I remember when I in 1993 bought the TFX game made by DID (Digital Image Design). I spent hours and hours playing that game. For its time, it was extremely advanced and while not as detailed as the falcon f-16 games, it think it could nonetheless be classed as a study sim (although with 3 planes). In 1995 I bought the EF2000 (EF = EuroFighter) game. That featured a manual of several hundreds pages and detailed descriptions by one of the EF program managers. It was a truly wonderfull game with a dynamic campaign engine. Then in 1998 the Total Air War F-22 simulator was released. I didn't get to play it until 1999, as my PC wasn't equipped to handle it. This game was the best game I have ever played - well, maybe a tie with Tie Fighter (pun intended . I still play it from time to time, but I have lost the log file hack that allowed me to fly all the mission from the start (the game's only fault was the amount of succesfull missions needed to be flown before being allowed to do something interesting). The disaster struck, and DID was aquired by RAGE. RAGE managed to truly dumb down the follow up to EF2000 (called Eurofighter Typhoon) to the point where it wasn't even enjoyable
Fast forward to today, we have MS Flight Sim, some WWII combat simes (not study sims IIRC) and maybe some survey sims with previous generation fighters. But where have all the detailed study sims gone? Although I'm extra picky because I'm mostly drawn to simulations depicting the bleeding edge in aircraft technology, but it seems like nothing is available. But why has this happened?
Is it because the computer gaming business has increased to much that the relatively low amount of money to be made of study sim enthusiasts is just not appealing anymore, or is there another explanation?
Maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough, but if so please enlighten me.
Thanks
Fast forward to today, we have MS Flight Sim, some WWII combat simes (not study sims IIRC) and maybe some survey sims with previous generation fighters. But where have all the detailed study sims gone? Although I'm extra picky because I'm mostly drawn to simulations depicting the bleeding edge in aircraft technology, but it seems like nothing is available. But why has this happened?
Is it because the computer gaming business has increased to much that the relatively low amount of money to be made of study sim enthusiasts is just not appealing anymore, or is there another explanation?
Maybe I just haven't been looking hard enough, but if so please enlighten me.
Thanks