Tired of being stuck in your office chair? Or perhaps you’re “working from home”, i.e. slumping deeper and deeper into your couch until you merge with it into a gestalt being comprised of upholstery, half-finished coffees, and despair? Longing to take to the skies and fly, to soar on the wind like the carefree, unfettered spirit you were always meant to be?
Well, there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that capitalism is still capitalisming, so you’re going nowhere. The good news is that as of this week, you can at least while away the hours by taking to the virtual skies of Google Earth’s Flight Simulator, which is now available in the browser-based version of Google Earth. To access it, go to earth.google.com, click “No” on various AI prompts, select “Explore Earth” from the top right of the window, click “No” on more AI prompts, go to the “Tools” menu, and select “Flight Simulator.”
Boom! You’re suddenly at the controls of a virtual plane flying over Google’s virtual composite earth. For all that Google’s heel turn from its “don’t be evil” days makes it difficult to view anything that it does in an entirely positive light, Google Earth remains a remarkable resource, and this is a fun way to explore it. Well, if you can fly a plane, anyway.
Happily, this simulator is somewhat more forgiving than Microsoft’s ultra-realistic take on the genre. From a personal perspective, at least, this is a good thing, since I hold the unenviable record of having performed hilarious “Wait, how do I land this thing?” crashes in every single version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, from 1.0 to the most recent 2024 version.
Having said that, I still managed to make an impressive bollocks of flying Google’s plane—I spent a good ten minutes stuck in an endless barrel roll, after which my plane only seemed to want to fly at a 90º angle to the ground.
But! Grinding down on the last of my chewing tobacco, my scarf streaming out behind me, I pulled my flying goggles back down over my eyes and muttered to the cat, “Jerry shan’t be taking me down that easily, darn it.” I wrestled with the blasted machine until finally the engine stopped making noises like an abused octogenarian and the wings levelled out somewhere off the coast of West Africa. “That’s more like it, old boy!” I cried in triumph as I moved the mouse to take a screenshot of my victory.
Oh, I say, the mouse also controls the plane, does it? Well, dash it all.
Truly, some of us were born to fly—and some of us were not. Back to the coffee pot it is.