12 ms·
The 212-story skyscraper in Melbourne, Australia
- chrismorgan 6y agoIs it morbid of me to wonder what happens if you fly a plane into such a building in Flight Simulator? It just… sticks out so much that crashing into it seems the obvious thing to try. (Judging by https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhrGEdO88kE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhrGEdO88kE where someone eventually succeeds in landing on this building, it looks like if you fail the screen just goes black at the point of impact, so no interesting physics simulation.)
- meheleventyone 6y agoYou can have two settings, one where things fade to black and the other where you bounce off with the collision doing no damage.
- bitwize 6y agoCrashing into stuff is great fun and probably the first impulse of anyone booting up a flight simulation program (especially kids) -- so much so that flight simulation software was the target of a moral panic in 2001 after the September 11 attacks were conducted by crashing real jets into buildings. Some people began to think of flight sims as "terrorist training tools" and call for them to be banned. That's probably why the screen simply went blank. Previous versions would display a "cracked windshield" over the cockpit view and the word "CRASH". Flight Simulator 5.0 would switch to an external view and show your aircraft shattering into pieces. MFS2020 can simulate an aircraft that was partially damaged after colliding with an obstacle, but a catastrophic crash will just fade to black and pop up a message. Lame.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- reitzensteinm 6y agoI built a game in the Flash days called Stunt Pilot, which happened to sit at #1 on HN the day of its release way back in 2007. Though that's way less of an achievement than it would be today! You played a stunt plane that would fly through hoops and around obstacles. The game featured a lite physics destruction model where if you made a mistake it would blow to pieces and tear down whatever you ran in to. Not as part of the gameplay, but in order to make your inevitable mistakes more entertaining. It featured user editable replays and a level editor, so people could post and rate content. I guess you know where this is going... Probably 50% of the levels and replays turned out to be something along the lines of "9/11 simulator". I culled it manually as best I could and eventually turned it off. I found it pretty funny how much of a cesspit user generated content turned out to be (in the same way that you'd laugh at 4chan), though I do wish I spent the many weeks rolling it out on something else. https://jayisgames.com/images/stuntpilot.jpg https://jayisgames.com/images/stuntpilot.jpg
- piva00 6y agoMarket opportunity for an indie developer to create a flight simulator with real collision physics? I'm not sure how complex flight simulators are to develop, I assume that getting real world data for plane characteristics modelling and such are part of the problem but as a project for software engineering I don't know if an indie developer could realistically create such a game.
- cpcallen 6y agoIn the mean time there's always Kerbal Space Program.
- hypertexthero 6y agoThe best damage model in a flight simulator so far is [IL-2 Sturmovik](https://hypertexthero.com/il2-flight-joy/ https://hypertexthero.com/il2-flight-joy/). The next game by the developer of Kerbal Space Program Felipe Falanghe is called Balsa Model Flight Simulator and it is already a lot of fun (I am currently playing a closed beta and it should be out soon): First ground takeoff in a plane I built: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715155254 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715155254 Midair collision during dogfight: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715177161 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715177161 Action figures in the cockpit: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715210985 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715210985 I am enjoying [MSFS 2020](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715725728 https://www.twitch.tv/videos/715725728) but the lack of a damage model and the “Empty Screen of Death” is really disappointing. I hope they add a damage model eventually. Seeing things go wrong without dying or hurting anyone is one of the joys of video games. Also keep an eye out for [Dead Stick](https://store.steampowered.com/app/771800/Deadstick__Bush_Flight_Simulator/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/771800/Deadstick__Bush_Fl...).
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoThat's because a few of the terrorists actually used flight sim games to "train" prior to the hijackings. It wasn't completely unfounded hysteria.
- SyneRyder 6y agoHere's one of the news stories about it, mentioning a British government report into the intelligence they had around September 11 and usage of MS Flight Simulator. (Apologies for a Daily Mail link, it's the only one I could find with some quick Googling, but it was commonly reported at the time.) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-357006/The-flight-software-trains-terrorists.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-357006/The-flight-s...
- bitwize 6y agoTrue, but at the time, anyone who wanted to fly a plane (for recreation, commercially, etc.) would be likely to use a flight sim as an inexpensive starting point for training or practice, and that's not even counting the people who might never step into a cockpit, but enjoy flight sims regardless. Terrorism was a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the use cases for flight simulators. And when this happened, the dust had just settled on a big nontroversy over the role of first-person shooters in real-life shootings -- arguably, a stronger case can be built for restrictions on those (for example, not allowing them to be sold to small children) than for restrictions on civilian flight sims.
