One of the closest experiences to flying this thing came in 1991, in the form of "F-117A Stealth Fighter" PC game, made by MicroProse. It was a masterpiece for its time in terms of the detailed console one had to learn to fly this. If you never play the game, you should just consider flipping through the incredible manual: http://www.abandonia.com/files/extras/25631_game_extra_1.pdf
The game and the manual had a ton of jargon that one had to learn to play the game, adding to the feeling of being in a real sim :) The section on evasion and defense systems was especially charming (Basically, this game was a dream for a kid who was into PC games and flying sims).
The paper version that came with the box explained tons of small details about the plane e.g. how radar absorption paint works (I learned later from a documentary that F-117 had to be repainted after every mission, making maintenance very expensive).
Two highlights of the gameplay were: a) landing on an aircraft carrier and b) learning capabilities of different types of missiles and how to deploy them (i.e. one was forced to read the manual!).
When I hear about F-117, I can't help remember this hidden-gem PC game.
Oh, MicroProse. They did make a lot of good games, even if often underappreciated. I have strong feelings of nostalgia to some of the titles of theirs, that I used to play as a kid. In fact, I recently wasted couple of hours trying to get one of the old games (Star Trek: Generations) to run - and in the process I learned that it's quite hard to emulate a Windows 95 machine these days.
Also, manuals in XX century were great. They were often decent books by themselves, full of information and lore. Somehow, this concept was abandoned around 2000 +/- couple years (StarCraft, from 1998, originally had a small-book-sized manual with details and stories; that's the last one of this kind that I remember.).
>Also, manuals in XX century were great. They were often decent books by themselves, full of information and lore. Somehow, this concept was abandoned around 2000 +/- couple years
Very interesting point. I wonder why did this happen? I believe the manuals/books with backstory/guides that came with the box, added to the engagement with the game. Why did they go away? Seems like a needless regression :)
Sometimes I lament that the entire character of PC games changed as well during the same timeframe, as they become more console-ish/FPS-style, rather than adventure/puzzle/strategy/sim style. But then I remember that probably every generation romanticizes the good old days. Technology advancement explains the shift to FPS (better game engines, graphics cards, leading to more immersive worlds and movie-like narratives + multiplayer is exciting), but doesn’t explain the death of the game “manual/novel/book” :)
> Very interesting point. I wonder why did this happen? I believe the manuals/books with backstory/guides that came with the box, added to the engagement with the game. Why did they go away? Seems like a needless regression :)
I remember it happened around the time of the CD-ROM and the digitization of manuals as PDF files simply dropped on the disc. Then, economy.
> Very interesting point. I wonder why did this happen? I believe the manuals/books with backstory/guides that came with the box, added to the engagement with the game. Why did they go away? Seems like a needless regression :)
I forget the source for this but it boiled down to:
- Apparently lots of people didn't read the manuals
- Game designers started using intro levels to teach the player what to do.
Personally, I LOVED the MicroProse manuals and was always super excited when I unboxed a new game and would spend hours reading all the details and stories (the games were awesome too).
> (better game engines, graphics cards, leading to more immersive worlds and movie-like narratives + multiplayer is exciting)
I strongly disagree that better game engines, graphic cards led to more immersive worlds and movie-like narratives. It's like saying Marvel movies are more immersive and have better narratives than pre-fx movies.
You may be right. I just don’t know why the old style pc games died. I just attempted one possible explanation —- For sure there is more to it.
it just seems to me that LucasArts (adventure games like Monkey Island), MicroProse, Sierra, Westwood, Firaxis, Brøderbund etc just died in a span of 10 years and PC games just never got back to their older style.
Nobody said "realistic." But higher-quality graphics (in a realistic style or not) are obviously more immersive. There's more to graphic quality than tech, but tech is a major factor.
Might be a Blizzard thing, I remember the original WoW box (the 5 CDs version) came with a small-book sized manual (200 pages or so, IIRC) with lore and explanations for the various classes, races, skills.
The battle chests (base game + expansion pack) also came with a detailed guide to all the new content, with leveling guides for the new areas, raid guides for the new bosses etc - though I don't think those were made by Blizzard, they just bundled them in the box.
I'll always remember it as F-19 Stealth Fighter :) (Microprose issued a patch shortly after release to correct the name, 3D model, and a "realistic" mode to conform to actual payload specs)
F19 was the first version. I still have the box somewhere. The f117 verson came out a year later. There was more to it, new areas, new art and new game concepts.
