How did you discover online flight sims?

[Stampf]

I was playing Janes Combat WWII Fighters.  Was researching WWII aircraft one day on the web and stumbled across the Blue Knights website.  They had detailed after action reports posted from their squad nights, and a link to Aces High.

One click...and the rest is history.

[save]

As a head of former Head of Warbirds European Training Corps, I agree with both the training part and the community
The latter probably could be explained by  more mature customer base in general in Warbirds.

 me (=save=) =dhy==(dhyran) =flu= (flubby) =lem== fdski= in Loose-Deuce where all part of Warbirds Euro Trainers corps.
We all had free shade accounts in Warbirds too,  call-signs where known  to other trainers only.
/Save

I saw the TV ad for Aces High and joined shortly thereafter (in late 2007?).  Advertising pays.

That said, I left AH after only a month or so.  I found out about Warbirds around the same time, tried it out and chose Warbirds over AH, cancelling my first AH subscription then.

Why did I choose Warbirds?  

Two reasons: TRAINING and COMMUNITY.  I felt (and still feel) that Warbirds had far more accessibility to Trainers and that allowed me to learn at a much faster pace.  Realistic flight sims are HARD and without help I probably would have quit (getting your butt handed to you without understanding why for several weeks on end wears on you.)  At the time, WBs had at least 3-4 trainers MINIMUM on during set hours (one or two nights during the week and one weekend time-frame) that were meant for new players to attend.  New players always had priority over experienced players and experienced players in the Training Arena were expected to help the trainers out.  In my opinion this focused on new player retention and it worked on me.  I don't feel AH is as aggressive with that process.

In a more general sense, WB's seemed at the time more of a "we" community, with lots of people willing the help.  Whereas from day one, AH seemed much more like a "ME" group. Warbirds was not as good of a game, but I chose it over AH for the reasons stated.  As the game felt more and more outdated, had increasing problems, stagnant arenas with and lower and lower player populations (sound familiar?), I left.  I then gave AH another go.  After (finally) getting some training and being invited to a squad in AH, I stayed.

My point in all this, for all the people who complain about arena pop and player numbers, I ask: How often do you specifically seek out new AH players (based on their stats or actions) and offer to take them into the TA to help them? How often do you go into the TA to see if anyone new there is looking for help?

Sadly "shading" seems to have a long tradition and be a fun past-time in AH, which perhaps discourages this.  (I never ONCE heard the term "shade" or accusations of shading made in WB).  Personally though, I'd rather make the mistake of asking a shade if they need help over potentially losing players to the indifference (at best) and abuse (at worst) that many AH players dish out to new people.

My two cents.

<S>
Ryno

[Gman]

Wow, 2 days, and 2 interesting threads in a row, without any of the usual rowdiness.  Full moon or something out?

I'd also like to hear how HT came up with the idea, I know from time to time HT and HTC has given us snippets of the history of the game, but it's something I'm sure a lot of us would love to read about.  I know that much of the AH crew had prior experience with Warbirds, I think at least.  I understand if there is legal reasons for not sharing stuff about the past however, I don't understand how that all works in the USA.

One thing that I find very interesting in this thread, is the number of guys who saw the adds on the military channel and became not only customers, but customers that stuck around.  I've never seen the adds, as our stupid CRTC in Canada didn't allow that channel up here, so no channel, no advertisement.  Is there anyone that has a copy of the HTC adds on youtube or someplace?  I'm very interested in seeing the add(s), as they appear to have had at least some level of effectiveness. 

[lunatic1]

i bought a computer from a guy who built computers-just cheap low memory low storage small vid card..and he had some sim games that he gave me-from the company"JANES"-they were great--then saw ad on military channel and dogfights for aces high .but my puter and internet was so weak i could not play or evan download it..so i had to wait for 3 years to afford a new puter..and one way or another i'm here to stay.

[hitech]

How did you get inspired to write AH. 

I wrote Warbirds before AH

I had a falling out after merging with a different company and then wrote AH,

I wrote Warbirds because I thought I could write a better sim then AW. And 2 friends decided to invest so we made a company.

HiTech

[Delirium]

I was into offline sims in the early 1990s but knew little about computers at the time. When I brought my computer to a shop, there was an older gentleman (who later was a RIO in the Navy) that was boasting about the amount of fun he had on AirWarrior. I went over his house, he let me fly on his account for a few minutes, and I have never looked back.

I did Airwarrior until the very end of that game and made the move to Aces High. I was a trainer and a P38 junky even before Aces High existed, been close to 20 years now.

Unfortunately, my wife doesn't approve of Aces High. She says that the head movement when using TrackIR makes me look stupid. Also, in her words, "When I look in on you it is always the same screen on the monitor. Can you look at porn or something?"

