Brian The Dog on 20/4/2010 at 22:33

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Another vote for Elite, especially when you consider the limited hardware Acornsoft managed to squeeze it into. Dark's audio in Thief was also way ahead of it's time, some of its advances are not common even today 12 years on. Graphically, I'd probably go for Unreal - it's the only game I went "wow" when I saw it for the first time.

ZylonBane on 21/4/2010 at 00:11

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Yeah, imagine if they'd taken that technology and made a racing game with it!

DentonSHODAN on 21/4/2010 at 01:10

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If you are unable to comprehend such a simple question, I truly feel sorry for you.

Shadowcat on 21/4/2010 at 08:29

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For me it's because I don't have a broad enough understanding of different sims and exactly how advanced they were, or how one could possibly compare them in that way. With other genres, the elements to compare seems like a much smaller set. Serious simulations tend to be so obsessively focussed (frequently upon different details), and always pushing the boundaries of computation and modelling for the processing power available at the time, that picking and choosing between them seems much harder.

I'll mention a few that stand out for me, however:

"Grand Prix Legends" by Papyrus. The detail and fidelity of that sim was/is legendary (along with the brutal difficulty resulting from the chosen era), and was purposefully developed as a generational leap ahead of Papyrus' previous driving sims, and probably all of their competition. A great many people still race it today (in significant part because of the truly incredible car and track mods that have been developed for it, mind).

"SVGA Harrier" by Simis. An enhancement of "AV-8B Harrier Assault", this was (AFAIK) the first SVGA-resolution flight simulator (hence the emphasis in the title), and a superb piece of work. They were building on their previous experience creating dynamic campaigns in "Interdictor 2" and "MiG-29 Fulcrum", but those sims absolutely paled by comparison with Harrier Assault. The game was a single continuous campaign where you planned and coordinated your air, sea, and land operations from an aircraft carrier, using a zoomable map of the entire island (and an accelerate time button). Flying a Harrier in person when those mission times arrived was actually optional! (albeit the core attraction :) Flight modelling was very smooth, and the VSTOL capabilities were a joy to use. The colour palette was also used superbly when fading colours in the distance, which made it easy to see that angular terrain as a real-world place. I could believe that other sims did individual things better, but SVGA Harrier seemed to stand pretty much alone in providing the overall package that it did.

"Flight Unlimited" by Looking Glass. A serious contender on two counts: Firstly, the method of realistic physics modelling implemented by Seamus Blackley, which to the best of my knowledge was absolutely unique for PC-based flight sims at the time. Secondly, the fully-textured terrain -- another first, AFAIK -- which made it the best-looking flight sim the PC had ever seen by miles. At least if you ignored the obvious mirrored tiling once you flew high enough (which wasn't very high :) They even included a 1024x768 resolution, which was utterly ludicrous for PCs of the time.

"Flight Unlimited 3" by Looking Glass. The civilian sims in the series (2+3) abandoned Blackley's physics code(*), but added many other advances not seen in any of the competition. Once again the terrain graphics were gorgeous (even if the region modelled was limited); they introduced dynamic air-traffic control; and the dynamic weather in Flight3 bested everything that followed for years (it took Microsoft another three generations of MSFS to come up with something comparable).

(*) I once heard that no one else could understand it after he'd left, but I don't know if that's actually true.

N'Al on 29/4/2010 at 21:54

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Less block quotes (especially of the post before) and massive pics in future, please.