Both games were noted for the quality of the AI, ground and air units working together.
Which was a total coup. Everyone had expected it to be called the F-19 as 14->18 had already been used. And many still question the "F" as it is purely a light bomber, not in any way a deserving of "fighter" status. The F-111 at least started as a fighter. So F-117 really made no sense then or now.
I recently wondered this myself. The best I could determine from Wikipedia [1] of what's known publicly is that it's seemingly an artifact of when the project began. The theory being that it was allotted a designation before the "Century Series" ended in the 1960s. (Further suggesting that other secret projects for F112-F116 were also allotted designations.)
At least with small arms, often the "missing" model numbers are either 1)one-off, special purpose purchases for a single service, or 2)something uninteresting. For example, at least 1 issued "pistol" prior to the M9 was a flare gun. The M3 Carbine, ostensibly the "predecessor" to today's M4, was a WW2/Korea night-sight-equipped M1 Carbine.
With aircraft, I assume the trend is similar, with the "missing" numbers being trials aircraft or testing designs.
There are F-105 and F-111 that are ground attack aircraft like the F-117. I think part of it was to hide the capabilities of the aircraft from other nations. Cf. SEAL Team Six
The numbering system was reset in 1962 as part of a bigger change, unifying aircraft designations across all the service branches. Some aircraft designated prior to this kept their designation, while others changed. Soviet aircraft obtained by the US for test and evaluation were often given designations >100 so they could be referenced internally without giving away what they really were, as the evaluation program was classified.
As for the F-117; fighters are generally regarded as sexier and more attractive than attack, bombers, cargo or other types. By calling it a fighter the USAF reckoned that recruitment would be easier and also that it's real purpose would be obfuscated. This is also the reason for the number; by giving a high number they indicated that this was an airplane designed prior to 1962 which never became anything.
F-104 is Vietnam era, as far as I remember. But then the F-14 was developed in the 80s. I would certainly buy into the theory that the point is to confuse the enemy.
The F-104 is almost Korean war era; its maiden flight was in 1954, it entered active service in the late fifties and remained operational at least into the early eighties in some countries - my uncle was conscripted as a mechanic on the Starfighter for the Royal Norwegian Air Force in 1979-1980. They were phasing in the F-16 at the time, so probably retired the F-104 shortly thereafter.
-I was two years old at the time and only know this from photo albums, I'm afraid; he got out of the air force at first opportunity and started working on the 727/737 for a commercial carrier instead.
I still never fail to get an interesting story or two from his AF days whenever we meet, though - trusting stuff like the Starfighter to a bunch of twenty-somethings is basically ASKING for lots of close shaves growing into very tall tales...
I recommend the Designer Notes podcast episode [1] where Sid Meier (yes, that Sid Meier) explains how this game was designed. And if you are interested, listen all of the four episodes where he is interviewed.
Sid Meier started his career with a string of flight sim titles. That's how he got to be a big enough name to start calling things "Sid Meier's X." (Which Microprose originally did with Pirates because they were worried all their die-hard flight sim fans would be turned off; Sid's name was supposed to reassure them.)
Really interesting bit of history. Thanks for sharing. (I remember Pirates! — what a great game that was. Vividly remember the opening graphics on my friend’s new 486 with a 16-bit VGA card. It looked stunning.)
Those old flying games had some serious manuals. I remember getting my copy of Flight Simulator for the C64 at the same time I was learning to fly actual planes. The game manuals (plural) were actually thicker than the training materials for my Private Pilot's License.
> a) landing on an aircraft carrier
Interestingly, the real life F117 can't land on aircraft carriers, only the game version could. And in the game you can also shoot at air targets and even have machine guns for dog fights, in real life it's just a plane that bombs targets on the ground.
The F-19 air-to-air missions were some of the most intense gameplay I've ever experienced. You had to fly deep into Soviet territory and kick off the war by shooting down an airborne command plane or an airborne early warning plane, and then make it out alive as World War 3 literally started around you.
Some of the DCS planes are study sim level (The A-10C Warhog, The KA-50 BlackShark, Mirage 2000, Viggten etc.) and the Hornet is going to join them (It is currently in beta and not complete).
"Study Sim" here means that you could learn the game using the real life documentation for the real aircraft. (Although they do have game specific guides).
