covering the week's top tech stories
with a slight linux bias a significant
enhancement in microsoft flight
simulator brings photo realistic
uk castles and football stadiums to the
game
i'll tell you all about it in a moment
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on with the story nearly half a century
ago in 1975
bruce artwick an electrical engineering
graduate
student at the university of illinois
submitted a thesis entitled
a versatile computer generated dynamic
flight display
using a 6800 microprocessor with a
whopping clock speed capped off at two
megahertz he pro presented a real-time
flight simulation on the computer screen
three years later he founded his own
software company calling it sub logic
and began developing graphic software a
year after that for both the apple ii
and radioshack's trs-80 he used the
model from his thesis to create the
first
fs1 flight simulator program by 1981 it
was reported to be apple's best-selling
title
at this time microsoft contacted artwick
and asked him to make a new and improved
flight simulator that would be
compatible with the ibm pc
and microsoft flight simulator was
released soon after
advertisements at the time claimed if
flying your ibm pc got any more
realistic you
need a license this is almost laughable
when we look at the graphics of the game
today
versus then as microsoft flight
simulator has evolved by great leaps and
bounds
in flight simulator 1.0 the player flew
a cessna 182 in seattle new york city
los angeles or
chicago the airport's starting position
was in chicago and a city with a city
skyline view on the left
and lake michigan on the right in the
europe 1917 mode
the player flew a sop with camel with
mountains on two sides
they could fire at enemy aircraft as an
act of war
now it's 2021 and microsoft flight
simulator has received a big
uk and ireland update big
to the tune of 48 gigabytes the world
update 3
includes high resolution 3d imagery and
features cities such as london
birmingham uh bristol cambridge and
oxford
there are more than 70 custom landmarks
and famous buildings that have been
improved and enhanced
with much detail added from palaces and
destinations such as stonehenge to
bridges and even football
stadiums no not that kind of football
this kind aside from that the update
also includes greater architecture
details for all manners and houses
countryside churches and castles and
handcrafted airports
have been added as well in addition to
the improved imagery microsoft is adding
a new flight in the northern isles
and landing challenges in the southeast
of england and the shetlands
the update is availa available for free
to everyone who owns the current version
of microsoft flight simulator
i have not played flight simulator in
like 20 years
wow i know yeah me too it's been around
yeah that long and do you remember what
it was like 20 years ago oh man it was
brutal but it was still cutting edge at
the time it was cutting edge and at the
time
strangely enough we're able to play it
and
be immersed in that environment
at that time yeah because the technology
was not there to make it photo realistic
as it is right now but
so it's just unbelievable how the
progression of technology
changes our um our kind of our
expectations of what a game looks like
so now if you play it
here in 2021 it's just absolutely
horrible
but i remember that i remember playing
it
in the early days of flight sim on a
keyboard and
oh yeah i remember playing it and
exploring
yes because you could you could you it's
like the first
open open world kind of game
yeah in that you could just fly and fly
and fly and there was really nothing to
look at
yeah it was just sky and the most part
and like
like squares and rectangles and colors
but it was
fun and i i'll never forget like the the
joy that that brought at the time
i got into the point of trying to like
stunt pilot through mountains so i would
always pick
an area where you had the mountains and
it'd be like how close can i get without
actually
blowing up what is the hitbox like on
this game from 1983.
that's amazing but wow the photo
realistic
being able to fly over stonehenge oh
yeah and the castles in the uk
it's just mind-blowing it really really
is and i i like that that
feature has been added simply because it
takes it to the next level and it does
make it more
adventuristic adventuristic yes i don't
even know if that's a word
it was coined here folks you heard it
here first
i adore that the technology of
being able to use satellite imagery has
evolved to the point where
they're able to use real photographs
from
orbit and turn them into landscapes and
you know i'm
talking about the old days of where they
had to program in these
vector graphics and and it looked
nothing like it does today
i mean obviously the technology wasn't
there but to think that a lot of the
gameplay is in fact
real we talk about photo realism but
it's actually
photo generated created by satellite
imagery
that's like super high resolution we're
talking 4k
gameplay which is wild and now they're
adding these
additional 3d elements so it goes to
show too that
um game development um has a kind of a
new process because we've never
i i know that over the past five six
years we've we've seen these kinds of
evolutions of games but looking back
further we never saw gameplay evolve
so much so that when you buy a game in
2020
the very next year you've got all these
enhancements like
what did becca say 43 gigabytes of
storage
it's massive um and the
so basically you could have flown it
three months ago
and now fly it again today and it's
completely evolved
yeah absolutely beautiful stuff now um
when they've placed all these elements
in the game
um maybe i missed it but are they like
geo locations specific to where they are
every one of the castles it's like
flying through reality wow
in a lot of ways that's cool you know
you
imagine if they continue to build this
using that concept that development
process and that up
update process in time it's just going
to be
absolutely superb like you're think
about right now the fact that we can't
travel
we can't go places and and fly
you know if you let's say you're a an
amateur
pilot and you you you like to just fly
around and explore like i did in the
well now you know during the covet 19
pandemic
you may not be able to do that like you
used to be able to yeah
so i know it's not the same thing i'm
not saying hey this is a great
replacement no but it's a
it's a way to still be able to enjoy
that process or that
feeling uh from the comfort of home and
the safety absolutely yeah i agree i
mean it was a couple years ago my wife
and i we flew to hawaii
yeah we took a vacation and the the part
that i loved about
the trip i mean why it was cool but i
love flying over the grand canyon
because even from like you're looking
out the window and you're seeing the
grand canyon there's a whole new
perspective
and so to be able to take that element
with
you know flight simulator and add in
things like you know your stonehenge and
all that kind of stuff
it just makes it that much cooler but it
does add to the adventure of it
i think it's it's exciting i don't even
think my computer would handle it
we're gonna try we are going to try
that's right maybe
how many of you have played the earliest
versions of this game or even the
pre-microsoft ones
i remember having it on the family
computer when i was just a kid
i can still picture the cga graphics
with the pixelated instrument panel
and the very basic terrain below and
hear the humming of the engines
have you already added the uk and
ireland edition update to your copy of
flims flight sim
let us know about your experiences in
the comments below
from the category 5 tv newsroom i'm
becca ferguson
thanks for watching
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