Most people know about Google Earth and how nice it is to explore different areas of the country and around the world, to see the landscape and some of what areas look like that we may not be familiar with. I enjoy using Google Earth to look at where I live, to pre drive the roads for a trip I’m planning, and a lot of times I enjoy using Google Earth just to explore. For example if you would like to have some fun, explore Blacks Canyon in Colorado.
Now Google Earth has a new feature, it is a flight simulator. The flight simulator comes with two airplanes, an F16 Viper and an SR22 for passenger 310 worst power airplane. The F16 with its afterburner on can generate 24,000 pounds of thrust for a speed of more than Mach 2, and the SR22 cruises at 156 knots.
After playing with Google Earth’s flight simulator for about 10 or 15 minutes, I found myself able to navigate some of the mountain canyons in the F-16 using my mouse pad. A joystick would be better obviously, but I had fun just using the mouse pad.
Google Earth’s flight simulator supports joystick, mouse, and keyboard controls, and as you’re learning the many keyboard controls you can hit the to pause your flight while you look for the keyboard shortcut you need until you learn all the controls.
To access the simulator you must first have the latest version of Google Earth, version 4.2, once you start the program and the earth becomes stationary, click on the earth then hit CTRL+Alt+A. This will bring up your menu box for selecting the airplane you wish to fly in the air for you wish to take off from. There are about 25 or 30 choices of airports to take off from.
Once you select your airplane and the airport, push the help key to learn which keys you need to press next to get you started. For example page up and page down keys control your thrust or throttle, the letter G will raise and lower your landing gear. You can trim the ailerons and flaps.
The best part of playing with this simulator to me was the Earth terrain. With the same fine detail Google provides with Google Earth, you get to simulate flying through the canyons, close to the ground, and even follow the terrain. Want to fly the little plane through the center of the Grand Canyon? You can, and unlike Microsofts Simulator, Googles Flight sim is free, and rumor has it that more features may be offered in future versions. Go Google!!
