Flight Simulator 2020 is fueling up.
If you’ve spent the last 3 months wishing you were flying around the world and experiencing the adventure of air travel, things are not looking so good for the near future. What is looking good, are the latest images from the alpha build of Flight Simulator 2020 from Microsoft.
Microsoft Flight Simulator’s roots go deep into the early 70’s. I was today years old when I found out it “began as a set of articles on computer graphics, written by Bruce Artwick throughout 1976, about flight simulation using 3-D graphics. When the editor of the magazine told Artwick that subscribers were interested in purchasing such a program, Artwick founded subLOGIC Corporation to commercialize his ideas. At first the new company sold flight simulators through mail order, but that changed in January 1979 with the release of Flight Simulator (FS) for the Apple II.[1] They soon followed this up with versions for other systems and from there it evolved into a long-running series of computer flight simulators.”
It wasn’t until Flight Simulator was released for Windows ‘95 that I got a chance to try take off and landings for myself. Ever the gamer, I spent most of the time creating doomsday scenarios. I couldn’t land the jumbo jets safely anyhow, so I created a wild story to explain away my poor piloting skills. It’s not like that for everyone. Hundreds of thousands of real and aspiring pilots have logged many hours with Microsoft Flight Simulator and the various add-ons. The level of realism and cockpit accuracy are a testament to the team and communitys’ passion.
Flight Simulator was cool, but Flight Unlimited was fun and memorable because of the way it made me feel when I played it. The visuals were jaw dropping at the time. The experience of piloting a glider and catching thermals stays with me to this day. The sound of the wind, the glare of the sun, the feeling of being “there”. Looking out the window and seeing the natural beauty of our planet is what I enjoy about flight simulators. Flight Unlimited also had flight instructors that would take you through your lessons while in the air. It was really nice.
I was today years old when I found out that the father of the X-Box Seamus Blackley conceived of the game in 1992! He just so happened to be a particle physicist AND amateur pilot working at Looking Glass Technologies in Cambridge, Mass. He felt that other flight simulators failed to convey the experience of real flight, and he reacted by coding a simulated atmosphere for Flight Unlimited based on real-time computational fluid dynamics. Aerobatic pilot Michael Goulian endorsed the game and assisted the team in making it more true to life.
The realism provides an incredible opportunity for aspiring pilots to experience the cockpit and flight modeling of some very expensive airplanes. However when I get my hands on it, I’ll be pretending the pilot had the fish and they need me to come up front and set this baby down safely.
