hit the key to release my payload...

A reassuring boom, and a destroyed tank farm on the MFD, provided me with proof that my primary objective had been completed.

Feeling pretty good and confident about my flying abilities (Tom Cruise, eat your heart out), it was now time to concentrate on my secondary objective: photographing the sam radar site at Wittstock.

Praying that no dramas were going to unfold as I neared my target, I waited until the radar site was completely filling the MFD forward view. When it did, I quickly opened the bay doors and took a series of photographs; the last one being key. Checking that the objective had indeed been completed, I closed the bay doors and headed in the direction of home.

With a maximum of 16 colours being displayed at any one time (from a pallet of 512 or 4096, depending on the ST model), it meant that the developers at Microprose had to be savvy about how they were used. A good example of this usage is in how they managed to represent different depths of water. In the image below, it's clear to see which areas are the shallows and which are the deeper areas of the water.

All these little details, while seemingly trivial by today's standards, really helped create a believable, albeit primitive, world to fly in. The resources available to developers at the time were miniscule, compared to the modern equivalents we have in front of us today, which makes games like F19 Stealth Fighter all the more remarkable!

If you had to ask me what I thought was the hardest thing to learn with regards to F19, I would have to say, without a shadow of doubt, landings! This wasn't due to any lack of control, it was more to do with the low frame-rate of the game, coupled with the low resolution graphics. It meant (for me, anyway), that landings were always something to be feared. This is probably why I flew with 'no crashes' on most of the time!

Anyway...I digress.

As Leck Air Base came into view, I reduced both speed and altitude, whilst at the same time, lowering my flaps and gear. With the runway jerking its way towards me, I watched as my altitude went below 200 feet.

A few moments later; 50, 40, 30, 20, 10...touchdown!

Reducing power and applying the brakes, I carefully brought my trusty aircraft to a halt...phew! As the enthusiastic camera crews raced towards me, I opened the canopy and gave them the biggest, cheesiest grin I could muster...

After my moment of fame, it was off to see the CO, and view a rundown of the mission.

When my mission briefing was over it was time to relax with the boys, and what better way to do it than at the officers bar (something my dad would have been proud of).

As you can probably tell, F19 Stealth Fighter made quite an impression on me, and it's one that has stuck with me through the years. Yes, it was simple by today's standards, but what it did, it did well, and that's something the developers should be proud of.

A few years later, I was lucky enough to own a PC (386SX 33 MHz), and one of the best things I remember about owning it wasn't the fact that it had a hard drive and a VGA monitor; it was the fact that I could enjoy all the fantastic titles developed by Microprose!

Some of these included:

• Gunship
• Gunship 2000
• Silent Service II
• F117A Stealth Fighter 2.0
• Formula One

So there you have it; F19 Stealth Fighter was my introduction to flight simulation, and what an introduction it was! But that's my story; what about yours?

Dominic Smith

Purchase Micropros - F19 Stealth Fighter