How did you discover online flight sims?

[palef]

Did a demo of Air Warrior 2 head to head with a friend at a Computer Gaming Expo in the early '90s. Had subscribed to AW3 by the mid-90s and was spending *gulp* about $300 per month, back when they made you pay for the Internet by the hour.

[Drane]

Always a computer nut and an airplane mechanic (among other things). Played lots of pc flight/combat sims.
Discovered AW on AOL around 1996. Always flew FR unless the arena was down. What a blast! 
EA bought AW and killed it.

Read about some people (some associated with AW) that made a new online sim called AcesHigh and jumped into that (beta).
Tried others but AW and AH have been the best. 

[Ack-Ack]

Stumbled upon AW on Genie.

[Flossy]

My husband (Zeb in AW) used to play AW on dial-up in the very early days and at the time I was more worried about the size of our phone bills!  When it went to Gamestorm my concerns about phone bills stopped and I got really interested when he told me he thought he might be getting invited to a squad - I had no idea things like squads existed and wanted to see more.  That evening I watched in fascination as he logged on into the OC and from there went to Cz HQ and eventually an airfield.  I watched his faltering attempts to accept an invite from Spiff and joined the Krait Squadron.   

I really wanted to get in on the action but never thought I would be able to fly, but he pointed out that I would be able to drive GVs as well as go as a gunner in the bombers so I created an account.  After several squad nights feeling a bit left out I eventually did learn to fly (in FR!) and finally settled on bombers, usually B17s.  The rest, as they say, is history!   . 

[Shifty]

Saw an ad for Air Warrior in Computer Gaming World magazine in the early 90s.

[Max]

One sunny day back in '96, I stumbled across Gamestorm/Air Warrior Macintosh on AOL. Gosh...that was 20+ joysticks and thousands and thousands of dollars ago  

[BuckShot]

I found an old Logitec stick at the dump. When I found the driver online, it came with a link to fighter ace. I played fa for a few years.

About a year before fa shut down, I found ah while searching for other air combat sIms.

When fa announced the shut down, our squad immediately came over to ah.

[Drano]

I used to build models until my kids got old enough to start messing around with em. They were out with the wife one day and saw this box with a pretty blue plane (so they said hehe). It was Air Warrior 3. I messed with the offline missions for a while and one day I was home sick I struck out online. Been with it ever since. Think it was 96 or 97.

[Rich46yo]

I heard about the game from an on-line help techie for some POS Packard Bell computer I had. I remember how being so fascinated you could play against others in near, or near, real time. My best days were with the 484'th and Blind Bats. A few other squads I was associated with, good guys all. 

[TheBug]

Saw a review/article on Confirmed Kill/Warbirds in Computer Gaming World magazine.

[LCADolby]

I

Blame

PEZ

[hyzer]

From usenet, alt.games.pc I think.  Started seeing threads from guys flying around and having a blast in WB.  Must have been around 96 or 97.

[Tinkles]

Saw Aces High commercial on the Military Channel.

Seen it when I was 12 on the Military Channel, and been here ever since.  Took a few years, but finally found my name

[Gman]

I bought the boxed game version of Air Warrior sometime in the late 90's, after playing Falcon, Falcon 3.0, and Falcon 4 for a long time.  I loaded it up, and looked at the little box screen you flew in, and declared it horrible, and put the box on the shelf, never realizing that there was a whole world of multiplayer filled with hundreds of online pilots out there.

In late 99, I was working on a review for Warbirds 2.7something, and mentioned it while playing Rainbow 6 with the crew from PCXL/PC Gamer magazine one night, and another player in that game told me about the beta for Aces High, and said it was far superior to Warbirds, which I had just been discussing in the after game chat window.  I tried it out, and been here ever since, and never went back to Warbirds, which I'd only had about 25 hours or so stick time in to begin with.  So I guess I was a word of mouth customer, and the player that told me about this place was Soulyss, an AH player that's one of a handful I recognize from 99/2000 that's still around today.

[hitech]

Bought a modem in 1991, in the box was an add from Genie, Found aw 1.04 for dos in the text menus of Genie.

HiTech