Monday, September 03, 2007

Up, up and away

For those struggling to fill their days in between playing with Facebook, Last.fm and working, here's something to check out:

Technical issues (firewalls, poor graphics cards etc) are preventing us from fully exploiting this rather exciting development from the brainiacs at Google.

Buried in the code for Google Earth is a flight simulator!

Apparently users only need the latest version of Google Earth before pressing CTRL-ALT-A and it's taxi, full thrust and gear-up!

Some pictures from Mashable and Boing Boing below. Google Earth has intructions on how to control the two aircraft available: a rather speedy F16 Viper or the rather more sedate Cirus SR22 four-seater.

Anyone had a go yet? Please report back...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution


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7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is superb. Not MS Flight Sim, understandably, but had fun on it for a few hours yesterday.

Tintin said...

I found it really hard to use. But then I'm no pilot. I was hoping to fly over my house, but I couldn't even get it out of Sydney.

Travolution Blogger said...

Joel: There seems to be a bit of a challenge going on with some of the Silicon Vlley techies - to fly an F16 Viper under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Boys and their toys...

Dan Caplin said...

I crashed far too many times, but I'm going to master this...Golden Gate Bridge here I come!

Not as fun, but there are many hidden treasures within GE, try flying to these locations:

39°49'21.77"N 3°28'44.50"W

45° 7'25.87"N 123° 6'48.97"W

52°30′31.46″N 13°20′6.90″E

52° 4′43.34″N 4°19′58.12″E

52°20′10.98″N 0°11′43.17″W

Anonymous said...

For those of you looking to fly a plane over the landscape without using google earth, try this mash up I came across a while back:
http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html

Space bar to fire...

Travolution Blogger said...

Rishi: tried it out. took me ages to realise where i was in london, as the highest altitude the plane will climb is only around 200 feet!!!

Rishi Lakhani said...

ummm I never said it was perfect...lol.
I Think if those issues can be fixed and a few interesting features added, it could be quite a good piece of link bait..