The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/writingongames03211! Also, if you enjoy the videos and would like to directly help me continue to make more, consider heading to patreon.com/writingongames and pledging only what you're comfortable with. Doing so gets you access to things like early, completely ad-free video uploads! Your support is what allows me to keep doing this and I'll never be able to thank you enough for that. Stay safe everyone!
15:00. The dips in environment quality have everything to do with the available imagery of the Bing Maps data. If you go to the actual Bing map of the same locations you explore in the sim, you will see the most popular cities are recorded in the highest detail. Other rural areas not so much. The machine learning algorithm can only replicate from the ACTUAL images so the higher the initial quality the better the replication. It has nothing to do with the dev and it would be impossible to modify everything from the 2 Petabyes of data. Also every time Bing maps gets an update over certain locations, the Sim automatically gets that image update.
@Fletch You'll pretty much get the same experience with the main thing missing is all the mods from the PC community. The drone is a stock feature I believe.
Was expecting a video essay but my man just found this game's entire lore. I am officially accepting that MSFS taking place in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by beings that look like motor vehicles while the last humans struggle for survival is canon.
@@amysteriousviewer3772 As much as i adore Subnautica the fact its alien means it doesn't capture that "dream game" of exploring the limitless ocean and all its beauty and horrors. The idea of this game but in the depths of the sea would finally give me the sea based game i've always wanted.
Me and my friends adored the mystery of the "Kentucky House", as we call it, so much that we even included it in our roleplaying sessions. Hell, one of us made a whole ARG centered around getting their character out of this place, where the cat turned out to be evil indeed! Very pleasant surprise to see it mentioned here
@@mofo78536 Was gonna correct you saying they're actually called augmented reality games, but I decided to google it first and it turns out, they're actually different things lol
Yooo dude, I used to browse google maps all the time. I used to think the exact same things you did! I remember when they started doing the more detailed 3D maps. I was just a young kid so it freaked me out that these places had turned into post apocalyptic wastelands. I would spend hours wandering the cities looking at all the deformed buildings making up stories and such. This brings back so many memories. Thanks for the vid!
What a starkly curious video. I enjoyed every last second of this one! I was listening through my earbuds as I went to the store on my break, but ended up rewinding a whole 2 minutes once I got to the house/bathtub story so I can actively watch when I got back given I was so immensely reeled in. Thanks for this one and glad to get some deeply involving and anecdotal videos of this kind every once in a while.
This is how I engaged with the game as well. It's always lovely seeing another articulate why I find interacting with various digital spaces in possibly unintended ways that highlight the artifice of them so meditative.
This is why I am subscribed. Its 9am, I'm having a bath in lockdown and deeply contemplating my place in the universe by juxtaposing its position to that of yours to a flight simulator game. This could be your best video yet, Hamish. Thanks mate.
Or when games like Animal Crossing New Horizons when from "who would want such kind of game" to "has social features? Need that right now!", and pushing some features (like the economy) to the point it featured in the front page of the Financial Times.
Comparing Flight Simulator to the Blue Lick Road house is absolutely genius. This also reminds me of this one town that went viral in like 2012 because it showed up all distorted and creepy on Google Maps for some reason... can’t remember the name of it, though, New Binghamton or something?
Brilliant. Found this looking for mention of the Melbourne anomaly, but showed me other aspects I'd not heard of yet. There's a sense that like the algorithm maps over patterns with semblances of what they probably are, the corrections that come later pave over the uncanny world that was accidentally created. At least with archaeology there are still signs of what came before, layers of earth hiding hints of the past. I wish there were a way to more reliably preserve these accidental worlds, even if they never wind up being experienced by human beings. Thank you for showing us what you found.
I hope you will hear this the way I mean it, but I'm really glad I didn't dip at the halfway mark. Not to say that I don't love your content, but I don't always have a ton of free time, and I thought I could guess what your final point was going to be. I was super wrong (or at least "unaware of how far it would go"), and I'm deeply glad to have stuck around. If you haven't, PLEASE play Talos Principle. If you have, please remember it, while you experience that sensation of uncomfortable solitude.
only Hambo would find meaning in the floor of a flight simulator. Excellent stuff, these weird personal reads on tech jank are some of your greatest pieces 🙌
This may be one of the most beautiful videos I have ever watched. I think one of the most important aspects of many games (not necessarily every one but many) is that the player has always something to say about how the game is supposed to be played and enjoyed that is not limited to the intension of the developers. This essay must be one of the best renditions to that I have seen. Thanks, mate.
15:32, the game had an update so that london now has that bridge, palace etc. To get it head to the marketplace to download it. The game also has japan, usa downloadable
This was... way more interesting than I'd thought it would be. I'm exploring the house on blue lick road right now and it is absolutely insane... so many things that I don't understand.
The way that you talk about flight sim being an unfinished, continuous process near the end of the video makes me think of it as a growing organism, like a creature assimilating our world and gestating a new, digital version.