A cheap'ish HOTAS (EDIT: See
llimllib's comment below, the last link has examples. A Thrustmaster T-16000M is about 100 bucks ) is all you need harware wise.
> HOTAS, an acronym of Hands On Throttle-And-Stick, is the name given to the concept of placing buttons and switches on the throttle lever and flight control stick in an aircraft's cockpit, allowing pilots to access vital cockpit functions and fly the aircraft without having to remove their hands from the controls. Application of the concept was pioneered with the Ferranti AIRPASS radar and gunsight control system used by the English Electric Lightning[1][2] and is widely used on all modern fighter aircraft such as the F-16 Fighting Falcon, the A-10A/A-10C and others.
Meaning, in this context, that you have a joystick and throttle with like 17 buttons each hooked up to your computer
I played DCS A-10C a few years ago. It's such an incredibly detailed sim that I barely managed to do anything more than get the plane started and in the air.
It would've been much easier if I had a couple of touch screens to simulate the cockpit controls. Trying to click on all the buttons or remember the keyboard shortcuts was impossible.
I did have a joystick and throttle at the time from playing FSX, MS Combat Flight Simulator, and Battlefield 3. I just found it a bit overwhelming to try and fly and click on all the cockpit buttons at the same time.
True for me too. I remember that game. Reading the manuals for all the Jane's and Microprose's games, and taking them very seriously, was definitely a childhood highlight.
> what is the best way to play this game on a MacBook
It appears as if the gog version of the game is the original with a bundled DOSBox, so you very likely can grab the gamefiles and DOSBox configuration from theirs and use it with a DOSBox installation on your system.
I just bought a relatively cheap ($70 CAD) HOTAS setup at a local retailer a couple of weeks ago. I’m not at home and don’t remember whether it was Logitech or Thrustmaster, but it’s a great setup for playing X-Plane. If I wanted to be more realistic, I should have bought a yoke and pedals, but that was more in the $200+ range and I’m not sufficiently committed... yet.
If you're still really into this stuff. And want to relive the feeling of this module or Jane's F-18, another great simulator from the 90s. Definitely check out Digital Combat Simulator and it's awesome high fidelity modules. Expect 600 page flight manuals to dig through. It's a rush!
Another big highlight of the game was their (for the time and platform) pretty good RCS modeling of ownship against various threats. Your movements against the threat would change the threat's ability to see you. Opening weapons bay doors caused your RCS to spike.
In 1991 I was immersed in Falcon 3.0. The incredibly vivid F-16 flight simulator. It was very similar. You really needed to learn aviation jargon, weapons and countermeasures capabilities and mission tactics.
I always looked forward to a future where Falcon 4.0's offspring were played on superfast PCs with incredible graphics. I was really annoyed when that genre of flight sims basically died off. The last I played was EF2000.
I’m of two minds on this. I loved the original Falcon on the Amiga (it actually talked! “Pull Up! Pull Up!”). I thought I wanted more and more realism. But at the same time I feel like all the sims lost their way trying to be too realistic. I was a huge avaiation buff as a kid. I loved flight sims. But it all stopped being fun when I had to learn so much just to play. It turns out ramming the afterburners and chasing down bad guys is a lot more fun when you don’t have to worry about scraping the engine on the runway on takeoff.
This was a truly great game. Thanks for these links. Many hours were spent flipping switches and not really understanding how to fly this thing but it was all so cool anyway.
I used to play Jane's USAF all the time. Jane's was seemingly the industry standard for accuracy. It is actually pretty sad that no good air combat simulators exist anymore. Ace Combat was good in the 90s/early 2000s, then it transformed into some weird anime thing later on with a story line when I really just wanted to be Maverick. Maybe the new Top Gun movie coming out will renew interest.
> It is actually pretty sad that no good air combat simulators exist anymore.
There's several. The problem is that, as hardware got better and the simulations grew ever more accurate, they become too complex for anyone but the most die-hard aviation fans to actually enjoy.
Happy news for you the I guess; Eagle Dynamics just recently announced "Modern Air Combat", which is a friendlier version of their hardcore flagship DCS simulator. Essentially a follow-up on their more game-like LockOn.
Sure, it still might feel bit too much, but if nothing else it represents that they recognize the need for lighter products.
I have long had it in my Steam library from some sale, and your comment finally pushed me to install it. Thanks! The manual is a wonderful read indeed - the introduction reads like a popular science artilce that is written better than most that get posted to HN front page.
