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Star Raiders's concept of environment was a lot more limited than FS-1 because you had to jump from one "block" to the next, whereas FS-1 had a fluid line drawing representation of airports and scenery throughout a large world. More FS-1 history here. If you are going old school on "3D", how about StarHawk (1979) or Night Driver? (1976)

What, you mean SubLogic Flight Simulator that MS bought in the 80's and rebranded?

http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsh/fsii.htm

Anybody know where he is/what he is doing?

Anybody know where he is/what he is doing?

You're in luck -- there is a whole site devoted to the history of Flight Simulator.
http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsh/artwick.htm

Visio was started in 1990. You are saying that Visio wanted to sell themselves to MS PRIOR to MS buying up companies? That is called urban myths.

Likewise, Flight sim was started in 1980 for Apple II's. It had NOTHING to do with MS. So you are suggesting that Bruce Artwick did Flight Sim in 1980 KNOWNING that MS would be running around buying up companies?

In fact, rather than putting out garbage facts, take a closer look at the dot.coms. The companies that did well are those that did NOT go down the MS path; Google, Yahoo; Amazon; etc. The numerous companies who survived AND used MS where those that had a real storefront combind with a virtual one. Plain and Simple, the vast majority of those that went under were MS, even though windows never accounts for more than 50% of all webs (and IIS throughout the 90s as in the 10-15% level). If anything, MS is a good predicator of impending failure. In fact, if you are doing something inovative, and you are on Windows, MS is far less likely to buy you than if you are running something with OSS. Consider the cases for all the anti-virus that MS bought. All were on Linux. All the Windows based ones, MS is about to put out of business, rather than buy them. See a pattern there? I do.

Flight Sim - Started out on the Apple II, originally produced by subLogic. http://fshistory.simflight.com/fsh/timeline.htm

ActiveX - Not sure, but wasn't it supposed to be an alternative to Java in an attempt to derail Netscape/Sun? Not exactly innovative then...

Legal attrition - By your own admission, neither a product nor particularly innovative. I don't think we've seen the full depths Microsoft will sink to by a long way yet. But then, there are other companies equally prepared to sink to pretty disgusting depths - http://www.percyschmeiser.com/

Admin/User confusion - I'm not sure that this qualifies as "successful", unless you mean that Microsoft deliberately set out to build a security and administration model which was complicated, inconsistent and illogical and succeeded in this aim.

Active Directory - Or, as the rest of the world calls it, LDAP. It's an X.500 hierarchical database - not exactly a new and innovative idea. Integrating it with the innards of the operating system (rather than just providing a security API so others can integrate what they want, a la pam on Unix) is perhaps innovative - I s'pose you can have a half for that one.

Or as I learned it, with double the irony! "It ain't really an IBM PC compatible until it runs Microsoft Flight Simulator".

Flight Simulator for the Apple II and TRS-80 came out in 1980.

http://fshistory.simflightcom/fsh/index.htm (pops).

Battlezone was in the arcades in 1980.

Microsoft has done pretty well on Flight Simulator over the years too.

Microsoft was a pioneer in writing flight sims.

What? Microsoft marketed Flight Simulator. It was originally created by a company called SubLOGIC, and later by BAO.

Maybe it doesn't attract the same people as Mario- but they've also got Flight Simulator. Personally I have never gotten into it- but an amazing number of people have.

Flight Simulator was originally developed by SubLOGIC Corporation in 1979. Complete history available, as well as other stuff like Artwick's history (as far as I can tell, he works for Microsoft these days, ever since selling Bruce Artwick Organization to Microsoft). All the box designs are also available. Man, I was hooked on that Apple ][ version.

Flight Simulator was originally developed by SubLOGIC Corporation in 1979. Complete history available, as well as other stuff like Artwick's history (as far as I can tell, he works for Microsoft these days, ever since selling Bruce Artwick Organization to Microsoft). All the box designs are also available. Man, I was hooked on that Apple ][ version.