The Google Earth Flight Simulator

[Parsifal]

Hidden within the newest version of Google's Earth global atlas application is quite a little easter egg. By pressing ctrl+alt+A you'll activate the hidden flight simulator program, opening a screen which asks you to choose from two available aircraft (A F-16 and a commercial double-prop plane) as well as your starting point. You can either elect to start inside the current view (already in mid-air) or choose from a drop down list of airports around the world, where you /will/ have to throttle up to take off. If you happen to have a joystick plugged in, there is a checkbox you can tick to let you use that to control.

"How Not to (immediately) Crash - Controlling your crate from Ground to Air (and suddenly back to ground)"

Since this is a hidden app there is no documentation whatsoever for this. Luckily for anyone wanting to try I've taken the time to find out. First things first, Throttle=PgUp and PgDn. If you're starting from an airport you have to throttle up and get off the ground, if you're in the air then there's really no reason to mess with this unless you're trying to pull some sort of hard angle turn (or trying to get out of a stall, resulting from said turn).

To avoid making a mess of the landscape caused by a stall (your engine stops responding), throttle down and aim yourself in the direction of your movement and then start throttling up until your engine restarts. If you're too close and pointed at the ground then try and turn your nose upwards and pray as you up the throttle.

Basic navigation is accomplished via the arrow keys. Simple enough, you just need to take the time to figure out how sensitive the turning is and get used to minor adjustments. The Up and Down controls are /of course/ inverted. Like in actual flight, moving the control (stick) back/down causes you to go up. The reverse is true. Word of warning, it is possible to use the mouse to fly as well so if you're going in a direction you don't mean to/spinning uncontrollably and you aren't stalled (it will say "STALL" in red letters on the right of the screen) check your mouse cursor. If its in the shape of a + then you've got mouse flight on. Should you wish to go back to just the buttons just left click anywhere in the flight window and it will revert to the normal cursor.

As far as simulation goes its really just the map turned flat with you flying over it. Its a fairly simple affair. You can go up and down and fly around things. Any changes in land elevation such as mountains do just upwards from the main plane of the map so you'll have to fly over. Having problems loading 3-D building shapes right now so I can't tell if you can fly between them yet or not.

If you have Google Earth anyway and you'd like to give it a try, go ahead and update your version to 4.2. Just click the "agree" button and the download window should pop up. Ace Combat it isn't but if you've got a little time to kill or are just curious, might as well give it a shot. Google Earth on its own is useful enough to warrant the download anyway.
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