The
Flight Unlimited series of
general aviationGeneral aviation is one of two categories of civil aviation. It refers to all flights other than military and scheduled airline flights, both private and commercial. General aviation flights range from gliders and powered parachutes to large, non-scheduled cargo jet flights...
flight simulatorA flight simulator is a system that tries to copy, or simulate, the experience of flying an aircraft. It is meant to be as realistic as possible...
s for home
PCA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator...
was created by
Looking Glass StudiosLooking Glass Studios was a computer game development company during the 1990s.The company originally formed as Looking Glass Technologies, when Blue Sky Productions and Lerner Research merged....
.
Flight Unlimited
Flight UnlimitedFlight Unlimited is the first of the Flight Unlimited series of General aviation Flight Simulator games created by Looking Glass Studios. It focuses mainly on Aerobatics. It was released in 1995 for DOS and in 1996 for Windows 95 and Macintosh. Notable features are the pioneering physics system,...
is a chiefly
aerobaticAerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in normal flight. Aerobatics are performed in airplanes and gliders for training, recreation, entertainment and sport...
simulator which contained an innovative
fluid dynamicsIn physics, fluid dynamics is a sub-discipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the natural science of fluids in motion. It has several subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics and hydrodynamics...
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
system,
photorealisticPhotorealism is the genre of painting based on making a painting from a photograph. The term is primarily applied to paintings from the United States photorealism art movement that began in the late 1960s, early 1970s.-Style and history:...
3D terrain mesh, and airborne hoops courses.
Flight Unlimited II
Flight Unlimited IIFlight Unlimited II is the second game of the Flight Unlimited series of general aviation flight simulators created by Looking Glass Studios, acclaimed for their sophisticated physics and pioneering gameplay features. It was released in 1997. The game was preceded by Flight Unlimited and followed...
is a civilian flight sim with a pioneering photorealistic mesh terrain representation of the
San Francisco Bay AreaThe San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, or the Yay Area, is a metropolitan region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses large cities such as San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and...
, and unrivalled (for the time) early implementations of real-time
air traffic controlAir traffic control is a service provided by ground-based controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and in the air. The primary purpose of ATC systems worldwide is to separate aircraft to prevent collisions, to organize and expedite the flow of traffic, and to provide information and other...
communication and vectoring, for the player and the realistic non-player-controlled air traffic.
Flight Unlimited III
Flight Unlimited IIIFlight Unlimited III was the third and last of the Flight Unlimited series of General aviation flight simulators created by Looking Glass Studios, released in 1999. It included ten user-flyable aircraft in total, and several new features...
is a civilian flight sim set in the
SeattleSeattle is located in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Situated in the western part of Washington State on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, about south of the Canada – United States border, it is named after Chief Sealth, of the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes...
region, similar to
Flight Unlimited II but with improved
graphicsGraphics are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples are photographs, drawings, Line Art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or...
,
weatherWeather is a set of all the phenomena occurring in a given atmosphere at a given time. Weather phenomena lie in the troposphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate is the term for the average atmospheric conditions over longer periods...
systems, seasonal changes and more player-flyable aircraft. It includes a scenery editor, and is customisable with a number of user-made
modsMod or modification is a term generally applied to PC games, especially first-person shooters, RPGs and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and require the user to have the...
and add-ons available freely on the Internet.
Flight Combat: Thunder Over Europe
Flight Combat: Thunder Over Europe was a largely unrelated
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
bomber sim based on the ZOAR engine used in the first and second games, was cancelled when Looking Glass Studios went out of business in 2000. The game was later reworked and released as
Jane's Attack SquadronJane's Attack Squadron is a World War II flight simulator computer game for the PC. It was created by Looking Glass Studios, then finished by Mad Doc Software. It was published by Xicat Interactive, Inc.. It was released in the North America on March 22, 2002.-Gameplay:In Jane's Attack Squadron,...
, when
Electronic ArtsElectronic Arts is an international developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers responsible...
took over as publisher (a move which also necessitated a new ground-attack focus to the game). It was subsequently picked up by Mad Doc Software who had hired several of the original development team, and was released in March 2002 by Xicat Interactive, Inc., albeit in a bug-ridden and altogether
unfinishedAn unfinished work is a creative work that has not been finished. Its creator might have chosen never to finish it, or have been prevented by circumstances outside of his or her control . Such pieces are often the subject of speculation as to what the finished piece would have been like; sometimes...
state.