Sometime in the early 00's I got to see an aircraft carrier from a light aircraft, at about a circuit height and distance. I never, ever, want to try landing on a real carrier. They're so tiny!
I remember when I got Falcon 3.0. The manual was 250+ pages [1]. Unfortunately for me, my 16MHz 386 just couldn't get the job done. I thought it might be playable with cranked-down details, but it really wasn't. So the manual stoked my imagination for an incredible flight sim on a capable computer.
I personally was a big fan of 688i Hunter-Killer. One of the most realistic sub games ever made, with a 250 page manual that frankly under-explained how a lot of the more technical systems on your boat functioned (I'm still not quite sure when it's a good idea to let out the port/starboard towed arrays!). To get good at the game basically required you to take a crash course in modern submarine warfare.
The original manual was about 200 pages! I can’t find it anywhere online. It goes into tons of other things — like the construction of this plane and dogfighting tactics (even though this plane isn’t designed for it) :)
I had one for the game about the Apache attack helicopter. When you landed after the mission the base asked you a "challenge" which required you to respond correctly or you would be shot down. This was probably a kind of copy protection. The correct response was printed on each page in the manual, one challenge-response per each page!
Yeah, definitely copy protection, as "type in something from page X of the manual" was a standard method these days; but it seems they've managed to fit it nicely in the theme of the game, too.
Got to see one in person at an airshow with my dad back in the late 90s. It was in an random hanger we were checking out. The main door was opened maybe five feet with a gate in front of it and guards were supervising people looking in. We had no idea what to expect. I will never forget looking around the door and there it was, gave me chills. It was the coolest thing I have ever, or will ever see.
As is hackernews tradition, I will now recommend "Skunk Works" by Ben Rich, fantastic book.
I saw one at EAA Airventure 1991. It was flanked by armed guards and, if I recall properly, portions were covered with tarps. It was quite a thing to see. The guard detial definitely made for a vivid memory.
I was at the big RIAT air show in England earlier this month and the pair of USAF F-15s had armed guards whereas the Special Operations Wing Herk, Osprey and Pave Hawk were open for public viewing. That seemed somewhat back-to-front.
I went to an airshow in Oklahoma in 1995 or 1996 while I was still in the Air Force (it was a civilian airshow at Will Rogers airport, not a military airshow) and they had one parked out on static display. I walked under the wing, even touched the bottom of it. We also got a B-2 flyover, land, take-off, flyover, the same year. It was a great show.
Until reading this I had completely forgotten that back in the late 80's during an airshow at Homestead AFB, I walked into an "open" hangar (door was open just enough for me to wiggle through) and climbed up onto an F-16 while my friends were frantically trying to get me to come back out before I got my ass hauled off by the security that for some unknown reason wasn't anywhere nearby.
When I got back out my answer to their "are you nuts?" remarks was "well, they left the door open, what do they expect?"
And, yes, I'm also going to recommend Skunk Works I loved the quote from one of Kelly Johnson's engineers, "that man could see air."
A bloke I was talking to had an interesting theory as to why it was labeled the F-117, despite being a ground attack aircraft rather than a fighter, and the number being out of sequence (everyone was expecting an F-19.
Around the same time as the F-117 aircraft was being developed, Pratt & Whitney PW2000 engine was being developed, which went on to be used in the C-17. The PW2000 was designated by the USAF as the F117 engine. By labelling the F-117 aircraft with the same designation, they were able to hide the development in plain sight. If anyone heard or saw anything about the F-117, they'd assume it was related to the engine, rather than the secret stealth aircraft.
I've never read anything on the internet regarding this theory, but it's an interesting theory nonetheless.
Tanks are called tanks instead of "Caterpillar Machine Gun Destroyers" so the initial design could pretend to be a project related to mobile water tanks which gave an excuse for needing lots of steel plates and engine components.
That story about the F-117/F117 is definitely plausible.
I remember seeing a documentary that had an interview with someone involved in the development who said it was designated F (Fighter) instead of B (Bomber) because it handled more like a fighter than a bomber so they wanted fighter pilots rather than bomber pilots.
No fighter pilot would have applied for the B-117 so F it was.
Don't really believe it but it is a funny thought.
It is an interesting thought, with some precedence. The F-111 Aardvark and the F-105 Thunderchief were labelled as fighter aircraft, but only ever used as bombers.
