No, they were not. Flight Simulator 1 was released for PC in the early 1980s (see 1), and even earlier for Apple II. Consumer graphics cards were not widely adopted until quite a bit later.
I'm sure this is just arguing about definitions, but the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA)[1] was a graphics card. I don't know what else you could call it.
I think the distinction you want is that CGA was a graphics card but later things that made graphics faster were graphics accelerators. These days a graphics output without at least some hardware acceleration is unthinkable.
Ok, that's fair. The CGA is technically a graphics card. I personally don't consider the true graphics card era to have started until VGA became a thing in the late 1980s.
IBM's MDA cards didn't support direct pixel addressing, which is one of the reasons I had a Hercules Graphics Card (original from 1982).
I spent way too much time trying to get various games to work with SIMCGA. Not only did it cause a massive slowdown (single-digit fps - or worse - was common) as it copied writes to VGA addresses into Hercules address space, the conversion from (e.g.) 320x200@16 onto a display that only supported 720x348@1 created usually required dropping/doubling lines at non-integer ratios, skewing the aspect ratio, and other nasty hacks[1].
I was very happy, years later, when I finally upgrade to a Trident TVGA9000B.
No, I am pretty sure this was pre-CGA... I worked for an IBM dealer back then, shipping the original IBM PC.
I recall it being a BIG deal when FS ran on the old 80x25 green screen monitor. This was before even the Hercules display adapter that let you manipulate things at the pixel level. IIRC the Microsoft engineers were one of the first to do pixel level animation on essentially a text display system.
I may be remembering incorrectly, but I am fairly sure my recollection is right, as that was quite a defining moment in computing for me.
The original IBM PC from day 1 shipped with either a text-only monochome display adapter (MDA) or the color graphics adapter (CGA) with the corresponding monitor. So graphics cards were certainly a thing from the beginning.
Thanks for clearing that up. I seem to remember that we had MDA only versions coming through the workshop in the early days, but I believe that was because the CGA version (or the associated monitor) was quite a premium priced option here in Australia at the time - or perhaps they weren't readily available from the US?
Whichever the reason - I know that it was a while before we saw a CGA version come through.
You're right in that the original IBM PC shipped with optional CGA graphics.
Searching around I'm finding conflicting information on Flight Simulator 1's use of the black & white 640×200 CGA mode and support for a colour mode targeting NTSC composite output. Maybe the original release supported both?