- ceejayoz 6y agoFlight sims are a lot more useful than FPSes for training. My first flight hour was an ILS approach in a King Air. Supervised, for sure, but the owner was rather shocked I could navigate and follow glide slope without any actual time in the air. The same is not true for a FPS.
- ogre_codes 6y agoAlmost all pilots use flight simulator "Games" during training.
- 6y ago
- sandworm101 6y ago>> MFS2020 can simulate an aircraft that was partially damaged after colliding with an obstacle Scenarios where aircraft strike fixed objects and remain airborne are virtually unheard of. Bird strikes are one thing, but touching a cessna wing to any building is a realworld game over. Touch any pole, any power line, any bridge, anything larger than a goose and you aren't going home.
- ceejayoz 6y agoF-15s: "Hold my beer." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Negev_mid-air_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Negev_mid-air_collision Great photo of the aftermath here: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9884/did-an-f-15-airplane-successfully-land-with-just-one-wing https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9884/did-an-f-1...
- sandworm101 6y agoYa, but that wasn't a fixed object but another aircraft. Aircraft, even fighters, are soft and light compared to buildings and rocks.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rpadovani 6y ago> Scenarios where aircraft strike fixed objects and remain airborne are virtually unheard of A cable car cables are not properly fixed, still quite an impact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable_car_disaster_%281998%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalese_cable_car_disaster_%2...
- bitwize 6y agoI think the primary use case is to enable simulation of emergency crash landings and landings with the gear up.
- jwr 6y ago> flight simulation software was the target of a moral panic in 2001 after the September 11 attacks were conducted by crashing real jets into buildings. Some people began to think of flight sims as "terrorist training tools" and call for them to be banned. I've been wondering if this is why there was so little flight simulation software out there in the last ~15 years or so. I remember visiting a retail store with software in the 2010's and wondering why there is a simulator for everything except an airplane.
- ogre_codes 6y agoThere have been 2 outstanding flight simulators on the market for the past ~20 years which more-or-less dominate the industry. X-Plane and MSFS are both excellent and both reasonably affordable. I suspect the lack of flight sims in retail has more to do with the fact that flight simulators are hard to create. When there is established competition with a great rep and decent pricing, it's nearly impossible to break into a market profitably.
- bitwize 6y agoIndeed. The dearth in flight sims predated 9/11, and was likely because MFS and X-Plane filled everyone's needs adequately, with FlightGear available as an open source option.
- ansible 6y agoIf you want air combat, DCS is the top choice. Because they model very complex state-of-the-art jet fighters, it is also very complex.
- ogre_codes 6y agoAll flight sims are very complex, it's sort of the nature of the beast. I think that's the fundamental difference between a simulator and a game. A simulator needs to model reality, a game can take big shortcuts to ease gameplay.
- kevstev 6y agoIt's also not that easy to do- you at least need a few hours playing a proper sim before you can reliably hit a building. Before 2006 (IIRC) there were was not much else to do but just fly around before they started doing tutorials and challenges and such. As a kid I would just do loops around airports until I learned to land semi reliably, fly into buildings, fly under bridges, try to fly and find recognizable things. Flying under the BK bridge, and into the sears and twin towers was probably the biggest "activity" I did on flight sims.
- writeslowly 6y agoThe Flight Unlimited series in the '90s had a great crash system where you could watch your plane get ripped apart and the pieces bounce along the terrain until you restarted. It wasn't entirely realistic, but it was pretty impressive for a game from 1997. I was really disappointed when I tried other flight sims and found out they just stopped instead of doing the same thing. You can see the Flight Unlimited version of plane crashes at 3 minutes in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk8MBD9sUi4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk8MBD9sUi4
- skue 6y ago> MFS2020 can simulate an aircraft that was partially damaged after colliding with an obstacle, but a catastrophic crash will just fade to black... Lame. It’s a simulator, not a video game. What would be more realistic than this?
- inscionent 6y agoNTSB investigation and paperwork
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoTry A-10 Cuba if you want to see this done right, in terms of fun. Can knock bits of your wings off, grind your gears up etc
- peterkelly 6y agoIn some versions, the leadership of the country you're flying in uses the crash to justify two long-term wars, one of which lasts a minimum of 19 years, costing trillions of dollars and countless lives and ultimately failing to achieve anything other than even more instability in the middle east.
- buildawesome 6y agoGlad I don't live in this simulation.
- ignoramous 6y agoIf you can read my comment... I have news for you.
