Interesting thread indeed,
for me I was interested in flying games since child.
first flying game I remember was from chinese 8 bit console games, there were one game that shoots in 3rd person view in wwii I think it was corsair but at that time I didn't know which plane it was anyway
Generally I'm into wwii and made toy models myself like t34, fighters russian (didn't know indivual types so my model was universal more like La similar to russian) and bf109, russian late war commercial plane An-2. ...etc
later I in search for fight games and found free FighterAce.. on internet.
This is the first combat flight game I've ever tried.
Then interested and looked for another but this time i bought Desert Storm I don't remember exactly cause back those days I play with keyboards
gameplay was terrible for me and I'm not into jets
Then I search for best games on interent and found IL2 reviews so I moved on since then I'm an IL2 series fan but when I found it was already 1946 then.
Now I have Clod and gonna buy all series regardless of current states of this game
yes i've tried wings of prey and rof. but all I want is IL2s