Flight simulators have always been a little underwhelming for me. It's always interesting to see them take technical leaps forward, to see how "real" they can make a city or a famous airport look, but as for me, I've never really cared that much about the fidelity exhibited in modeling ground support equipment at a particular airport. Faithful, digital depictions of urban areas will always be more exciting to me when I'm on the ground, admiring the effort of putting stickers for fake electric companies on utility poles - buzzing a lovingly rendered Eiffel Tower with a commercial jet covered in raytraced reflections isn't going to do much for me.
All this is to say that I'm in love with the mundane and the games that let you zoom way in on the stuff that isn't exciting enough to be depicted elsewhere or documented extensively by hobbyists. It's fortunate for me, then, that we live in an era where so many things are documented no matter how many hobbyists are paying attention, all because technology has afforded us the opportunity to do so. Despite its 100+ gigabyte install size, most of MFS2020 is being pulled from 2.5 petabytes of data in cloud storage, a figure that doesn't even represent the full scope of street and geographical data in Microsoft & Google's collections. Not even a tenth of it, actually, based on estimates from five years ago.
So sure, you could fly through a semi-hand-crafted representation of Manhattan (it's neat! it genuinely is!), but I imagine that there are other simulations that could provide stiff competition, and in that light MFS2020 is probably less impressive. If your curiosity allows it, though, I recommend going somewhere else. Fly over Bao Bolong, around Futuna, visit Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, follow the Ohio River from the town of Ripley heading either direction. Pick a capital city of a country that you don't know much about and fly as far as you can tolerate. If you're feeling adventurous, go to Google Maps, right-click a random spot, and click the coordinates to paste them into the game.
We are so connected that you can now look at a map of the individual aisles of a Best Buy in North Carolina from the base camp at Mount Everest, so why not use it to visit places that never would've received your attention? The world is full of fascinating places that will never be on a list of travel destinations. Find something interesting, get lost in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, fall in love with the immensity of our planet.
Random Street View
Random Wikipedia Article
Listen to a Spotify song with zero plays
Detchibe's wonderful GeoGuessr review, the inspiration for what you're reading now
All this is to say that I'm in love with the mundane and the games that let you zoom way in on the stuff that isn't exciting enough to be depicted elsewhere or documented extensively by hobbyists. It's fortunate for me, then, that we live in an era where so many things are documented no matter how many hobbyists are paying attention, all because technology has afforded us the opportunity to do so. Despite its 100+ gigabyte install size, most of MFS2020 is being pulled from 2.5 petabytes of data in cloud storage, a figure that doesn't even represent the full scope of street and geographical data in Microsoft & Google's collections. Not even a tenth of it, actually, based on estimates from five years ago.
So sure, you could fly through a semi-hand-crafted representation of Manhattan (it's neat! it genuinely is!), but I imagine that there are other simulations that could provide stiff competition, and in that light MFS2020 is probably less impressive. If your curiosity allows it, though, I recommend going somewhere else. Fly over Bao Bolong, around Futuna, visit Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, follow the Ohio River from the town of Ripley heading either direction. Pick a capital city of a country that you don't know much about and fly as far as you can tolerate. If you're feeling adventurous, go to Google Maps, right-click a random spot, and click the coordinates to paste them into the game.
We are so connected that you can now look at a map of the individual aisles of a Best Buy in North Carolina from the base camp at Mount Everest, so why not use it to visit places that never would've received your attention? The world is full of fascinating places that will never be on a list of travel destinations. Find something interesting, get lost in a Wikipedia rabbit hole, fall in love with the immensity of our planet.
Random Street View
Random Wikipedia Article
Listen to a Spotify song with zero plays
Detchibe's wonderful GeoGuessr review, the inspiration for what you're reading now
10 Comments
It took a lot of restraint to not just list a bunch of small island nations/territories because that's what I personally find most fascinating - one of the things that always makes the planet feel huge is seeing an island with 5-10 thousand people on it that you could fly around in 20 minutes, all surrounded by unfathomable amounts of ocean. For as many times as I've read over the Wikipedia page for Tristan da Cunha, I don't think I'll be visiting if my only way in/out is to spend a week on a boat. MFS might be about as close as I come to visiting these remote places.
