The WOW factor in flight simulation
Many people seem to believe that flight simulation is all about the technical aspects of flying an aircraft. It isn’t! Many times, and for many people, it is also about the unique experience of seeing the landscape from up there.
Flight simulation for me, is a state of mind. While flying, recently, an extended kind of round robin flight around England, using Orbx scenery on top of the other Orbx layers, from somewhere on the westerly side of the map to my Chester destination, I had the time to ponder on the subject. With Neil Young’s music streaming — from the Neil Young Archives — softly inside the cockpit, I said to myself it was time to write something about the freedom flight simulators give us. Not just that, but why I believe those refusing to explore some of the options available inside a simulator, are not having as much fun as they could.
The heart of a flight simulator, is, no doubt, the aircraft itself, so I understand people want to have it “as real as it gets” — to keep with the mantra Microsoft Flight Simulator preached since its early years. Being able to touch, adjust and keep an eye on all the controls an airplane, even virtual or simulated, offers, is a unique experience and, for many, the only way to live a dream. People come to flight simulation for different reasons, many because it is a way to train some aspects of real aviation, others for the challenge of flying an airplane… without the risks.
Cockpits are exciting…
Whichever path you take to your first experience with a flight simulator, once you go past the initial learning curve, and if you move all the “realism” sliders to the right, things start to get tough, more real, one could say. For some, whose goal is the “as real as it gets”, that means taking it so seriously that they never leave the cockpit view, a view made even more exciting with the 3D cockpits with clickable controls we’ve had for a while now.
Yes, cockpits are exciting. But have you tried the view outside? I ask this, because browsing through forums online I found comments from many people that, while also demanding for power hungry graphic representations of the areas they fly through, seem to never leave the cockpit and admire the world, their aircraft, the beauty of it all, from the unique vantage point that flight simulators gives us. To those people I simply say: give it a try!
Discussions online about this subject center, usually, on the importance of “being realistic”, to what I reply: ”hey, it’s a simulation, else you’d be probably dead on a crash”. There is one reason why flight simulators — simulators in general, now that I think about it — have external views which, many times, can be extended through independent programs as EZdok Camera or ChasePlane. There is one reason — the same — why those programs are so popular: they allow users to have more control of the ways they admire their plane and the surrounding landscape… from outside of the airplane itself.
… but so is the view from outside
The optional external views already present in your flight simulator may be enough for your needs. I’ve used those in Microsoft Flight Simulator for decades now and the results they allowed me to achieve are impressive, from where I see it. Still, if you want to have more flexibility, the software programs mentioned above might be something to invest. For those creating videos of their flights, they expand the tools available to a “Hollywood” level that the built-in external views can’t match!
Why am I so worried about people not trying to explore the world of their flight simulation from outside? Because they are missing one of the great aspects of flight: the pleasure and freedom of flying through fantastic landscapes. On my recent — virtual — flight in England listening to Neil Young — while still keeping an ear open for ATC — I thought about all this while looking at the patches of light on the ground below me: the experience was so unique, so “real”, if you want it, that I felt the urge to leave the cockpit and look from outside. It can be breathtaking!
Have you never felt the desire, while on a real airplane and flight, to open the window and slide down the white fluffy clouds looking like an enchanted castle or flying dragon, or imagined what your plane looks like against the backdrop of a sunset on sunrise? Well, in a flight simulation you can do all that, and take pictures that will capture those fleeting moments. They may be virtual, but they do represent part of an experience others will love to see. That explains why so many people take photos/screenshots of their simulated flights.
A photographer in the cockpit
I know from experience that even seasoned pilots — probably them more than anyone else — love to fly the skies, because they also dream of being able to leave the steel bird for moments, and fly “like a bird” through clouds, across landscapes. Browse YouTube after those videos that give you that unique vision of the sky — glider pilots seem to be posting a lot of those — and… take the plunge.
Small action cameras fixed to wing tips or tails are another example of how real pilots want to see the world and their plane from outside. Guess what? In your flight simulation you can take that experience to a new level, and while it may not be ”realistic”, it provides you one unique learning instrument that flight simulators have: by being outside you can see how your plane reacts to your different inputs, making for a faster understanding of how everything works.
My passion for flight simulation intertwines with my passion for photography, and my approach to the capture of screenshots while using a flight simulator is the same I’ve for photography in real life. This means that I am always looking for the best light and the best angle to capture a shot. It does not matter if I am photographing a real plane during an aerobatic display, either on the ground or airborne, or a plane inside a simulation, the rules are the same, with the difference that in the flight simulation I can better choose my vantage point and even control lighting and other elements.
Jump out of the airplane to get the shot
Having flown a fair amount of cockpits with professional pilots on commercial flights, I experienced in those voyages their passion for being there, their interest for photography, their dreams of being able to jump from cloud to cloud. I continue to see, through the photographs they post on social media and share with friends, that despite them being professionals “driving those big trucks in the sky” — as one of them outs it — day in day out, the dream that once led them to discover how airplanes work is still vibrant.
I remember once, approaching Arlanda airport, in, Sweden, at sunset, with banks of clouds under us, the childish conversation on cockpit about how fun it would be to slide down some of the unique shapes of the clouds. When faced with a glorious landscape they would, if they could, jump out of the airplane, just to get “that shot”. Those pilots and friends keep a camera on the cockpit with them all the time, and through their eyes we have a chance to admire the world in a different way.
We’re blessed, in flight simulation, with the option to do exactly that, extending the dream to a level that doesn’t make the flight less real, only gives us a different perspective over the whole thing. And because the planes look fantastic and the sceneries we fly through are, nowadays, fantastic reproductions of the real places, and lighting systems along with atmospheric conditions simulations contribute to create simulations “as real as it gets”, it’s almost as if we’re taking photographs of the world we live in.
Discover what you’re missing
That’s what moves me to fly virtually. Flight simulation is an exciting experience, not only because it’s always a challenge, once you take a plane up, to bring it down in one piece — and I love the technical aspects it includes — but also because of the photographic experience it offers, and the challenges it creates for one to capture photos that will have a unique WOW factor.
So, please, next time you open a flight simulation do me a favor: put aside some of those “real” word limitations that tie you to the cockpit and wander outside. Choose a place and time allowing for some good photography and snap away, using a unique option that no one should put aside. Imagine, for one moment, you’re an astronaut on a space walk outside the International Space Station. I hope my photographs used to illustrate this article reveal how much you’re missing from the flight experience, no matter which simulation you use. My real world friends who are pilots tell me that they would do the same, if they could!
