Well, I'm Torsten, 47 years old and work as CCA currently. Before that i drove trucks and sold music.
Since i was a youngster, i was interrested in flight. So i wanted an remote-controlled airplane model (cheap, with all nessesary about 200 Euro). A comrade told me that it will be 500 Euro (due crashes in the first year). But when i realised that i could acctually flew with the 500 Euro/year (and less due working during the winter), i choose the option as a glider pilot.
Later there where simulations, witch are beautiful up to day. Sims like the MFS are ok; but a "Shuttle", in witch nearly every switch can be operated, a proper handbook with the "online" checks during the game was most impressive. But weather you turn the APU's on inhibit or not (and so on) does not inflict the outcome. Even the loaded Computer program (Start, OMS 1 and 2, landing) have a only a effect on the information witch are displayed on the MFD's. Only a to early (manually) performed SRB-seperation leads to an explosion.
When i then stumbled over orbiter (first generation), i was stunned about the changing flight information data in "realtime", with a real outcome in the "gameplay". At the orbiter-website then i realised Orbithangar.com and the addons.
With these like Deltaglider4/Ravenshield & MMU (in witch you can "die", when using wrong options) it depends on the pilot to perform a good start, flight and landing. That's great!
There is only one option missing, a flight data analysis (Pitch, yaw, bank, g-forces e.g.) witch can be stored on HD in the simulations subdirectory.