I do definitely see the sentiment around that the internet is getting smaller and I do get why people say it, since I definitely feel like a lot of people have been funneled into the same handful of sites, whether it's conventional social media or content aggregators like Reddit. It's definitely harder to imagine that the incredible number of people walking around with the internet in their pocket also means there's a ton of stuff out there that nobody will ever see because it's private, and tons of stuff out there that's public that virtually nobody will see, intentional or otherwise. When I was including the links at the end, there were several things I didn't include for ethical reasons, but there's plenty of examples out there too where a sufficiently determined and/or knowledgeable person can do some digital people-watching, relying entirely on lack of public knowledge for protection - calling the emergency phone in an elevator, unsecured security/webcams, YouTube videos that have been inadvertently uploaded publicly. It kinda makes the whole "admiring the vastness of the internet" thing less cuddly, but if it makes people better at protecting themselves online, then I'd be happy with that.
I do definitely see the sentiment around that the internet is getting smaller and I do get why people say it, since I definitely feel like a lot of people have been funneled into the same handful of sites, whether it's conventional social media or content aggregators like Reddit. It's definitely harder to imagine that the incredible number of people walking around with the internet in their pocket also means there's a ton of stuff out there that nobody will ever see because it's private, and tons of stuff out there that's public that virtually nobody will see, intentional or otherwise. When I was including the links at the end, there were several things I didn't include for ethical reasons, but there's plenty of examples out there too where a sufficiently determined and/or knowledgeable person can do some digital people-watching, relying entirely on lack of public knowledge for protection - calling the emergency phone in an elevator, unsecured security/webcams, YouTube videos that have been inadvertently uploaded publicly. It kinda makes the whole "admiring the vastness of the internet" thing less cuddly, but if it makes people better at protecting themselves online, then I'd be happy with that.
I think the biggest leap now is when those aforementioned unknown nor retaken places become populated by entities, construct complex traffic/pathfinding structures where culturally/geographically accord species congregate in digital tomorrow. More dreamy enough, people who talk to you about those very places. Damn, future is lit all of a sudden!
What wikipedia articles did everyone get? I got the page for Hokkaidō Tōshō-gū, a shinto shrine. Apparently, it enshrines the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate. I wonder if this page was made by someone with a historical interest in said shogun, a local with a passion for this bit of history, or some other kind of person entirely?
(btw this is a really lovely piece)
I got Yoshinori Kobayashi, right wing mangaka for Neo Gōmanism Manifesto Special
Welp guess it's time to convert, I'm done
Welp guess it's time to convert, I'm done
I got the Siege of Polotsk where the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth led by the Prince of Transylvania took on the army of Ivan the Terrible.
Planet Earth is a beautiful thing ain't it? Lovely review as always.
(My random Wikipedia page was on Linwell the racehorse. He won the 1957 Cheltenham Gold Cup!)
(My random Wikipedia page was on Linwell the racehorse. He won the 1957 Cheltenham Gold Cup!)
@Detchibe and Woodaba: Thank you both!
One of the most interesting realizations I had recently was that the Wikipedia pages for US highways are absurdly well documented, and by looking in the edit history of one of these pages you can get a peek at little communities of people who document these highway expansions like it's the story of a river changing course. It's kinda fun to look at the pages for the editors that contribute the most to see whose hobby you've stumbled into.
One of the most interesting realizations I had recently was that the Wikipedia pages for US highways are absurdly well documented, and by looking in the edit history of one of these pages you can get a peek at little communities of people who document these highway expansions like it's the story of a river changing course. It's kinda fun to look at the pages for the editors that contribute the most to see whose hobby you've stumbled into.
@ConeCvltist: Oops, hadn't refreshed the page - thank you as well!
Detchibe
1 year ago
Your mention of random Wikipedia articles and unstreamed Spotify tracks highlights how much data is really out there. There's this prevailing sense -- in my circles -- that the Internet is getting smaller day by day. While that's certainly true insofar as websites being absorbed or going down or going off the clearnet, that doesn't change the fact there's still so much out there that simply isn't being looked at. It's why I loved StumbleUpon so much, and continue to try and find websites with near-zero traffic to ogle it. I guess my point is there's a lot of stuff out there nobody knows about, and it's like a fun little secret to find out about it for yourself!