Yeah, Flight Unlimited won't run in W2K. It also won't run in W98SE on a processor above, like, 266MHz. The weird thing is that it's a DOS/4GW error. The sad thing is that they've embedded DOS/4GW into the executable, so we can't hotswap them.

It does work in win98SE with a CPU greater than 266MHz - my 1GHz athlon runs it fine. Only snag is my joystick software (logitech stick) although it works with proggies that run in a dosbox, the calibration is screwed making it unuseable. Its for that reason I'm trying to get FU to run under win2k with VMS as the the same stick works fine with other dos games.

Oh well

Now got Aces Of the Deep running under win2k and VMS. A real classic.

Don't have the game but have you tried the NOLFB hack posted in the "Deep Thought" forum? This enables VESA modes for games that support fallback to Vesa 1.2...which I doubt Flight Unlimited does.

Can you try this game under Windows XP? For GF3/GF4 cards XP supports access to a "few" more VESA modes than 2K does....but I'm betting that your best solutio will be to play the game in Real DOS...or try out Connectix Virtual PC! http://www.connectix.com

Tanyrhiew wrote:

It does work in win98SE with a CPU greater than 266MHz - my 1GHz athlon runs it fine.

Wha? How'd you manage that? It didn't run on my 700MHz Athlon with 98SE... and it doesn't run on my 1533MHz Athlon with 2000!

Just thought I'd post to point out that Flight Unlimited 1 (the DOS version although there was a Windows 95 version of FU1 which I haven't tried) doesn't work with GeForce cards AFAIK.

To fix this I have to use two utilities from here-
http://unirefresh.demonews.com/videoproblems/index.html
and this is when running under DOS.

I doubt that FU1 will run under NT/2k/XP since, like System Shock 1 and Terra Nova, it was written by the team at Looking Glass. They were simply so far ahead of their time that they drove DOS to its very limits. And, in doing so, created some classic games that are not going to behave politely under XP and the like whatever you do.

That should fix it in Windows 2000/XP, then, too. You'll prolly need NOLFB too. (Just going by the website's description of the fix.)

Er, Colin, this is a Deep Thought-type solution, or should be, IMHO.

[EDIT]
That is, if that's the only problem, a VESA issue. Still, test out this solution in 2000/XP, guys.

I'd been starting to look into this a few months ago, hadn't finished thinking about it.

[EDIT AGAIN]

When I said I was looking into this, I meant his UVBELIB fix! Whoops, sorry! Anyhow, at the bottom of the page:

Problem games Game: Solution: Flight Unlimited I by Looking Glass […]
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Problem games
Game: Solution:
Flight Unlimited I by Looking Glass

Use VESA12 if the game does not run at all.
Use 6bitDAC if the game looks real dark.

Interesting what VESA12 does, guys:

This program lets the VESA bios report that it supports VESA VBE 1.2. This will prevent other applications to use higher version […]
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This program lets the VESA bios report that it supports VESA VBE 1.2. This will prevent other applications to use higher versions of VESA VBE. Linear video modes and the protected mode interface are not supported with VESA 1.2 so every problem that is caused by using linear video modes or the PM interface are prevented by this tool.

You can use this program if you can't get an application to work properly with your video card.
Flight Unlimited I from Looking Glass running on a GeForce2 GTS suffered from a problem which is fixed by running vesa12.com.

Note: this tool does not give your card VESA support, it only degrades the VBE from a higher version to VESA VBE 1.2.

Simply run the program to install. For uninstallation simply run it a second time. It can't uninstall if you have loaded another TSR that hooks the video interrupt.

Cool. So it's NOLFB written years ahead of Ken. It's a DOS TSR, though. Maybe NOLFB works better in Windows NT, I have no idea. Test guys, test! (It's too bad you can't have VBE 2.0 or 3.0 support, though.)