To be fair, it's amazing what they've done. Live weather, volumetric clouds, actual photo maps of the entire earth, live air traffic, 3d procedural foliage and buildings pretty much where they should be, automatically. It all looks pretty believable from 1000+ feet. It's a long way from even the last MSFS.
My first Microsoft Flightsimulator was the FS3 when i was 14 and i remember i was also totally blown away by its visuals BACK THEN. I bet 30 years later, people are again shaking their heads in amusement at the technology that leaves us speechless today.
This was so captivating to watch, somehow half an hour went by with me barely noticing. It weirdly speaks to me as if I've had this experience before despite never playing the game, it's that negative space and unintended gameplay that one can find in some games, those oddly memorable moment that feel much longer when looking back.
I wish they had expanded on this by keeping all of the buildings in the world that malfunctioned within the algorithm, like the 2 kilometre tall Melbourne monolith, and filled them out as surrealist dreamscapes inside.
As someone who gets easily afraid about wide open spaces and being all alone, MSFS looks absolutely terrifying. Excellent video, Hamish. You covered so many interesting points not just about this game, but how "games" and the ways we interact with them are constantly evolving.
Hell yeah. I've been doing this for several years, but I really picked up my habit of looking around Google Maps and clicking through in street view at weird or remote places- Alaska, Hudson Bay, Greenland, the southern islands of Chile, along borders between countries, etc. Think we're all coming up with weird habits to cope with being inside all the time.
It was actually removed from the virtual tour for a while because you have to pass by a bunch of Girls Gone Wild DVDs to see the bathtub, and that wasn't considered appropriate. After a while they added back the bathtub room, so you can find it now
@@tuuudes3449 Lol, I appreciate the extra lore. I definitely remember seeing a stack of "sexy lady" calendars on a shelf, so the Girls Gone Wild DVDs doesn't surprise me.
This reminds me of the first time I used Google Earth VR. It astounded me how no matter what major landmark I went to, no matter how far apart on the planet it was, there was at least like 2 dozen people there just living their lives, or worse, a crowd so dense you could barely walk in it let alone run. It got me thinking about population crisises, how in the absolute fuck we manage to feed as many people as we do 1-3 times a day, and the total and utter insignificance of my own life among everyone else's despite how much one would like to think they're the main character in the planet's story. I don't think human brains are 100% ready in our current evolutionary stage to comprehend the idea of being able to use technology to teleport anywhere on the planet on a whim, that or I'm just not used to existential crisises of that level. One of these days, in the distant future when technology makes this possible, I wanna play something like flight sim, but designed for ground level traversal. Would probably love "Jogging sim 2035". As I get older I want to explore more and stuff like what you did in this video with flight sim only fascinates me more as time goes on. There's a reason certain people liked Ubisoft's "The Crew" so much.
As usual, my man Hamish has come up with a unique video that is filled with his common themes of existentialism and self discovery that I absolutely love. Keep up the good work, Hamish. 😊 This is easily one of your best videos. 👍
This totally reminds me of a strange dream I had when I was a kid where I was walking home from school and got lost in a long route that looked a lot like the footage in this video, I remember one part I fell down a hill in some woods and stood up suddenly on a clean sidewalk in a suburban neighborhood with no clouds above, just clear sky and sun, and an airliner flew over. Maybe I mentally entered MFS2020 somehow lol also, subbed!
For me it's the amount of hours of media and movies that lie inside 8800 Blue lick Rd that gives me that uneasy feeling. Like each forgotten disk is another hallway to get lost down. Adds another layer to the maze
My girlfriend loves this game. She just finished a months-long meandering trip around the world in all kinds of different planes and helicopters. It’s been nearly three years since you posted this video, and there have been improvements and fixes, but there are still plenty of errors in the world to discover, especially in the less publicized parts of the world. Some buildings, mountains, and other structures are still far too tall, many are just flat images on the ground that the software failed to recognize as a structure (including, apparently, Stonehenge). Snow appears in appropriate areas but often obscures features in unrealistic ways. In many sparsely-populated stretches of land, the data determining what should cover the ground (grass or trees or rock, etc.) is so low resolution that the world looks like an up-res’d world map from a SNES JRPG. The river data is often low resolution there too, with the path of a river following joined line segments of impossibly straight lines with impossibly sharp corners in the turns, and sometimes the height data will disagree with the river data so water will flow up and back down the same hillside. The most unsettling things I’ve seen (though surprisingly common) are the ‘hills’ of water, where the game’s height data thinks there should be a hill, but it’s in the middle of a river or lake, and due to the game’s method of rendering reflections and shadows, the water hills look like they’re refracting the bright blue light of a clear sky but it’s coming from underneath the earth. Anyway thanks for the great video
Funny. When you were talking about how you were probably the only person to experience that spot, that lighting, that weather, it brought me back to discovering previously unseen planets in No Man’s Sky. And then you mentioned it. Made me happy
I am just under 22 minutes into this and I had to pause to appreciate the rabbit hole you're taking us down with the virtual property walk through and just how absolutely f a s c i n a t i n g this building is and its occupant(s) and I didn't expect to show up here, watching a video about the hidden game inside flight sim, but I'm in for this ride, wherever it's going.
