Oh this takes me back. I remember myself wasting a lot of time on a mostly text based bomber simulator on C64 (which I can't remember then name of) as an elementary schoolkid and most of the time having no idea what I was doing. But I was fascinated by the interactive illusion. How shocked and amazed I was when I got my hands on [Harrier Combat Simulator] that was my first time seeing realtime 3d graphics. That game ran a lot better on my friends powerful atari with the tiny floppy disks. Kinda miss the time I was as starry eyed about all the possibilities of computers, then again I was very very young.
Yeah, back then we couldn't believe how good it looked... Now, we can't believe we ever had to cope with these horrible graphics.
I wonder when, not if, we will have affordable, photorealistic simulators in VR.