How high-fidelity does a flight sim need to be?

Early on in Terry Pratchett’s novel The Light Fantastic, a spell is cast to map the world.

Real-life software developers, including video game developers, have been casting spells like this for decades.

A forested riverside with cliffs and mountains behind in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

At what point will this phantasmagorical planet be Earth-like enough?

It sounds like there’s not much further to be gained from bumping the resolution of the environment.

Do we really need more resolution than a few millimetres?

An evening view of the statue of Christ the Redeemer on a mountainside above Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as depicted in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024. There’s also a blimp on the righthand side flying over the city lights.

No, I think on that side, we’re fine."

Drone photography, meanwhile, might allow for footage that would be impractical to obtain by human pilots.

But this reflection is, nonetheless, tightly circumscribed.

A blue helicopter flies over a rainy city.

“We are not really allowed to download it anyways.

He’s keen to make such exchanges evermore the heart of the game, hence the interest in drones.

And theoretically, we could be able to merge that into our world.”

A huge aircraft takes off next to a lake.

But Neumann is sure they can be overcome.

The emphasis on community goes hand-in-hand with an ethic of preservation.

The preservation angle extends to places and periods, fossilised within the amber of older versions of the game.

Cover image for YouTube video

Future versions of the game might serve as tools for recording environmental alterations resulting from rising global temperatures.

“For example, NASA has an entire array that looks just at pack ice.

There’s another array that is public, actually, for wildfires.

Can we get that?

“I’m a collector, right?

I collect all kinds of stuff, like rocks and things.

I have my Indiana Jones hat on, you know.

We want it to feel as close to the real thing as we can get.”

For example, the real-time locations of endangered animals.

The developers could have gone much further.

“So we now have every ship on Earth every 30 seconds.

We could do that with environmental things as well.

There’s an “angle of responsibility” to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, he asserts.

I found my surroundings totally unrecognisable, which filled me with relief.

Not yet: the spell is still being perfected.

There is still a more Earth-like Earth than this.