Microsoft Flight Simulator’s version of Earth is a marvel. Satellite data from Bing Maps (hey, someone’s got to use it) interpreted by Microsoft’s Azure AI platform creates an approximation of our planet, all 200 million square miles of it. The result is a feat of engineering to rival the real-life aircraft you fly over it – an evolutionary leap from Google Earth, exactly the world tourism simulator we all need right now. Except when it’s not.
Drop beneath the clouds, and you may notice the generic office buildings that replaced iconic landmarks such as the Washington Monument and Buckingham Palace. Or the Brazilian airfield swallowed by a mile-deep chasm. Or the 2,000-foot monolith piercing the skies of Melbourne, apparently the result of a typo in OpenStreetMap, a source that Bing Maps itself pulls data from.
These (often hilarious) errors grabbed headlines and became in-game tourist attractions in their own right. But they’re not the only gaps on Flight Sim’s globe, as anyone who’s discovered a flat texture where their home town should be will tell you. “It’s great outside of cities, where all you need is rather rough heightmap and ground textures with decent resolution, and satellite images are enough,” says Ilya Perapechka, a software engineer and a key part of the Flight Sim community on Reddit, where he goes by the username ‘Jonahex111’.
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Denne historien er fra January 2021-utgaven av PC Gamer.
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BITING BACK
The tooth is out there in adventure TEETH OF GLASS
SMOKE ALARM
THE INVISIBLE SMOKE FACTORY is back in a Flash
MECH ME OVER
Move over Mario, here's mech-based platforming in ARMORED SHELL NIGHTJAR
"I like Pillars of Eternity better than Baldur's Gate III"
PILLARS OF ETERNITY deserves a bigger space in the CRPG pantheon
"A harrowing dark fantasy about hapless, bright-eyed children"
Spelunking into hell with MADE IN ABYSS: BINARY STAR FALLING INTO DARKNESS
THE IMMORTAL LOCK
A massive, meaty game in a single horrific Quake map.
NEW MANOEUVRES
Building a dedicated sim racing space in an average family house
OVERWATCH 2
Save me space girl.
REET GOOD TIME
THANK GOODNESS YOU'RE HERE is a riotous recreation of Yorkshire
THE PLUCKY SQUIRE
How many games let you make friends with a MtG card?