This video RULES. The fact that you discovered what is essentially an accidentally procedurally generated surreal walking simulator INSIDE of Microsoft Flight Simulator opens up so many compelling (and slightly unnerving) doors. What else could be lurking in seemingly innocuous digital worlds? It reminds of the time my brother and I landed in the Ronald Reagan Airport on a trip to DC. We wandered from the terminal and into the dense urban landscape, overwhelmed by unfamiliar transit systems, until submerging into the bowels of Crystal City. This underground network of sparse, angular passages was completely abandoned and devoid of human life. Colorful shops clashed with the uniform metal gates locking them away, jammed side by side with nail salons, hamburger joints, and what certainly appeared to be a cube-like store filled with puppets. The brutally utilitarian concrete combined with the fluorescent commercialism (eerily empty of consumers) got our imaginations running. Of course, it turned out that the whole complex had been shut down because it was New Year's Day, but despite the fact that we also visited the dang National Mall... Crystal City is what sticks in my mind from that trip. - Stephen
The fact that it's got details on buildings and under bridges not even meant to be seen is crazy effort. Only fromsoftware with dark souls has that level of obsession and effort.
My friend and I took a 3D tour of a house he was considering for purchase, and it was almost as wild as the Blue Lick road house. People were definitely still living there, and there were rooms we didn't understand and decorations that felt a little alien. Eventually it started feeling like a game - what weird thing can we find next? A window in the basement leading to a single chair, a mattress below hanging exercise equipment, a very, very small sauna and at least 11 musical instruments packed in a narrow room. It was a bizarre view into this family's life that people don't normally see. Thank you for this video. I love the things we don't normally see.
This really is one of my favourite videos I’ve ever come across and totally inspired me to change how I approach the sim (and maybe gaming in general). With the new flight sim coming out tomorrow and the addition of a real walking mode now and lots of improvements to the ground quality I really think you should check it out! Maybe a sequel to this video? 😅
First, thank you so much for your incredibly kind comment. I'm still pretty proud of this video, and I'm grateful it can still find an audience. Second, they're adding a walking mode?! That sequel may be on the cards...
What an amazing video and thanks for making it. I must admit from day one of MSFS I have always explored the local area, after a crash, with the drone camera. But this takes it to a whole new level. Brilliant.... and my wife is just going to love that 8800 Lick Rd tour :)
The first quarter or so of this video is what I love about games on a planetary, or even galactic scale. Nobody else has seen what you've seen, and nobody else will see what you've seen. It's genuine discovery.
Man, you took me on a journey. Like I just discovered this channel through watching your katamari vid, and holy hell are you a good essayist. This vid gave me Jacob Geller vibes. Really loved it
I've watched a frankly disgusting amount of videogame essays. Caught one of your first vids endlessly scrolling r/games back in the day; pretty sure I've seen all the WoGs. Something about the Trackmania video particularly resonated with me like, "Huh, WoG really has been consistently top fuckin' class this whole time." This one absolutely slapped me clean though. Like, this is sincerely an achievement for this format and certainly among the most meaningful, and I mean from anybody. I think with this one, and really everything from this past year, your portfolio is prolific enough for me to say that you're among the best of the best. This is absolutely the content I'm looking for on here, so I suppose the thing to do is sign myself up for a spot on that next Patreon crawl. Good job man, one for tha books
The fact I can't afford a computer powerful enough to process this and will therefore never witness the abomination my house will have become is cosmic horror levels of terrifying
I saw a comment of yours on a limmy video which made me check your channel. I'd never have thought I'd be interested in a video about flight simulator but I was gripped
I adore this game or sim, I have gone on a world tour, starting at my home in Scotland and then heading to Wales, England, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria and now in on Italy
Incredible video. I am aware i think too much about Horizon Zero Dawn but the way you described the landscape and what could have happened under the skin really set off some bells.
Absolutely love this video, my channel is made up of me exploring add-ons for this simulator so the drone camera is my tool of choice. Sure I do fly in the sim and I enjoy it but for making my scenery videos I use the drone camera to great effect, my before and after shots all require smooth use of the camera to create cinematic shots that later almost match up with default scenery into the new payware or freeware sceneries. Without this drone camera I doubt my channel would be were it is today, my viewers love to see each scenery up close and love how I go in depth with textures and details added by the creators. Thank you for this video, I really enjoyed it.
The problem with many people outside the sim community getting into MSFS is that they don't want to deal with the cons of simming, and start to complain, high system requirements and costly equipment has been part of sims for years, but insightful video!
This reminds me of that sense of wonder when flying for the first time around Outerra, no map boundaries just pure freedom and discovery, amazing video!
