Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) (PC) (Asobo Studio)
0Here's my obligatory "I Can See My House From Here" video for the incredibly ambitious Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. I briefly visit five places on the west coast of Sweden where I grew up (Kungsbacka, Göteborg, Kungälv, Stenungsund and the island of Tjörn).
Despite having purchased the 120€ edition rather than going for the free-with-subscription version available on Xbox Game Pass, I'm probably not interested enough in the mechanics and overall experience of piloting airplanes to spend an excessive amount of time with this undeniably impressive simulator. Still, it's going to be interesting to see if the lead designers from Asobo as well as their various partner studios can continue to develop what's by far the biggest selling point of MFS; i.e. the satellite-powered in-game model of the whole f**ing planet.
Approached purely as a software tool for virtual tourism, Microsoft Flight Simulator is both incredibly detailed and very rough around the edges. As one might expect, the smaller urban centres covered in this video have not been manually worked on by the developers, and the AI-based guesswork involved means that the majority of buildings don't look particularly close to their real-world counterparts on close inspection (which, to be fair, isn't really the point in a game about realistic aircrafts travelling at cruising altitudes). Also, there are plenty of landmark structures that the computer algorithm just doesn't know what to do with. For example, the mighty 700 year old Bohus Fortress looms over the old quarters of Kungälv in real life, but is reduced to a flat surface texture in MFS. All that being said, the overall terrain as well as the networks of man-made infrastructure are certainly accurate enough to make navigation and orientation really easy if you're familiar with the places in question.