A couple of days of casual flying in the evenings with #MicrosoftFlightSimulator and I have precisely two thoughts:

1) Wow, this is incredible, what a super cool future video games have.

2) lol this super cool future sure is a long way away...

A (short) THREAD
Firstly, if you haven't tried this, and you have a beefy enough rig, you should. You can get a month of GamePass for ÂŁ1 and it's included.

But 'beefy enough rig' is important. This is a pretty demanding title, and my 1080 is struggling at 1440p on high with occasional <40fps
And secondly, this is a stunning game, and I've had some great fun landing (or trying to land) turboprops 400ft of runway on the Dutch Antilles, and A320s in remote Bhutan valleys. Look at that landscape! (and wtf where is this runway)
But in the game that is so often referred to in the press as one where you can 'find your house', it's actually better not to.

See, the more you know the area you are flying over, the more the illusion (as that's all it really is) is broken.
Because it's not your house in a model, it's an algorithm's prediction of what your house might look like in 3D, more often shared with other models.

Anything bespoke either doesn't get rendered (see Waterloo station), or gets rendered as an office (see Buckingham Palace)
Because it's not your house in a model, it's an algorithm's prediction of what your house might look like in 3D, more often shared with other models.Anything bespoke either doesn't get rendered (see Waterloo station), or gets rendered as an office (see Buckingham Palace)
Because it's not your house in a model, it's an algorithm's prediction of what your house might look like in 3D, more often shared with other models.Anything bespoke either doesn't get rendered (see Waterloo station), or gets rendered as an office (see Buckingham Palace)
So I guess the more generic your town, the more generic your house, the better it will generally come out of this.

But all the beauty of the human world is in the less-generic. Which brings me to my 15 minute fly past the Amalfi Coast this evening. The Amalfi Coast of Horror....
Because the Amalfi coast is the perfect example of everything MS Flight Simulator is bad at, whilst simultaneously an example for the reason to play it. It is at once beautiful, unique, historic and haphazard; the roads are absolutely nauseating.
Because the Amalfi coast is the perfect example of everything MS Flight Simulator is bad at, whilst simultaneously an example for the reason to play it. It is at once beautiful, unique, historic and haphazard; the roads are absolutely nauseating.
Because the Amalfi coast is the perfect example of everything MS Flight Simulator is bad at, whilst simultaneously an example for the reason to play it. It is at once beautiful, unique, historic and haphazard; the roads are absolutely nauseating.
Because the Amalfi coast is the perfect example of everything MS Flight Simulator is bad at, whilst simultaneously an example for the reason to play it. It is at once beautiful, unique, historic and haphazard; the roads are absolutely nauseating.
So it's would be anyone's dream to have a slow flypast of these seaside towns, carved into the cliff face.

Let's see how the Amalfi coast looks when rendered by an algorithm from this (satellite of Positano).
Actually the town of Amalfi itself? Pretty good. The dock is mostly underwater, the town has very little of the character its famous for, but it is at least in the right place.

Which is more than can be said for the landscape around it.
The absolute building-vomit that makes up Positano is much worse. And between you've seen cars driving horizontally on cliffs, random landscape unrendered, other parts too-rendered, a real mess that has none of the intrinsic draw of this coastline.
So Flight Simulator failed, it didn't deliver. The more you know what something is supposed to look like the more it is likely to disappoint you.

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, because it's unlikely you know too many places this well.
And once we get past Sorrento's tower-blocks built into the edge of cliffs and more anti-gravity cars, we find a treat that Flight Simulator cannot be beaten in: the real-life mess of Naples...
And to most others this is probably the same feeling they get flying over London. Flight Simulator does 'just enough' to make the city feel real: the colour, texture, topography and pseudo-traffic come together to make what feels real. It looks absolutely incredible. 😍 /fin
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