Just landing on this video while cycling through my watch-later-list I was not aware who was talking to me. There are so many guys talking about games, you see. And in between I was convinced that you were jacob gellar. So consider that praise, I love his videos, and your introspection here was beautiful.
Xplane isn’t a game either, MSFS isn’t just this ‘arcade game’ that people take it as. While its physics are worse than Xplane, that doesn’t mean other aspects aren’t useful.
Oh, and also before I forget... When you were talking about Buckingham Palace, it is actually now fully detailed because of the UK World Update. So many more city updates and world updates to come! The scenery is only going to get better!
If you're into this kind of experience (a weird feeling of wonder and existential dread borne from a mix of physically accurate data and procedural generation), I HIGHLY recommend you play Space Engine. :)
Brilliant! All those doors that don’t go anywhere! I kept thinking you’d find Joe Chip trying to escape from his money grabbing door, or Lord Running Clam slipping under one of them.
I don't understand much about planes but some of my close friends are studying to become pilots and I love to hear them talking about the bucket of bolts that somehow a defies the laws of physics to fly
This video reminded me of Eurothug4000's video on Photography as she mentions Robert Overweg's game photography that centres around unnatural virtual worlds. Great Video!
i spent a lot of middle school exploiting glitches in mirrors edge to get to street level and walk among the little people i saw down there. had a really similar experience
This makes me think of what kept me and a friend playing EA UFC 3. I hate vs games normally, but we hang out and laugh at the many glitches, like when one of us jumps in the air for a spinny kick but our head stays facing forward or something :P Sometimes the lack of polish is a selling point, I agree, each version should be preserved
You can actually navigate to anywhere in seconds in MFS: toggle on Slew mode to move translate the plane in any direction, then speed up the Sim Rate, and you can zoom from country to country- provided your internet connection is strong enough!
Awesome video! Also, don't worry, in such a huge game there will always be bugs and weirdness. The dark side of msf might evolve and change but I don't believe it will ever disappear. If anything, trying to find the surviving traces of this insane nightmarish parallel world could become an epic quest!
Off topic but just wanted to say I love your work. Your dark souls video resonated with me so much your channel has genuinely helped me this last year so a big thank you.
The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/writingongames03211!
Also, if you enjoy the videos and would like to directly help me continue to make more, consider heading to patreon.com/writingongames and pledging only what you're comfortable with. Doing so gets you access to things like early, completely ad-free video uploads! Your support is what allows me to keep doing this and I'll never be able to thank you enough for that. Stay safe everyone!
15:00. The dips in environment quality have everything to do with the available imagery of the Bing Maps data. If you go to the actual Bing map of the same locations you explore in the sim, you will see the most popular cities are recorded in the highest detail. Other rural areas not so much. The machine learning algorithm can only replicate from the ACTUAL images so the higher the initial quality the better the replication. It has nothing to do with the dev and it would be impossible to modify everything from the 2 Petabyes of data. Also every time Bing maps gets an update over certain locations, the Sim automatically gets that image update.
@Fletch You'll pretty much get the same experience with the main thing missing is all the mods from the PC community. The drone is a stock feature I believe.
i recomen you outerra
I am getting Cyberpunk 2077 vibes...
@Flex you got your wish bud! Even the "GOTY Edition" is free on GamePass now!
If you stare long enough into Microsoft Flight Simulator, so too shall Microsoft Flight Simulator stare into you.
Awesome comment, hahahahah. I bought flight simulator primarly to hike around . I was wondering if there somebody will do a "horse trekking " mod.
i once stared into the clouds, and bill gates stared back...
Was expecting a video essay but my man just found this game's entire lore. I am officially accepting that MSFS taking place in a post-apocalyptic world dominated by beings that look like motor vehicles while the last humans struggle for survival is canon.
so it's taking place in the cars universe
@@osakablinladen Yes.
I’m up for another version of Maximum Overdrive.
@@osakablinladen it's a prequel since in cars humans are dead
Staying on the ground is too dangerous. That's why we have to fly everywhere.
We went from Microsoft Flight Simulator to exploring a weird creepypasta house
but first we need to talk about parallel universes, like our earth and this earth.
I love that there are mods to show the ever given stuck in the Suez Canal 😆
Ok
Imagine someone smashing a 747 into the ship to push it
Nice
💀
@@mikey-dh9bw Ok
When your home is so messy it becomes a video game location.
we need this kinda shit for the ocean, being lost down there, seeing giant squids melded with schools of fish and reefs
Have you played Subnautica? I think it captures the feeling of being lost at sea really well.
It's all we've got... for now
@@amysteriousviewer3772 As much as i adore Subnautica the fact its alien means it doesn't capture that "dream game" of exploring the limitless ocean and all its beauty and horrors. The idea of this game but in the depths of the sea would finally give me the sea based game i've always wanted.