I can't win... maybe she would appreciate Aces High if I looked at porn.

[Baggy]

First found AW1.12 while searching for flight sims online in the early 90s. Played via the London host with the SinS against the Kraits.

I remember Flossy and her boys joining and eventually joined the Kraits, where is Spiff now?

I hate to think how much I spent paying hourly  . Then played via AOL I think.

Left in the late 90s. Found AH in about 2004 and been here since.

[craz07]

I never really heard of air warrior until recently..  But I did discover this little game called warbirds that was so dam cool like late nineties when i had just graduated high school and had no direction in life but had ample amounts of time..  This cool little free game had all these programmer dudes hitech, pyro, etc. that as a player you could wing with and i believe shoot down as well  ..  The best part of the game was the real/simulation aspect of it.. I could not for the life of me lift over this mountain with this bomber i was flying for the longest time until i finally realized it was because it was loaded with 100% fuel.. doh!!  And what was that nonstop weird buzzing sound?? But then it got better.. even tho it was a free game.  once you developed some skills you had the oppurtunity to play others online!! This was amazing.. I remember as a teenager fooling around thinking it was cool i could talk to a friend of mine on the computer using a modem just a few years prior.. It was just a complete hoot.. So much of my happiest times was transitioning from kid to adult with this game.. Really even my family would be like.. dude whats with you and that warbird game? lol..  and they would make fun of me too, a-holes.. lol..  I guess as warbirds kind of started to fall behind a bit I heard of Aces High in game and figured I'd give it a try.. found it was superior in almost every aspect.  I even tried to get my squad over but seemed they'd rather go down with the wb ship..   Anywho it was a great time and ride  with Warbirds, i thought it was a hell of a game and community, nothing will ever take away that awesome time.. offline/online it was just kickarse those days..  Now Aces High is just the new chapter.. Ok sorry for my long winded rant

[FLOOB]

As a head of former Head of Warbirds European Training Corps, I agree with both the training part and the community
The latter probably could be explained by  more mature customer base in general in Warbirds.

 me (=save=) =dhy==(dhyran) =flu= (flubby) =lem== fdski= in Loose-Deuce where all part of Warbirds Euro Trainers corps.
We all had free shade accounts in Warbirds too,  call-signs where known  to other trainers only.
/Save

In the first few years AH was like that too. An AH trainer hooked me up with a squad, then again, most of the AH players in the first few years were former wb players.

[icepac]

Used to play Chuck Yeager's Air Combat and had a friend over for a lan party where we were playing doom and  other multiplayer games.

We discussed wishing that we could play multiplayer in Yeager's Air Combat (pc) and he mentioned that he thought he remembered a network tab in a menu of the game that he had installed onto his Mac Graphics work station at work.

Some slick individual then ported either ported the mac version back to dos (pc) or was able to patch the dos version and we got buggy copies we could play multiplayer over a serial link as we were doing with other games at the time.

I think he used the ipx emulation over serial from another game like grand prix racing or got it from a doom bbs.

I later set up a doom server on 4 phone lines at home and got deep into that until I saw Air Warrior and it's multiplayer goodness.

From there it was the Warbirds/CK setup on the network head to head and then the free beta online and then back to Head to Head for a few years before coming back to and leaving warbirds multiple times.

I really miss the Zeppellin from the early Dawn of Aces versions.

[Blooz]

First online air combat sim was Red Baron 3D. It was about 1998. I was looking for a good WW1 air combat game and this one had it all. After I played it for awhile offline only I tried it online. It was limited to about a dozen planes in each "room" but it was very good!

About 2002 Red Baron had died off and I went looking for another air combat sim. Googled and found Aces High. Downloaded and flew for about 30 minutes and I was hooked. It was WW2 but hey, you can't have everything!

I've had a good time. Computer is too old to run the new terrain when it goes live. Oh well, I'll find something else and keep hoping for better days.

[Arlo]

In the 90's I was looking at video games in a store. And I found Air Warrior II, if I remember correctly it came in a card board box like most pc games at the time. I ask because back in those days there were no commercials on tv or online for video games and it got me wondering how people discovered online flight simming. I bet most people discovered it like I did, they saw it on a shelf in a store. Not counting noobs who got into it this century.

Man the 90s were awesome.

Copy word for word, mark out 'Floob' and pencil in 'Arlo.'

[Lazerr]

I ran into AH on accident.  First flight sim, will probably be my only one too.

If you google "online flight simulator", AH doesnt even appear on the first page.  Im not a SEO master but I would imagine bringing AH up in these rankings would be of help to growing the crowd again.

[MajWoody]

In 02 I saw a commercial on the military channel for AH1. I downloaded the game the next day. I haven't played in a couple of years now but still have my account. Been thinking about logging in again. Just need to make time.

[craz07]

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