Exactly ten years ago this very day...

[tubemad]

I had the box version but the disc was damaged some time after so I snapped it in half and threw it away. Then I got the DVD boxed version.

When I had the original, I was amazed by the NEC, S&C, Marias Pass...but since then both the American versions have been re-vamped and put the MS versions to shame and then I realised half the S&C was wrong.
They claim the Flying Scotsman was recorded from the real 4472...but the whistle sounds wrong and as for the carriages..I'd like to know what the hell they recorded, as it sounds nothing like a bogie coach!!

After a short while I discovered James Hunts amazing 08, HST and DMU's and of course the Modern England. Since then graphics and routes have improved and I have never touched the default routes at all, they can go to hell


I believe MSTS was released in a rush as there was competition with the first release of Trainz at the time?

[steam4me]

In mid-2001 I was contacted by a Microsoft Australia representative, offering me a copy of MSTS I'd been running a railfan-based web page for several years. I agreed to have a look and a few days later, the Flying Scotsman box arrived in the mail at or just before release in Australia.

I think Microsoft got repaid many times over in publicity and support for their simulator since that date, thanks to the contributors I hosted on the steam4me site - over 3 million visitors in 10 years.

Sometimes, when you plant seeds, you have no idea of how much you will harvest.

"From little things, big things grow" (apologies to Paul Kelly and Messengers - it's actually the title of a song about indigenous land rights).

[mickrik]

Hi Yuri,

A lot of credit for the long life of MSTS has got to got to websites such as your steam4me and UKTS plus a host of others dotted around the world.

With such sites offering advice forums where we can swap ideas, get tuition, obtain 3rd party software wether it would be freeware or payware.

So thanks Yuri, UKTS and a host of other foreign sites for supporting MSTS without you, MSTS would never have got to 10 years old.

Mick

[rufuskins]

Hi Yuri,

A lot of credit for the long life of MSTS has got to got to websites such as your steam4me and UKTS plus a host of others dotted around the world.

With such sites offering advice forums where we can swap ideas, get tuition, obtain 3rd party software wether it would be freeware or payware.

So thanks Yuri, UKTS and a host of other foreign sites for supporting MSTS without you, MSTS would never have got to 10 years old.

Mick

Hear! Hear!

Well said that man!

Alec

[steveenefer]

Have to confess my copy wasnt bought for me it was bought for my lad who at the time was two and seemed interested in trains so my dad thought it would be a grand idea to have on the computer ... sadly he wasnt interested and my intrest in railways had waned by that point but after a few years i picked it up and stumbled accross ukts looking for something better than the dah 9 and gp38 to run and alas around 9 years later here we are and still my son doesnt like it lol

[CWill]

I'm well behind the lot of you guys!

I got my copy of MSTS for Christmas in 2007. It was around $7 as by this point Atari had taken over distribution in the U. S. (Happy Independence Day by the way; hope you Brits aren't still mad about that! ) I found Yuri's site a few months before I found UKTS and unlocked a whole new world of MSTS through both. Thanks goes to all the modellers and activity writers and troubleshooters who put their effort into trying to provide qualilty (free) add-ons for MSTS. May it live on another 10 years!

[dave13]

I got my copy of MSTS in 2005 in Hereford and use it still a lot!!

(Happy Independence Day by the way; hope you Brits aren't still mad about that! )

I got married on Independence day in 1998 LOL
Dave:)

[3digitdriver]

I imported my copy from the States and recieved it on July 3rd, just after it came out in the US. I seem to remember that it cost me about £15 less then if I'd have waited and bought it in the UK!!

So I guess my 10 year anniversary will be tommorow (Sunday 3rd).

I made my first add-ons in August 2001 (Ffestiniog Rly loco Prince, a couple of Ffestiniog coaches and a slate wagon). Although, they wern't actually released on Trainsimfiles until September. I think these may possibly have been the first Narrow Gauge addons for MSTS.

I still have it installed on my old backup computer that I bought at the same time as MSTS.

I also recently reinstalled it on my current computer, just to see what it was like (from the original disks)

As you say this was the days before UKTS. In those days we used to use Trainsimfiles. What happy memories that brings back

I've managed to find a picture of my first model :-



Built in August 2001. I was so proud of that model when I first managed to get it to run in MSTS, particularly as I had never done any 3D modelling before. I don't think I've ever had the same "excitement" with any other model, as I had with that one.

Cheers,

kevin

ive got a lot to thank you for and youre great Ffestiniog models as this is how i originally found MSTS. I started off in the train sim world with Trainz utc which was given to me as a present. Being a fan of the Ffestiniog railway i soon found some great Ffestiniog addons for it. I also noticed lots of MSTS downloads too so i thought id buy a copy and give them a go too. Then did a bit more searching around and found UKTS and wow a massive selection of quality addons. That was it i was hooked Its brought many ups and downs since then, sometimes being so frustrated with it for alwayse managing to find somthing wrong and give you errors all the time. To then being really pleased with it when an activity comes out just perfect and then taking some great screenshots. Its amazing how far the game has come since it first realised and how popular it still is with a great community here . Long may it live as in my view its still the best.

[terrycunliffe]

I've still got my original discs. Purchased in July 2001, at a cost of (I think) £24.99 from PC World. I've lost count of the number of PC's that I've run it on over the years, but is currently installed on my desk PC (XP Pro) and 2 different lap tops, one running XP, the other Win7.

I've also got a back-up copy under the xplosive label. I think that I paid a around a fiver for that. It's packaging is still intact.

[ianmacmillan]

I only bought MSTS when Woolies had it discounted to £5.

When MSTS came out I went to PC world and was unimpress by the 6foot high poster of Flying Scotsman at the door.
I left empty handed.

A friend at work did buy it but soon tired of it and gave me his copy along with some 3DTS disks and a tecnical program I didn't understand.

My real interest was not kindled until I visited the Brighton model railway show and discovered UKTS.

Wow - an HST on a British route (Mid East)
I logged on and my life changed.

My interests at the time were photo editing and 00 finescale modelling, especially wagons.
It did not take long before I was repainting MSTS models.

I dug out my old disks and realised the tecnical program I had ignored was TSM.

The rest is history.

[qzdcg8]

update - missed it, but on 10th October last week it was 10 years to the day that the first tiles of the Woodhead Route first popped out of the RGE

[mstsbe]

For me, the tenth year in MSTS was some weeks ago. I bought my copy in April 2002, and became member of the now defunct MSTrainstop forum on 1 May 2002. That's how I remember it.

Back then, I ran it on my Pentium III 450 Mhz, 64 MB RAM and an ATI Rage Pro with 8MB VRAM and Windows 98 First edition. Later updated the graphics card to a GeForce 3 Ti 200, was already a lot faster. Then followed a P4 3GHz with Win XP, a Q6600 with Vista/later Win 7 32-bit. And my current system since a few months, a Core i7-2600 with 12GB RAM, Radeon HD 6850 and Win 7 x64.