Submersible Simulator would be the most gorgeously horrifying thing ever
Abzu
Me and my friends adored the mystery of the "Kentucky House", as we call it, so much that we even included it in our roleplaying sessions. Hell, one of us made a whole ARG centered around getting their character out of this place, where the cat turned out to be evil indeed! Very pleasant surprise to see it mentioned here
Got a video about it? Sounds like a good mini documentary
@@mofo78536 Not really, this was just a small thing for our friends to do
ARG?
@@thewingedporpoise Alternate Reality Game
@@mofo78536 Was gonna correct you saying they're actually called augmented reality games, but I decided to google it first and it turns out, they're actually different things lol
Yooo dude, I used to browse google maps all the time. I used to think the exact same things you did! I remember when they started doing the more detailed 3D maps. I was just a young kid so it freaked me out that these places had turned into post apocalyptic wastelands. I would spend hours wandering the cities looking at all the deformed buildings making up stories and such. This brings back so many memories. Thanks for the vid!
One of my favorite classes in college the dude taught with Google earth when it was brand new. It was incredible lol
Cool
Congratulations, you recreated no man's sky on launch day
What a starkly curious video. I enjoyed every last second of this one! I was listening through my earbuds as I went to the store on my break, but ended up rewinding a whole 2 minutes once I got to the house/bathtub story so I can actively watch when I got back given I was so immensely reeled in. Thanks for this one and glad to get some deeply involving and anecdotal videos of this kind every once in a while.
Yes! I was just going to watch for ten minutes while I ate dinner but couldn't close my laptop until the conclusion!
- Stephen
I wasn't expecting existential dread when I clicked this video.
This is absolutely the best video game essay video I've EVER watched. No hyperbole. This is next level for you.
This is how I engaged with the game as well. It's always lovely seeing another articulate why I find interacting with various digital spaces in possibly unintended ways that highlight the artifice of them so meditative.
Made up fun is the best fun
sasuga lain
This is why I am subscribed. Its 9am, I'm having a bath in lockdown and deeply contemplating my place in the universe by juxtaposing its position to that of yours to a flight simulator game. This could be your best video yet, Hamish. Thanks mate.
I am absolutely astonished that this isn’t a video meant to troll us or be a shitpost
Public perception of walking sims pre-Covid 19: Lol you're a joke.
Public perception of walking sims during Covid-19: My precious escape...
Or when games like Animal Crossing New Horizons when from "who would want such kind of game" to "has social features? Need that right now!", and pushing some features (like the economy) to the point it featured in the front page of the Financial Times.
@@EduardoEscarez Persona did that for me...
loved, loved, LOVED this video!! absolutely stellar and meditative ~
Pretty sure flight sim is now set in the SCP universe.
*PCP universe
This was amazing, there is something eldritch about this video
Nice word usage
@@Casedilla73 Eldritch, gibbous, squamous.
@@sirmount2636 Wow
You like the ‘ous’s, don’t you
Comparing Flight Simulator to the Blue Lick Road house is absolutely genius. This also reminds me of this one town that went viral in like 2012 because it showed up all distorted and creepy on Google Maps for some reason... can’t remember the name of it, though, New Binghamton or something?
New Baltimore, N.Y
Brilliant. Found this looking for mention of the Melbourne anomaly, but showed me other aspects I'd not heard of yet. There's a sense that like the algorithm maps over patterns with semblances of what they probably are, the corrections that come later pave over the uncanny world that was accidentally created. At least with archaeology there are still signs of what came before, layers of earth hiding hints of the past. I wish there were a way to more reliably preserve these accidental worlds, even if they never wind up being experienced by human beings. Thank you for showing us what you found.
Wanna preserve the first version of the game? Just torrent a pirated copy of the launch edition and store it somewhere safe ;)
It streams a lot of its data from the servers, not sure how much would that preserve
Yeah just need a 2 petabyte hdd
@@Marizyth AKA......a million bucks in SSDs?
147 Gigaflops 1.0.2 available little messy but all multiplayer stuff are working ...
I hope you will hear this the way I mean it, but I'm really glad I didn't dip at the halfway mark.
Not to say that I don't love your content, but I don't always have a ton of free time, and I thought I could guess what your final point was going to be.
I was super wrong (or at least "unaware of how far it would go"), and I'm deeply glad to have stuck around.
If you haven't, PLEASE play Talos Principle.
If you have, please remember it, while you experience that sensation of uncomfortable solitude.
What was your guess of his final point?
Very interesting take. Massively underrated channel!
you are an amazing storyteller. I was gripped the entire time.
only Hambo would find meaning in the floor of a flight simulator. Excellent stuff, these weird personal reads on tech jank are some of your greatest pieces 🙌
This is why I stayed subcribed for 2 years now
Thia man draws different demographics of gamers with his awesome narration and content
This may be one of the most beautiful videos I have ever watched.
I think one of the most important aspects of many games (not necessarily every one but many) is that the player has always something to say about how the game is supposed to be played and enjoyed that is not limited to the intension of the developers. This essay must be one of the best renditions to that I have seen.
