I considered myself lucky to have witnessed the birth and evolution of PC Flight Simulators.
Back then in the mid 80's I had my hands on the first ever Flight Simulator by Bruce Artwick on a TRS 80, then Sublogic on the first PC (DOS, 4.77MHz, 256K RAM).
You needed creative imagination back then to augment what you saw and perceived on the screen as "cockpit" - basically all lines in white (or 3 colors CGA) with frame rate of only 3-4fps!
Suffice to say, I have ALL versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator since ver1 thru FSX.... and needless to say I had spent thousands of $$$ on PC hardware upgrades, software addons etc. anything you can do (if I had to break the bank) to make sims run smooth.... all through the years and more often than not, It was always disappointing seeing at performance issues - there were lots of wishlists, something computer hardware had to always catch up with the software like flight sim demands. But It was "fun". I had all the flight sims that came out, including military ones.
I left the sims for more than a decade now (Life gets in the way). I have said I had given up on "chasing" flight sims UNTIL that day comes when I don't have to break a bank to get a PC fast enough to satisfy to make a sim fluid enough like IRL.
And then Aerofly FS2 came along. I just came across it in youtube. I was skeptical at first, but seeing those I had to try it and see for myself. And what a game changer it is!!!! I can't f*****g believe the experience. I really must say this is a milestone. My PC is getting really outdated - i7 3770k @3.5GHz, 650Ti Boost 2Gig, 8G RAM - something that is already considered low-mid setup by today's standards.... but boy oh boyll.... at 2560x1440 res AFS2 runs like butter!! I had always wished the Extra 300 in FSX would at least give me smoothness that came closer to how it manuevers in real life.. but seeing it in action in AFS2 with my mid-low PC setup is beyond awesome!!! Now I am back, spending late nights with it, and I am looking forward to Aerofly FS2 bright future! I will support it all the way.
Sorry for the long post.. I got carried away LOL!!!