As for 6bitDAC, that is also interesting:

With many VGA cards the RAMDAC (which turns the information from the video memory into video signals) can be switched from 6bit […]
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With many VGA cards the RAMDAC (which turns the information from the video memory into video signals) can be switched from 6bit (the default setting with VESA VBE video modes) to 8bit per primary color with 256 color video modes. The advantage from this is that an application can choose from 4 times as many colors; it can use 256 colors at once out of a gamma of 16M colors instead of a gamma of 256k colors.
6bitdac simply let the VESA bios report that it is not capable of switching to an 8bit DAC.
Why would you want to do this, since this limits the amount of colors?
Some games like Flight Unlimited I from Looking Glass have buggy support for the 8bit DAC. Flight Unlimited I switches the DAC to 8bits per primary color, but it does not reprogram the DAC with proper 8bit values which result in a very dark image. Loading 6bitDAC before running Flight Unlimited I will prevent the game from switching the DAC to 8bit which effectively solves the problem of the dark screen.

Another neat, well-done fix. It's too bad Rob hasn't worked on these utilities in a while, testing under Windows, etc.! 😀

Two more final notes.

1. Make sure you've updated FU with the latest v2.4 patch.
http://www.patches-scrolls.de

2. All this advice, up til' now, has been for the DOS version. However, searching the web turned up "Flight Unlimited for Windows 95". I'm told that this uses DirectX. If you can find it, NTCompatible says it worked in NT 4.0, ergo it should work now. But good luck trying to find it to purchase! All I've found so far is a demo version.

I wonder if there was a patch or a 'send-in-your-old-disc-and-we'll-give-you-a-new-one' upgrade to the Windows version...
...maybe someone will read this and upload it? (hint,hint 😉)

I have Flight Unlimited from http://www.classic-trash.com and it worked almost ok under my W98 Duron 850 Riva TNT2.But the game crashed when i clicked leson "landing" and higher(free flight worked).Without any error mesage,just falled to windows.Now the game crashes every time,when i click any flight leson or free flight(have GeForce2),but i have 2nd computer with Celeron 333 Riva TNT2 SoundBlaster16(same error).Menu works at both computers.I have no idea whats wrong.Maybe version.Does anybody else have same version?

Try running the vesa12 and 6bitdac files I've pointed to above before running the game. You'd probably have to reboot to get them out of memory after playing the game in Windows though.

This game really cries out to be run in DOS mode outside of Windows 98. If you have DOS mouse, CD-ROM and sound drivers installed then you can just create a shortcut to the game's bat file and right-click it. Go through Program and Advanced and select restart in DOS and fill in the required autoexec.bat and config.sys fields. Then drag the shortcut to somewhere useful and give it a suitable name.

Oh alright. It's a bit of a steep learning curve if you don't know what you're doing! But there's no better way to run these older games...😁

Snover wrote:

I wonder if there was a patch or a 'send-in-your-old-disc-and-we'll-give-you-a-new-one' upgrade to the Windows version...
...maybe someone will read this and upload it? (hint,hint 😉)

Not that I know of.

Here's the demo.
http://www.5star-shareware.com/Games/Flight/f … d-download.html

Looks like it was illegally copied, tho':
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6v5d06%2 … news2.xs4all.nl

Look! Panzer General/Win95 is listed too! cool...

ANNND his email address is current. *cough cough*

Sorry, what? I can't read that. 😜

See? Ray knows English - http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=tHjE7.43 … ws03.chello.com

Follow the path of the searcher:
1. www.google.com/search?q="tijgert@hotmail.com"
2. http://www.guru3d.com/guide/quadro-modify/index5.shtml (search for "tijgert")
3. http://fly.to/flightrage -> http://www.xs4all.nl/~eikelman/
4. Contact page!

And see, now we know more than one email address, and much more besides!

Learn wisely, grasshopper... <bows>

And it doesn't hurt to ask these people (http://www.xs4all.nl/~eikelman/) about that stuff (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6v5d06%2 … news2.xs4all.nl)

So give it a shot. But "VOGONS is by no means responsible for this post, and there is nothing knowingly illegal in this post." 😀