One of the longest-running PC game series of all time, Microsoft Flight Simulator predates even Microsoft's well-known

Windows operating system product by three years. Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 was released in

1982, having been licensed from a smaller company that was making the game for several different

computers of the era,

though Microsoft was keen to demonstrate the graphical superiority of newer 16-bit IBM PC platforms,

so they had a nicer-looking version, which made use of a bleeding-edge color graphics adapter card

that was in these newer computers whipped up so they could then

slap their logo on and sell it to folks looking for something to do with their fancy,

expensive new personal computers beside the typical business things. Beyond the licensed version,

the company behind Flight Simulator, SubLogic, continued to release

other versions for Apple Macintosh computers, the Commodore 64, and the Atari 8-bit

family computer, among others, as they'd done since the first iteration of their non-microsoft

branded flavor of the game back in the 1970s.

The branded variation did well enough, though, that another Microsoft version,

number 2.0, followed in 1984, which was then followed by 3.0 in mid-1988,

and this continued every couple to a handful of years, with each new iteration of the game,

offering a more realistic, accurate simulation, from the layout of various airports to the tools

you use to pilot the planes, to the graphics, the number of planes available, and other

in-game customizations.

The most recent version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is often referred to as MFS 2020,

was released in mid-August 2020, and includes a compelling update from its predecessor.

The terrain over which you fly while piloting your aircraft is simulated and updated based on real high-quality cartographical, topographical, and texture data

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