For real. When I started civilian flight training just a hair under 20 years ago, we had no GPS approaches (and specific to our aircraft, no GPS at all), still shot NDBs as a requirement for the instrument practical, and our fanciest airplane had a VOR/DME based RNAV computer. Having an HSI was a game changer, especially with dual VORs. That wasn't really that long ago, but it seems like a different world, which I have mostly forgotten. You're right though, there was a real explosion of capabilities with proliferation of GPS RNAV approaches and tablets, all of which seems to have happened in the last decade or so. No joke, my first GPS approach ever, was sometime around 2017, shortly after we got RNAV in the F/A-18.