The Hidden Game Within Microsoft Flight Simulator
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- Опубликовано: 29 мар 2021
- The first 1000 people to use the link will get a free trial of Skillshare Premium Membership: skl.sh/writingongames03211
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, played as intended, is absolutely fantastic-its 1:1 recreation of earth is a technical masterwork. That said, I was interested in actually exploring that world beneath its beautiful cloud formations-what I found was absolutely not what I expected. Here's the story of how I accidentally managed to turn Flight Simulator into a walking sim-how a seemingly simple shift in perspective led me on one of the wildest journeys I've had with a game in some time, uncovering things about Flight Simulator that I never thought I'd find. It also got me thinking about intended play, game preservation, speedrunning and, well... my own place in the universe.
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The House on Blue Lick Road (Andy Baio, Waxy) - waxy.org/2020/10/the-house-on...
Police discover thousands of stolen items in former church (Ann Bowdan, WLKY) - www.wlky.com/article/police-d...
DOOM speedrun footage from Games Done Quick - • DOOM (2016) by jeromeg...
• DOOM (2016) by blood_t...
Developer interview footage from Noclip - • How Microsoft Flight S...
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Text intro by Isaac Holland - / drazgames
This video was sponsored by Skillshare 
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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.
When your home is so messy it becomes a video game location.
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
Congratulations, you recreated no man's sky on launch day
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
I wasn't expecting existential dread when I clicked this video.
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
Pretty sure flight sim is now set in the SCP universe.
*PCP universe
I don't expect my comment to make it but,
I just want to say that I've had this love in games and media like this for several years, i remember playing open world games and looking too in depth into some under developed areas, and just falling in love with their imperfections.
I made up fun stories on why some buildings in Fallout were destroyed like they were, and id act like weird design choices were on purpose and had their own backstory id make up.
Those moments will always have a spot in my heart,
thank you for this video and showing I'm not the only one in love with details like this.
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
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
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
Not the right word, but yeah, it's some sort of novel feeling.
I am absolutely astonished that this isn’t a video meant to troll us or be a shitpost
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?
This is absolutely the best video game essay video I've EVER watched. No hyperbole. This is next level for you.
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...
Her: Come Over
Me: I can't right now
Her: My parents aren't home
Me: 11:19
you are an amazing storyteller. I was gripped the entire time.
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.
loved, loved, LOVED this video!! absolutely stellar and meditative ~
Thia man draws different demographics of gamers with his awesome narration and content
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 🙌
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
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 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.
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.
This is probably one of my favourite videos you put out this year hamish. I had quite a laugh watching it. Good job.
It is as if it is a return to imagining things. After forgetting about anything below what is in front of you.
Very interesting take. Massively underrated channel!
This is why I stayed subcribed for 2 years now
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.
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.
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 :)
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
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
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!
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!
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
One of my favourite videos of the year, this was fantastic.
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
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.
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 remember seeing this a while ago. This is by far my favorite video on this platform and may have even influenced how I look at the world today. Thank you.
That's very nice of you to say - made my day. Thanks a lot for watching!
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 love how they're fixing the glitches on this new version of Cyberpunk
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
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.
As a person that really never traveled in my life this game looks great cause I can see landmarks I never saw:)
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. 👍
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.
I find it funny that most peoples biggest complaint about Microsoft flight SIMULATOR is it’s too hard to fly a plane
Literally the best games writer on youtube, and honestly this is one of your best pieces. Fantastic.
This game makes my computer cry.
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.
That is very beautifully written up and told. Bravo.
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
Gosh, I love every single one of these video essays!
Incredible script, great experience, well done. I loved it
Full-dive virtual reality. That's what we need.
"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.
This video is incredible, I love the eerie appearance of Flight Simulator from the ground
Flight Simulators Landscape on the Ground view can be made into a artwork or Album cover lol.
Nice video mate 👌🏻
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.
Great video. I always thought that what Asobo created as MSFS could also be the basis of the greatest road game on earth. Navigating across europe and onwards. You took the FS and showed us its underbelly - brilliant.
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.
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!
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.)
I love this video and what you've done here, I love all your videos really. I can offer a counterpoint despite fully understanding where you're coming from (insofar as not wanting to literally learn to fly a plane- especially since I'm playing this on Series X on a controller, which essentially makes the tiny cockpit buttons and switches impossible to use anyway); as someone who was entirely blown away by the actual (ALL ASSISTS ON- IDK shit about IRL flying) Flight Sim part of the Gameplay, I can say that the Series X MSFS on GamePass was more than sufficient for my occasional enjoyment lol. Everything looks so damn beautiful, and feels so realistic to control (obviously), that I generally do one of two things: pick an Airport to take off from (usually one I've really been to) and then just explore the surrounding area to see if I can find places I've been to IRL. Alternatively, I could just choose one of the like 5-10 "Suggestions" you mentioned, which are like NYC, Egypt's Pyramids, etc., and let the game spawn my plane in mid-air so I can just see things that I will most likely never see IRL before I die. I guess the reason the actual flying doesn't bore me has to do with me always being a Console gamer (bc I don't manage $ well?). So spectacular visuals in games, especially near-photorealistic ones - like Forza Horizon 5 or MSFS - have always been exciting / impressive to me. Even if I don't necessarily have the patience to "Play The Game As Intended, AKA: Learn To Fly a 747", I haven't uninstalled it & don't plan to. It's one of the best "Next Gen Console Show-Off" games on the Series X, so when I go to friend's /family's homes that have monstrous *4K HDR 120hz LED TVs,* the game becomes this magical display of "how far games have come", to everyone present specifically "non-gamers," who've no concept of where the industry is at, technologically speaking (or otherwise). Moreover, the Fighter Jets in BATTLEFIELD games were always my favorite part of the "big" Conquest Matches, and flying around in BF3 in cockpit view and shooting down other aircraft was what I spent most of my time doing. The graphics and sounds blew my mind, even back in 2009 or whenever it was (even on the now-trashcan Xbox 360). Any well-designed videogames with jets continue to do so today, even with Battlefield 2042 being a huge garbage fire right now. Seeing the insane visual detail on _those_ jets; the rain effects and the glowing afterburners, the minute details on the (hull?) exterior model, and of course the exceptionally futuristic, thoroughly rendered cockpit textures. The same goes for the sound design and animation work on both MSFS & BF2042's planes, they all sound / move with such life-like mechanical subtlety and physically reactive materials; meaning the wings hitting the wind and bobbing up and down, the rain streaming over the glass windshield thing (again, Idk any terms). It's all just so cool to me. No Man's Sky definitely falls into this category to me, as I also love space and spacecraft. You can only imagine how damn excited I am to experience *STARFIELD...*
I'm only going to but this sim on x box series x just to walk around the town's and cities I know and see what they look like in different weather conditions and times of the year. To see how similar areas I know look. Keep up the great work I loved this video.
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.
Really good video!
Absolutely amazing. A legit work of art
Great vid man. I was entranced
Brought here by Adam Millard, awesome video dude!
A dlightfully fascinating introspective look into your personal experience with this game. Thank you for letting me in to see what you see. :)
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 was such a great video!
very insightful and inspiring, thank you
Fantastic Narrative of the world below Microsoft Flight Simulator. An excellent research project ;-)
I've watched your channel before, but I never subbed by mistake. So glad Adam Millard reminded me of you.
I was about to say your writing made me hard and then I checked your channel name, oh, that's why. Damn. Well done!
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.
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. :)