Thanks, mate.
15:32, the game had an update so that london now has that bridge, palace etc. To get it head to the marketplace to download it. The game also has japan, usa downloadable
This was... way more interesting than I'd thought it would be. I'm exploring the house on blue lick road right now and it is absolutely insane... so many things that I don't understand.
It is as if it is a return to imagining things. After forgetting about anything below what is in front of you.
The way that you talk about flight sim being an unfinished, continuous process near the end of the video makes me think of it as a growing organism, like a creature assimilating our world and gestating a new, digital version.
To be fair, it's amazing what they've done. Live weather, volumetric clouds, actual photo maps of the entire earth, live air traffic, 3d procedural foliage and buildings pretty much where they should be, automatically. It all looks pretty believable from 1000+ feet. It's a long way from even the last MSFS.
My first Microsoft Flightsimulator was the FS3 when i was 14 and i remember i was also totally blown away by its visuals BACK THEN. I bet 30 years later, people are again shaking their heads in amusement at the technology that leaves us speechless today.
Her: Come Over
Me: I can't right now
Her: My parents aren't home
Me: 11:19
This was so captivating to watch, somehow half an hour went by with me barely noticing.
It weirdly speaks to me as if I've had this experience before despite never playing the game, it's that negative space and unintended gameplay that one can find in some games, those oddly memorable moment that feel much longer when looking back.
I wish they had expanded on this by keeping all of the buildings in the world that malfunctioned within the algorithm, like the 2 kilometre tall Melbourne monolith, and filled them out as surrealist dreamscapes inside.
As someone who gets easily afraid about wide open spaces and being all alone, MSFS looks absolutely terrifying.
Excellent video, Hamish. You covered so many interesting points not just about this game, but how "games" and the ways we interact with them are constantly evolving.
Hell yeah. I've been doing this for several years, but I really picked up my habit of looking around Google Maps and clicking through in street view at weird or remote places- Alaska, Hudson Bay, Greenland, the southern islands of Chile, along borders between countries, etc. Think we're all coming up with weird habits to cope with being inside all the time.
Holy shit, I can't believe I never found the bathtub room!
It was actually removed from the virtual tour for a while because you have to pass by a bunch of Girls Gone Wild DVDs to see the bathtub, and that wasn't considered appropriate. After a while they added back the bathtub room, so you can find it now
@@tuuudes3449 Lol, I appreciate the extra lore. I definitely remember seeing a stack of "sexy lady" calendars on a shelf, so the Girls Gone Wild DVDs doesn't surprise me.
This reminds me of the first time I used Google Earth VR. It astounded me how no matter what major landmark I went to, no matter how far apart on the planet it was, there was at least like 2 dozen people there just living their lives, or worse, a crowd so dense you could barely walk in it let alone run. It got me thinking about population crisises, how in the absolute fuck we manage to feed as many people as we do 1-3 times a day, and the total and utter insignificance of my own life among everyone else's despite how much one would like to think they're the main character in the planet's story. I don't think human brains are 100% ready in our current evolutionary stage to comprehend the idea of being able to use technology to teleport anywhere on the planet on a whim, that or I'm just not used to existential crisises of that level.
One of these days, in the distant future when technology makes this possible, I wanna play something like flight sim, but designed for ground level traversal. Would probably love "Jogging sim 2035". As I get older I want to explore more and stuff like what you did in this video with flight sim only fascinates me more as time goes on. There's a reason certain people liked Ubisoft's "The Crew" so much.
As usual, my man Hamish has come up with a unique video that is filled with his common themes of existentialism and self discovery that I absolutely love.
Keep up the good work, Hamish. 😊 This is easily one of your best videos. 👍
This totally reminds me of a strange dream I had when I was a kid where I was walking home from school and got lost in a long route that looked a lot like the footage in this video, I remember one part I fell down a hill in some woods and stood up suddenly on a clean sidewalk in a suburban neighborhood with no clouds above, just clear sky and sun, and an airliner flew over. Maybe I mentally entered MFS2020 somehow lol also, subbed!
It's nice to experience nature without having to be out in it.
I love how they're fixing the glitches on this new version of Cyberpunk
For me it's the amount of hours of media and movies that lie inside 8800 Blue lick Rd that gives me that uneasy feeling. Like each forgotten disk is another hallway to get lost down. Adds another layer to the maze
This game makes my computer cry.
Literally the best games writer on youtube, and honestly this is one of your best pieces. Fantastic.
My girlfriend loves this game. She just finished a months-long meandering trip around the world in all kinds of different planes and helicopters.
