Monday, September 10, 2007

Google Takes Flight

I only had 5 minutes to play, and I'd need to get a joy stick plugged in to really try it, but I just learned that Google Earth 4.2 has a built-in flight simulator of sorts. It certainly makes sense with all that fast-loading terrain data - it gives you another way to explore it. I was all over the sky trying to use the keyboard controls, but it seems to have some sort of flight model, and two aircraft to fly (F-16 jet and Cirrus SR22). It's no threat to Flight Simulator X (though it's probably crazy to say the words "no threat" and "Google" in the same sentence!), but it's pretty cool. Fire it up for the first time with Control+Alt+A (upper case) - keyboard commands are here, and more info here.

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