Microsoft to Change Flight Game

NY Times AP Online ^ | September 14, 2001 | Associated Press

[The Electrician]

Flight Simulator 2000 was shown on one of the TV news reports, approaching the twin towers although not deliberately crashing in to them.

[RetiredArmy]

Just a few days to late Dollar Bill.

[mountaineer]

I remember fooling around with Flight Simulator over ten years ago. I must have crashed into the Hancock Building half a dozen times. Not so funny anymore.

[DouglasKC]

I'll be honest. I've purposely crashed into buildings using flight simulator. I've also landed on the little island the Statue of Liberty is on.

Is Microsoft going to revise it's game to show the new towers when they're built?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Just a few days to late Dollar Bill.

I don't think Microsoft flight simulator was responsible for the WTC attack. Political correctness never saved a single trade center.

[Grig]

I think this is an overreaction. They should rebuild the towers rather than try to erase them from existance. Already there are two movies (Spiderman, Zoolander) that are having the WTC digitaly removed, and some want them removed from AI when it comes out on DVD. Just let it be, rebuild the towers, and show these creeps that they can't make a lasting difference.

I bet someone will create a patch to add the towers back into the game too.

[Sloth]

There has been no suggestion the terrorists used Microsoft's computer game to prepare for Tuesday's deadly attacks.

Until this AP reporter suggested it, of course. Hmmm, wait for supposed victims to start suing Microsoft over this.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

I used to crash the planes all the time, but not into the hancock building . . . I worked there a ways ago.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

I used to crash the planes all the time, but not into the hancock building . . . I worked there a ways ago.

[MPB]

I remember fooling around with Flight Simulator over ten years ago. I must have crashed into the Hancock Building half a dozen times. Not so funny anymore.

I made a suggestion to our programmers (not MS programmers...just programmers in general) that the next version could have code that would automatically notify the FBI if it sensed you were deliberately crashing into buildings.

Of course, I said this tongue planted firmly in cheek, but hey... you never know...

[ctdonath2]

For a new FS product, I think it's simply a practical matter: the buildings just aren't there anymore.

[mountaineer]

I seem to recall crashing into the Statue of Liberty, too. It was just for fun. I certainly hope no one is seriously blaming software for what happened Tuesday. No sane person would make the leap from playing around on the computer to actually flying a 757 into a building.

[Doogindayton]

Can someone please post or E-mail me the link to the picture of the rap album by the coup that had pictures of the WTC ablaze. I don't remember where this was located, This was the cd cover from a cd released in July. Thanks in advance. God Bless this great country.

[DoughtyOne]

I saw someone using the Microsoft flight simulator on TV last night. They were talking about this. I thought to myself, hey they ought to remove all the ground in that simulator. Hey, the pilot could crash into about anything. Thus the only way it could be totally PC, would be to remove all obsticles.

Folks, we really do need to quite being quite so anal when it comes to sensitivities. That game wasn't devised for people to get a sick pleasure out of killing people by flying into a building. Let's try not to lose our total friggin minds over this.

It's only natural to goof around. That doesn't mean we're all closet terrorists.

[Barak]

Part of my own flight training has been accomplished using a PC flight simulator called X-Plane. When I saw the attacks on Tuesday, my first impression was that the pilots were not very skilled, because they both crashed into the upper portions of the tower--the first one more so than the second one. Much lower impacts would have brought the towers down more quickly and killed more people.

So I fired up my simulator, selected a 767, took off from La Guardia, and experimented with crashing into the World Trade Center as low as possible, taking into account the heights of the surrounding buildings.

Turns out it's fairly easy to crash very low, but it requires a steep dive over the neighboring buildings that threatens to overspeed the airframe: you have to use speed brakes to stay below Vne.

Conclusion? More people could have been killed if the terrorists had been better pilots. Thank God for terrorists of limited competency.

Guess I won't be able to run the same test with the next version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, eh?

[Phantom Lord]

[Beeline40@aol.com]

How Freaky!

[steveegg]

Depends on whether the asbestos below floor 61 would have kept the towers up long enough to actually fight the blazes. We'll never know.

[Big Guy and Rusty 99]

I'm not. These people are against technology, I doubt they trained on Flight Simulator.