- paulcole 6y ago> ultimately failing to achieve anything other than even more instability in the middle east Hate to break it to you but this was the exact desired outcome.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoMuch easier and cheaper ways to achieve that. Are you aware how much technology the state has at its disposal?
- MacsHeadroom 6y agoNot cheaper for powerful profiteering and racketeering enterprises. Arms, oil, etc. State capture by corporate interests is inevitable.
- jessaustin 6y agoSpending money is the point. Don't imagine that the reptiles care about the region one way or the other. All the bullshit about peace and modernity and hating Islam is pure marketing. That's why their arguments for war in one nation can completely contradict their arguments for war in a different nation. (In Syria they pretended to care about "good governance". In Libya, not so much...) Like every other region of the globe, the Middle East is just an opportunity to reach further into the pockets of American taxpayers.
- kkotak 6y agoLooking at this video and how hard it is to aim for a skyscraper, you'd think the chances of Amateur pilots hitting the Twin Towers so precisely - twice - would be close to zero!
- nimbius 6y ago"ladies and gentlemen if you look out the window to the right you will see...the blinding hubris of mankind as it pierces the heavens to mock god himself."
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 52-6F-62 6y agoOh that's too funny. On a side note: I signed up for the discounted $1 trial month of Xbox Game Pass just to try this game out. The download and installation process was ridiculously slow and causing my CPU to ramp up to 80-100° even while undervolting it. On a brand new i7 9750. Not sure what that was all about. I put the process on pause... I am looking forward to giving it a try, though. Anyone else have any difficulties?
- crysin 6y agoI'd check your CPUs heatsink mounting and make sure the thermal paste is applied correctly. Installing and downloading shouldn't cause your CPU to ramp up to 100C.
- 52-6F-62 6y agoHm. There's no other context in which it ramps up that high, no matter what I've thrown at it. And unfortunately, it's a new laptop so I'm hesitant to crack it open for want of invalidating the warranty just yet.
- chrisandchris 6y agoSo you never used Microsoft AutoUpdate on a Mac, right? Because that‘s the only thing this tool does apparrently. Full 100% CPU while downloading, no matter how slow your network is...
- radegast 6y agoah, you are holding it wrong. Gaming on Mac? Ts ts ts...
- whywhywhywhy 6y agoWeirdly common I mean look at Dropbox, 100% processor while syncing. No idea why this is acceptable from such large companies.
- naavis 6y agoI also had a weird issue where minimizing the Flight Simulator window during the download/installation procedure bumped GPU usage to 55 % on a GTX 1070 until unminimizing the window again. GPU usage was hovering around 5-10% when the window was not minimized.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adaisadais 6y agoI love the concept of massive buildings / structures in areas without such but I don’t think the city people would enjoy such buildings in actuality. The massive circular mine in Russia comes to mind (no pun intended).
- sidewndr46 6y agoAre you thinking of something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostankino_Tower https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostankino_Tower ?
- gen220 6y agoReminiscent of the fernsehturm in berlin. [0] It's kind of nice. You can usually keep track of where you are in Berlin, by triangulating around the tower, which is visible from a great distance and in one of the "centers" of Berlin [1]. If you're ever lost, you can just walk towards it, and eventually you'll end up in the one of metro's nexus at Alexanderplatz. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernsehturm_Berlin#/media/File:Berlin_Tag_und_Nacht_(46908855315).jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernsehturm_Berlin#/media/File... [1]: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Flive.staticflickr.com%2F4038%2F4524549201_9fab160750_b.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
- tk75x 6y agoSimilar setup in Dublin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spire_of_Dublin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spire_of_Dublin
- GekkePrutser 6y agoAhhh the great toothpick of O'Connell street :) But really it would have been nice to have something more Irish. I always felt it's out of place there.
- manacit 6y agoI am reminded of the Turning Torso in Malmo, which is 190m and surrounded by nothing anywhere near as tall (the second tallest building in the city, almost 100m shorter, is pretty far away). I would say people don't mind, but the owner of the building has been trying to sell for years and nobody has bought it. It looks pretty though.
- afandian 6y agoThe ridiculousness of this brought unexpected joy. It reminded me of the The Centrifuge Brain Project. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVeHxUVkW4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVeHxUVkW4w
- yboris 6y agoReminds me of Euthanasia Coaster https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/designandviolence/euthanasia-coaster-julijonas-urbonas/ https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/designand...
- phaedrus 6y agoIt's like something The Culture might produce on a GSV that's gone Eccentric and the crew just goes along with it.
