More than once I lowered the flaps or turned the engine off because I pressed the wrong button accidentally.
If you’ve got a headset on, there’s no way to know which button you’re pressing, unless you’ve memorized the layout.
The other trick is that you have to learn how to control the plane completely by feel you can’t use the Oculus VR controllers with Flight Simulator, so you have to rely on a joystick and keyboard commands. I attempted a few barrel rolls in Flight Simulator, but for the most part kept things to slow and steady turns. I also got a bit dizzy if I moved the plane around too fast I’m a bit prone to motion sickness, as I discovered during my DJI FPV drone review. I also noticed that the headset would sometimes have trouble rendering a support pillar of the plane if I turned around too much, or came too close to where it was. It wasn’t perfect there was a bit of jitteriness here and there as the headset tried to keep up with the imagery outside the airplane. The headset even managed to show such intricacies as small scratches on the plane’s canopy and distortions of light as the Sun reflected off the glass. At first, I thought that the instrument dials were a bit fuzzy I then leaned forward, and they came into focus and gained detail. I wonder how long before they advertise it as official functionality.I gained a new appreciation for the details inside the cockpit, too the textures of the plastics, metals and leather seats all took on a new level of realism. I'm pretty impressed with this hidden feature. I thought I'd go check out Windsor Castle: If you decide to quit, Google Flight Simulator doesn't return you back to the normal Google Earth view, instead you remain in the "Simulator" view (it's normal view, but with a lower level of elevation) and you can then use your mouse to move around and view things as if you were flying, but without the need for skill. If you crash, don't worry, you can select to continue with your flight and Google Flight Simulator will then start again, but with you in the air near where you crashed. I took off from Heathrow, flew for a bit and then doubled back on myself just to see how accurate and clear the view would be. Once you're airborne, you can start using your mouse to control your plane.Īnyway, soon enough you'll be off the ground and flying over the country you selected to take off from. The keys are in reverse, as one would expect with any flight simulator, so use the down arrow to take-off. Once you've accelerated to a sufficient velocity use the arrow keys to take-off.
In order to take off, you need to build up some thrust - press the Page Up key for a few seconds (the thrust meter is the left bar of the lower-left meters). Soon you'll be sitting on your selected runway, ready to take off. Make your choice and click "Start Flight".
Here you can select one of two planes (F16 fighter jet or SR22 prop plane - it doesn't seem to make much of difference which you choose) and select the airport and runway you wish to take off from. You'll be presented with a screen like this:
To get started, fire up Google Earth, zoom in a bit and then press Ctrl+Alt+A (Cmd+Opt+A for Mac users). Not only does the latest version of Google Earth have the ability to view the night's sky, but it also has a "hidden" flight simulator that cleverly and accurately shows the ground below you.