Flight Simulation

Flight Simulation is a 1982 Psion release for the ZX Spectrum and ranks among the earliest attempts to put powered flight on an eight-bit home computer. The record lists a first-person view, meaning the world seen from the cockpit.

In 1982 Psion was one of the first software suppliers for the newly launched Spectrum, and its titles sold directly through Sinclair. That gave them enormous reach – anyone buying the machine met this catalogue before the independent publishing scene had properly started.

Flight simulation was an extraordinarily demanding task on that hardware. The Spectrum ran a Z80 processor with 48 kilobytes of memory and a display burdened by attribute colour clash; drawing a horizon, instruments and an aircraft's response to the controls meant real-time calculation at the edge of what the machine could manage. The result was a wireframe picture at a low frame rate, but the principle held.

That is why these early simulators occupy a particular place in the history. They sold an idea rather than action – the promise of operating something complicated that had to be learned. The printed manual often mattered more than the program itself, and reading through the takeoff procedure was as much part of the experience as the keyboard was.

This piece of history can be started right in your browser on OldGame.cz, with nothing to download, and its page carries the release year and screenshots too.