It’s been nearly three years since you posted this video, and there have been improvements and fixes, but there are still plenty of errors in the world to discover, especially in the less publicized parts of the world. Some buildings, mountains, and other structures are still far too tall, many are just flat images on the ground that the software failed to recognize as a structure (including, apparently, Stonehenge). Snow appears in appropriate areas but often obscures features in unrealistic ways. In many sparsely-populated stretches of land, the data determining what should cover the ground (grass or trees or rock, etc.) is so low resolution that the world looks like an up-res’d world map from a SNES JRPG. The river data is often low resolution there too, with the path of a river following joined line segments of impossibly straight lines with impossibly sharp corners in the turns, and sometimes the height data will disagree with the river data so water will flow up and back down the same hillside. The most unsettling things I’ve seen (though surprisingly common) are the ‘hills’ of water, where the game’s height data thinks there should be a hill, but it’s in the middle of a river or lake, and due to the game’s method of rendering reflections and shadows, the water hills look like they’re refracting the bright blue light of a clear sky but it’s coming from underneath the earth.
Anyway thanks for the great video
As a person that really never traveled in my life this game looks great cause I can see landmarks I never saw:)
Funny. When you were talking about how you were probably the only person to experience that spot, that lighting, that weather, it brought me back to discovering previously unseen planets in No Man’s Sky. And then you mentioned it. Made me happy
I am just under 22 minutes into this and I had to pause to appreciate the rabbit hole you're taking us down with the virtual property walk through and just how absolutely f a s c i n a t i n g this building is and its occupant(s) and I didn't expect to show up here, watching a video about the hidden game inside flight sim, but I'm in for this ride, wherever it's going.
This video RULES. The fact that you discovered what is essentially an accidentally procedurally generated surreal walking simulator INSIDE of Microsoft Flight Simulator opens up so many compelling (and slightly unnerving) doors. What else could be lurking in seemingly innocuous digital worlds?
It reminds of the time my brother and I landed in the Ronald Reagan Airport on a trip to DC. We wandered from the terminal and into the dense urban landscape, overwhelmed by unfamiliar transit systems, until submerging into the bowels of Crystal City. This underground network of sparse, angular passages was completely abandoned and devoid of human life. Colorful shops clashed with the uniform metal gates locking them away, jammed side by side with nail salons, hamburger joints, and what certainly appeared to be a cube-like store filled with puppets. The brutally utilitarian concrete combined with the fluorescent commercialism (eerily empty of consumers) got our imaginations running. Of course, it turned out that the whole complex had been shut down because it was New Year's Day, but despite the fact that we also visited the dang National Mall... Crystal City is what sticks in my mind from that trip.
- Stephen
The fact that it's got details on buildings and under bridges not even meant to be seen is crazy effort. Only fromsoftware with dark souls has that level of obsession and effort.
Your videos are the type that I will immediately drop what I am doing to watch, and if that is impossible, I will put it in watch later :3
My friend and I took a 3D tour of a house he was considering for purchase, and it was almost as wild as the Blue Lick road house. People were definitely still living there, and there were rooms we didn't understand and decorations that felt a little alien. Eventually it started feeling like a game - what weird thing can we find next? A window in the basement leading to a single chair, a mattress below hanging exercise equipment, a very, very small sauna and at least 11 musical instruments packed in a narrow room. It was a bizarre view into this family's life that people don't normally see.
Thank you for this video. I love the things we don't normally see.
This really is one of my favourite videos I’ve ever come across and totally inspired me to change how I approach the sim (and maybe gaming in general). With the new flight sim coming out tomorrow and the addition of a real walking mode now and lots of improvements to the ground quality I really think you should check it out! Maybe a sequel to this video? 😅
First, thank you so much for your incredibly kind comment. I'm still pretty proud of this video, and I'm grateful it can still find an audience.
Second, they're adding a walking mode?! That sequel may be on the cards...
What an amazing video and thanks for making it. I must admit from day one of MSFS I have always explored the local area, after a crash, with the drone camera. But this takes it to a whole new level. Brilliant.... and my wife is just going to love that 8800 Lick Rd tour :)
The first quarter or so of this video is what I love about games on a planetary, or even galactic scale. Nobody else has seen what you've seen, and nobody else will see what you've seen. It's genuine discovery.
Man, you took me on a journey. Like I just discovered this channel through watching your katamari vid, and holy hell are you a good essayist. This vid gave me Jacob Geller vibes. Really loved it
Especially with modding, I've been thinking about this whole game within a game, finding your own experience alot.
Thanks for putting it into words.
I find it funny that most peoples biggest complaint about Microsoft flight SIMULATOR is it’s too hard to fly a plane
Just wait until there's an uncanny valley for landscape and city simulations where they become so real, that we don't want to play them.
Full-dive virtual reality. That's what we need.
I've watched a frankly disgusting amount of videogame essays. Caught one of your first vids endlessly scrolling r/games back in the day; pretty sure I've seen all the WoGs. Something about the Trackmania video particularly resonated with me like, "Huh, WoG really has been consistently top fuckin' class this whole time."
This one absolutely slapped me clean though. Like, this is sincerely an achievement for this format and certainly among the most meaningful, and I mean from anybody. I think with this one, and really everything from this past year, your portfolio is prolific enough for me to say that you're among the best of the best.
