Interesting Places To Visit In Flight Simulator

One of the fun things to do in Flight Simulator 2004 is to visit interesting places around the world—major cities, famous landmarks, natural splendors, etc. On my computer, I have the full version of Encarta installed, which is a pretty good encyclopedia from Microsoft. I browse around the encyclopedia to find places to visit, then jot down the information in Notepad. Then I open the Encarta World Atlas, which is quite good, and look up the location for each interesting place, jotting down the latitude and longitude (for big landmarks like cities, you don't need to write down all the numbers). Meanwhile I have Flight Simulator running, too, so I Alt+Tab into FS2004 and go to "World Map" (Alt->W->M) and set the latitude/longitude for the airplane (you can also change latitude/longitude using Slew Mode). Click "OK" and presto, you're there. Just because you visit someplace interesting doesn't mean Flight Simulator does a good job with the scenery. At plenty of locations, the scenery or landmarks turn out to be very disappointing, but some places are pretty decent, especially for a computer game.

I have seven pages of interesting places, which you can visit sequentially by clicking the "Next Page" button at the bottom of each page.

The famous Flight Simulator aircraft carrier. It's parked in the Pacific Ocean just west of the Golden Gate Bridge (fly out of San Francisco International, in California). Even flying a slow Piper Cub, it's surprisingly difficult to land—the flight deck suddenly seems very short when it's surrounded by water. As for the Boeing 747, forget it—that shot was posed with Slew Mode.

The "Hollywood" sign, located in the hills above Hollywood, California. For an extra treat, visit at night—the sign is lighted.

This airport is at the south end of San Francisco Bay; it's listed as Moffett Federal AFLD (KNUQ). You could fit many 747's in the immense hangar, which was used to house Navy dirigibles.		I thought this was a pretty nice posed shot. It's the Wright Flyer next to the Wright Brothers Memorial on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It's located next to the airport listed as First Flight (KFFA) at Kill Devil Hills. You can click on this picture to enlarge it; use your browser's "back" command to return.