Microsoft has been tantalizing the flightsim community throughout the year with too-good-to-be true screenshots and videos of its new product, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. I immediately bought it on its release date in August and have been using it nearly daily since then.
Actual in-game footage from one of my flights
Amazingly, Microsoft’s first release of Flight Simulator was forty-one years ago in 1979. I recall being a bit perplexed about it in the 80s, wondering what there was to do in it. How did it function as game? Were you just taking off, flying in a straight line for two hours, and landing? Did you get points? In the 80s, my video game attention span was limited to spaceship battles, magic sword fights, and pac men.
Fast-forward to a few years ago when I developed an increasing interest in aviation, writing a series a sci-fi stories about a pilot. In my quest for knowledge, I started watching YouTube aviation channels. It occurred to me that I could download the free trial version of X-Plane and tinker with each of the airplanes. I admit, it was a very engineerish thing to do, the virtual equivalent of taking something apart to see how it works. Of course, once I figured out how to start my virtual Cessna, there it was: the dark stretch of runway, blue sky, and a spinning propeller. The clouds beckoned their challenge. I reached for the throttle.
As I learned the ins and outs of virtually flying using the same maps and tools as real pilots and learning radio work on subscription ATC services such as PilotEdge, I understood now what eluded me in the 80s. The fun is in it not being a game. I felt like I was actually learning something and demystifying what happens behind those closed cockpit doors. Whether you think a simulator can teach you how to land a real-life plane or not, you can’t argue that I didn’t learn how to read actual FAA VFR sectional maps, navigate complex airspaces using traditional nav aids such as VORs and NDBs, and make and receive by-the-book ATC radio calls. One of my X-Plane virtual flights to Oshkosh was a recreation of the real-life annual AirVenture fly-in there, and the air traffic controllers giving me instructions on the radio were the actual real-life air traffic controllers from the Oshkosh event.
If I can follow instructions from a real-life controller, I must have picked up something.
The other surprising aspect of X-Plane is that it simulated the entire world. All of the airports were real and accurate, down to the simplest grass strips in the countryside. Roads, mountains, rivers and buildings were all correct. The advent of Google Earth, Open Street Maps, and other databases meant that X-Plane used a model of the Earth. I could follow actual streets in my neighborhood from the air, and find my house. From the air, my home town looked like my home town in real life.
Like most video games, you buy the game but the community provides mods. X-Plane brilliantly crowdsourced its world to its users, giving them easy-to-use tools to replicate real-life airports. If you buy X-Plane today, four of its airports were made by me. Other third-party tools allow you to import Google satellite images and cover your virtual world in them. So, what you end up with is a Google Earth-style recreation of the world.
Pilots fly using either Visual Flight Rules (VFR) or Instrument Flight Rules (IFR). VFR is how you drive your car, looking out your windshield with eyeballs to see which way to go. If you were to drive your car IFR, you’d be looking at your dashboard and GPS constantly, following precise written instructions while someone on the phone gives you cues when to turn and by how much. Many flightsim enthusiasts like to fly commercial jets, and these are flown IFR. You really don’t need a visually detailed world for IFR. In fact, much of your flight may be in the white-out of a cloud. All you need is an accurate navigation database and realistic working instruments. But for VFR, you need to find real-life things visually.
So, what is so exciting about Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 is that Microsoft owns Bing, and Bing Maps is used to stream the entire Earth to the simulator on demand. It’s literally petabytes of data. Like Google Earth, some areas of Bing Maps have fully recreated 3D cities and towns based on satellite scans. In these areas, not only can you find your house, but it actually looks like your house, your yard, and your car in the driveway. The Dunkin Donuts down the street? It’s there. You can navigate just like real pilots, looking for a specific shopping center or a church or a bridge as a waypoint.
Visually, MSFS 2020 looks like it’s about ten years ahead of X-Plane. In terms of flight simulation, X-Plane feels like it’s about two years ahead of MSFS. I imagine that gap will close over the next year. But, as a virtual pilot who enjoys flying light general aviation Cessnas and Pipers VFR, I’ve been tickled. I have a YouTube channel where I share my X-Plane and MSFS flights, and there’s at least a dozen flights since getting MSFS.
If you’d like a detailed tutorial on simulator VFR flying, check out my blog post A Rookies Guide to Getting Started on PilotEdge. It’s written as a primer for using the online ATC service, PilotEdge, but it applies to any VFR flight and will take you through reading VFR sectional maps, flying the pattern, departing towered and untowered fields, and making CTAF radio calls.
Here’s a few of my recent flights. In some cases, in real life I’ve been to the places I’m flying over, and they look the same as they do in the simulator:
When I’m not flying the virtual skies, I’m the sci-fi author of the Hayden’s World series. If you love exploration and adventure, be sure to check it out.