I always wondered how it worked. It seems to me that with its limited hardware, it can only display ground features, not whole 3D surroundings. Am I completely wrong? Is it something like this?
it was really basic (but awesome for its time). You basically flew over a flat grid - literally a grid - so the only thing "3d" about it was that you could see this 3d grid rotating and moving about. At one edge of the grid was a 2D "mountain" which was orthogonal to the ground-grid.
I found a screenshot here: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/39/85/9c/39859c5ccf2e08207f72...
If memory serves, one of the grid boxes in the top-left of that image contains the enemy base. You could dogfight against two other planes.
I mean... they were single pixel planes.
I think that TRS80 "graphics resolution" was 128x48 so you know. It would probably fit inside the letter O on today's hardware. Which is pretty cool when you think about it.
Here's another link with lots of screenshots:
I actually learned to fly IRL (didn’t finish my PPL sadly - maybe one day) but I learned to land properly by spending hours and hours and hours in X-Plane on my laptop, with a proper yoke and pedals.
My instructor couldn’t believe how much I had improved in just a week.
I was also really good with instrument flying :)