Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator makes flying—and turbulence—a lot more realistic
The new game considers thousands of points on an aircraft's surface and how those points interact with the air. (Microsoft Flight Simulator/)After more than a decade, Microsoft has officially launched the next version of its famous flight simulator. The game dropped for PCs this week, and while no computer simulation of something as complex as flight can completely mimic what actually happens in the real world, the program deserves kudos for coming close. Last month, we took a look at how the simulator modeled the world. It uses artificial intelligence to carry out tasks like reconstructing some building shapes or figuring out where landscape features, such as trees, should be located. And other computer techniques allow them to depict elements like waves in the water, or the light that illuminates the world and the inside of the cockpit. But of course, ground-based aviators fire up a simulator because they want to fly....