by Keith Stuart on (#599DE)
Far from moaning about the glitches, players are experimenting with everything from community fly-ins to planes operated live by Twitch groupsThe building stood 212 storeys high, piercing the skyline like some kind of alien monument. The pilots who discovered it while flying over a quiet Melbourne suburb quickly reported their findings on forums and social media, drawing other fascinated spectators. Soon, they were visiting in their thousands.The building is not real – it exists only within Flight Simulator 2020, the latest in Microsoft’s 35-year-old series. And what players quickly realised was that it was the product of a slight mathematical error. Flight Simulator bases its reproduction of the entire surface of the planet on data from a range of sources including the OpenStreetMap, an open source mapping application maintained by volunteers. One such volunteer, Australian student Nathan Wright accidentally entered a particular building height as 212 storeys rather than 12. No one corrected it, so the Flight Simulator program used the data as it stood. Hence: super skyscraper. Continue reading...