This is absolutely the content I'm looking for on here, so I suppose the thing to do is sign myself up for a spot on that next Patreon crawl. Good job man, one for tha books
The fact I can't afford a computer powerful enough to process this and will therefore never witness the abomination my house will have become is cosmic horror levels of terrifying
This is probably one of my favourite videos you put out this year hamish. I had quite a laugh watching it. Good job.
I saw a comment of yours on a limmy video which made me check your channel. I'd never have thought I'd be interested in a video about flight simulator but I was gripped
I adore this game or sim, I have gone on a world tour, starting at my home in Scotland and then heading to Wales, England, Belgium, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Algeria and now in on Italy
"How could someone live like this?"
Oh man, you have no idea how incredibly common that is.
Incredible video. I am aware i think too much about Horizon Zero Dawn but the way you described the landscape and what could have happened under the skin really set off some bells.
Absolutely love this video, my channel is made up of me exploring add-ons for this simulator so the drone camera is my tool of choice. Sure I do fly in the sim and I enjoy it but for making my scenery videos I use the drone camera to great effect, my before and after shots all require smooth use of the camera to create cinematic shots that later almost match up with default scenery into the new payware or freeware sceneries.
Without this drone camera I doubt my channel would be were it is today, my viewers love to see each scenery up close and love how I go in depth with textures and details added by the creators.
Thank you for this video, I really enjoyed it.
Flight Simulators Landscape on the Ground view can be made into a artwork or Album cover lol.
This game is absolutely beautiful
The problem with many people outside the sim community getting into MSFS is that they don't want to deal with the cons of simming, and start to complain, high system requirements and costly equipment has been part of sims for years, but insightful video!
This reminds me of that sense of wonder when flying for the first time around Outerra, no map boundaries just pure freedom and discovery, amazing video!
Just landing on this video while cycling through my watch-later-list I was not aware who was talking to me. There are so many guys talking about games, you see. And in between I was convinced that you were jacob gellar. So consider that praise, I love his videos, and your introspection here was beautiful.
"MSFS is not a game per se" tells me you haven't tried X-Plane yet.
or especially something like DCS
Xplane isn’t a game either, MSFS isn’t just this ‘arcade game’ that people take it as. While its physics are worse than Xplane, that doesn’t mean other aspects aren’t useful.
Oh, and also before I forget... When you were talking about Buckingham Palace, it is actually now fully detailed because of the UK World Update. So many more city updates and world updates to come! The scenery is only going to get better!
If you're into this kind of experience (a weird feeling of wonder and existential dread borne from a mix of physically accurate data and procedural generation), I HIGHLY recommend you play Space Engine. :)
Brilliant! All those doors that don’t go anywhere! I kept thinking you’d find Joe Chip trying to escape from his money grabbing door, or Lord Running Clam slipping under one of them.
I don't understand much about planes but some of my close friends are studying to become pilots and I love to hear them talking about the bucket of bolts that somehow a defies the laws of physics to fly
This was a very good video my god
Great Video ! There are so many things to discover in MSFS, you can spent your whole life in the game and hav not seen everything
I wish they would bring a trucking simulator to game pass next.
This video is incredible, I love the eerie appearance of Flight Simulator from the ground
This video reminded me of Eurothug4000's video on Photography as she mentions Robert Overweg's game photography that centres around unnatural virtual worlds. Great Video!
i spent a lot of middle school exploiting glitches in mirrors edge to get to street level and walk among the little people i saw down there. had a really similar experience
This makes me think of what kept me and a friend playing EA UFC 3. I hate vs games normally, but we hang out and laugh at the many glitches, like when one of us jumps in the air for a spinny kick but our head stays facing forward or something :P Sometimes the lack of polish is a selling point, I agree, each version should be preserved
One of my favourite videos of the year, this was fantastic.
I’ve said this for the longest time, but the technology behind flight simulator shouldn’t be wasted on only flying
You can actually navigate to anywhere in seconds in MFS: toggle on Slew mode to move translate the plane in any direction, then speed up the Sim Rate, and you can zoom from country to country- provided your internet connection is strong enough!
You certainly enjoy using this sim. That is certainly helping through the current times. (that is why I do "play" that currently too. It is my zen.)
The humams had to wall themselves off from the toy cars! Damn their reckless abandon!
This video gives me a vibe of a character of this world discovering all incoherencies of the simulation and starting to see the matrix.
Awesome video!
Also, don't worry, in such a huge game there will always be bugs and weirdness. The dark side of msf might evolve and change but I don't believe it will ever disappear. If anything, trying to find the surviving traces of this insane nightmarish parallel world could become an epic quest!
I bet you've already done this, but oh man would you love to just exist in ARMA 3's maps.
I had to double-check I wasn’t watching a Jacob Geller video several times. Great video!
Off topic but just wanted to say I love your work. Your dark souls video resonated with me so much your channel has genuinely helped me this last year so a big thank you.