- thamer 6y agoThanks for sharing this, amazing short film.
- xwdv 6y agoThe article says it's impossibly narrow but is it really? It's only about 2.5 times taller than 432 Park Avenue in New York, but it also looks a little bit wider. A building like this would probably sway a bit more than usual at the top due to being so tall and having no other wind breakers around it, but I imagine it could be possible to build and live in safely.
- rtkwe 6y agoIt's taller (assuming just 10 feet per floor) than the Burg Khalifa. Super tall structures require a far larger base to support against winds, as you go up winds get faster and their leverage against the base increases.
- spuz 6y ago10ft per floor would make it 2120ft or 646m tall. The Burj Khalifa is 829m tall.
- rtkwe 6y agoI was looking at the top floor height by accident, the last 200 feet or so are a tower. It's a common cheat in the fight to be the world's tallest building, build pretty tall then slap a bunch of floors or a tower on top that people can't get into. https://qz.com/122356/44-out-of-72-of-the-worlds-tallest-buildings-are-cheating/ https://qz.com/122356/44-out-of-72-of-the-worlds-tallest-bui...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- java-man 6y agoDid Microsoft credit Open Street Map?
- ceejayoz 6y agoIt looks like OSM credits Microsoft for a lot of that data. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Microsoft_Building_Footprint_Data https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Microsoft_Building_Footp...
- rwmj 6y agoNow I'm wondering if in engineering terms such a tall, thin building could be constructed.
- ceejayoz 6y agoNo one's gone quite that big, but this one's similarly tall and skinny, and ~100 stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue
- jaypeg25 6y agoThe 57th St Tower (still being built I think) is slightly taller and even skinnier - and just as ugly. Really I think it detracts from the beauty of Central Park.
- jdpink 6y agoThe skyscrapers are what makes Central Park unique. There are millions of acres of parkland around the world. There is only one place where a park is surrounded by the most iconic skyline in the world. That contrast between the urban and the "natural" (there's little to no true wilderness in Central Park) is what makes it beautiful to me.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThere's a new cluster of super-tall buildings going up around Central Park, though, that are changing the situation a bit. Housing for handfuls of billionaires shading the public park used by millions. https://www.npr.org/2014/04/23/305643904/nyc-s-tall-skyscrapers-cast-super-shadows-on-central-park https://www.npr.org/2014/04/23/305643904/nyc-s-tall-skyscrap...
- bluthru 6y agoThese supertalls are adding significant shadows to Central Park: https://www.westsiderag.com/2018/11/11/billionaire-shadows-now-creeping-across-central-park-olmsted-and-vaux-would-not-be-happy https://www.westsiderag.com/2018/11/11/billionaire-shadows-n...
- BitwiseFool 6y agoKinda looks like 432 Park Avenue! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue
- screpy 6y agoLOL! Always remember to sanitise your data: https://twitter.com/liamosaur/status/1296305262144364544 https://twitter.com/liamosaur/status/1296305262144364544
- growlist 6y agoI really think this should now be built.
- dwd 6y agoThere have been ideas for a similar tower for decades. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grollo_Tower https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grollo_Tower
- tus88 6y agoThere is something much funnier happening in Melbourne right now :D
- ipnon 6y agoI hope they keep the building or make it an option. This is the sort of creativity that seems to only happen by accident. It makes the game better for some people, they enjoy the fun backstory and challenge of navigating around and landing on it.
- carabiner 6y agoLet me remind all citizens of the dangers of magical thinking.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoGood to see OSM being actively used though.. I really love that project. And the maps, at least here locally, are of amazing quality. When I'm hiking, on Google and Apple maps I'm walking in a grey square. OSM has the tiniest mountain trails. Love it. And mistakes do happen, hope this one would get corrected though :) And it's not the only one of its kind! Many are seen all around the world.
- testrun 6y agoAccording to that twitter feed, it has been already corrected in OSM.
- dwd 6y agoAs an aside, I was curious how on a few of the trailers they feature out of all the places in the world - Warrnambool (Victoria). Given, it's a picturesque place (having grown up and gone to school there), but maybe not as interesting as say a low level flyby of the 12 Apostles about 10min flight time back along the coast. Was there a competition to get your town in the trailer, or one of the developers grew up there and slipped it in?
- Balgair 6y agoAside: One of the best FSX posters out there is AirForceProud95. He's what got me into flight sims, at least for a little while. A good compilation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8E3SyMbaSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8E3SyMbaSk