There’s a half-kept secret among pilots of small planes that is guaranteed to scare the hell out of people. It comes from the assumption that pilots are constantly relying on fancy equipment to track where they are at all times. The truth is, they don’t.
So how do we get around? Often, we simply look out of the window.
When I first began learning to fly in real life (an abandoned career path), I kept getting told off by the instructor for focusing on all the shiny dials in the co*ckpit. “Look up at the horizon,” he’d say.
My error was a common one. It was something he’d seen a lot among trainee fliers whose dream to float amid the clouds began not while lying in the grass and staring up at the skies, but in a slightly less romantic setting: in front of a computer screen, playing Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Since 1982, the company’s longest-running software product – even older than Windows – has attempted to recreate the joy of flight. It always did a pretty good job at simulating the inside of a plane, but everything outside mostly looked like lumpy papier-mache.
This week, the beloved series has been resurrected. It’s not just aviation fanatics who are frothing over it but the video game industry as a whole. One tech editor of a major gaming website, who no doubt spends his days rolling his eyes at hyperbolic press releases, said it was the most impressive piece of technology he’d ever seen.
Speaking as someone who can fly a plane, it’s not baseless hype. I can’t stop showing people videos of in-game footage. Dawn sunshine glints off snowy mountain peaks, coral reefs are visible in azure waters near tropical islands, cities shimmer with electric light at nighttime. I mean, LOOK. AT. THESE. CLOUDS. Don’t get me started on how realistically rain splatters the windscreen.
What’s even more spectacular is that the world in this game doesn’t just appear real – much of it is real. Using satellite images and photogrammetry, the team has made a true representation of the earth, so accurate that you can probably find your home. If you wanted, you could then chart a route to your friend’s house by following the roads you usually drive.
What this means for aviation enthusiasts is that for the first time in the simulator’s four-decade history, pilots can virtually fly and navigate how they would in real life – by spotting landmarks. That might be a lake known by its unusual shape, train tracks, Buckingham Palace, that ugly Amazon warehouse next to the M1.
It’s hard to nail down why humans love flying, but I bet it’s one of your three wishes. Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been adored because it attempted to replicate that feeling artificially, but it always seemed a little bit counterfeit. This time, it has finally captured it.