Theory I've heard was that it was for counterintelligence purposes, but more in the designation of "Fighter" - the thought being that the Soviets wouldn't be as interested in a new black fighter project as they would have been in a similarly black bomber.
Funny, I've heard it's because attack planes are the redheaded stepchild of the air force, and so it's purely a marketing move. DOD and AF brass don't want to fund an attack plane when they can spend money and fancy fighters, and all the pilots want to fly fighter jets.
During the 1990's it was believed [citation needed] that there was a limit on the amount of bomber aircraft the USSR and USA could field. Calling this aircraft a fighter made it not count towards that limit. I actually thought that this was the "well-known" explanation until stumbling upon the uncertainty in this thread.
Fun fact: The F-117 looks like a low-poly model on an underpowered computer because that's exactly what it is. Optimizing the shape to minimize radar cross-section took a whole lot of math, and it got too complex for '70s-era supercomputers unless you stuck with flat surfaces.
The B-2 Spirit stealth bomber was curvier because they had better computers by then.
If anyone is interested, F-117's are on display at Blackbird Park at Palmdale, CA, Nellis Air Force Base north of Las Vegas, Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio, and Nikola Tesla Airport in Belgrade, Serbia (only portions of aircraft).
The Chinese got something amazing out of the junk they bought from the F-117 shot down in Bosnia. This has to be something at least a little like when the U2 went down in USSR. Whatever they got, and reverse engineered, and are putting into their F-35 knock-offs, it has "us" worried, and we have to have tried-and-true countermeasures in place for when China uses those against our assets, or our allies in the next few years.
Politics and "sealed fates" are strange bedfellows.
Interesting how that stuff was apparently known to cause health problems by the people stripping the plane, but it also apparently wasn't to blame for folks getting sick at Groom Lake
Soda blasting? That's a ubiquitous process being performed literally all the time.
Yeah, blasting, grinding, cutting, forging, and dozens of other industrial processes are nasty and messy, but that isn't the hassle. The problem here is secrecy and finding shops with a large enough blasting bay (there are thousands of auto body shops with bays for blasting full size trucks and other large vehicles - literally 15 on Google Maps within half an hour of me) and having laborers with top-secret clearance to do the work. All so 1970s tech can stay a secret.
Doesn't seem likely that they even need to remove it. An F-117 was shot down over Yugoslavia using a modified microwave oven as a lure, and an antiquated Soviet-era anti-aircraft system. Its remains were handed over to the Russians _and_ the Chinese. TL/DR: the nations that we're worried about having the low-RCS paint already have the paint, and whatever was secret about it is secret no longer.
The article supposes that the paints were adapted and improved over time, so the paint on the airframes at retirement could be a decade more advanced, and that on current airframes could be two decades ahead, of that on the aircraft shot down.
Paint, maybe, though unlikely, but the airframe is almost certainly identical to the one that was shot down. The last F-117 was delivered to USAF in 1990. The aforementioned shoot-down was in 1999.
The article links to another article (http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/21914/the-air-force-can...) that explains the difficulty with putting the F-117 or B-2 in museums. Not only does the toxic radar-absorbent paint need to be removed, but also all the secret internal components. Plus parts of the airframe need to be modified to avoid revealing classified features, including the complex radar-evading structure underneath its smooth skin.
As a child of the 80s and 90s, I sort of miss the public unveiling of secret aircraft. It seems like there hasn't been anything matching the mystery of the B-2 or F-117 in a long time.
I would guess that anti-stealth technology has also developed since it first flew. I wonder if the recovery of the wreckage of the F117 shot down over Bosnia can be assumed to have revealed ways to counter its technology?
The game and the manual had a ton of jargon that one had to learn to play the game, adding to the feeling of being in a real sim :) The section on evasion and defense systems was especially charming (Basically, this game was a dream for a kid who was into PC games and flying sims). The paper version that came with the box explained tons of small details about the plane e.g. how radar absorption paint works (I learned later from a documentary that F-117 had to be repainted after every mission, making maintenance very expensive).
Two highlights of the gameplay were: a) landing on an aircraft carrier and b) learning capabilities of different types of missiles and how to deploy them (i.e. one was forced to read the manual!).
When I hear about F-117, I can't help remember this hidden-gem PC game.
Relevant links:
1) Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/328920/F117A_Nighthawk_St...
2) Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-117A_Nighthawk_Stealth_Fight...