[skybrian]

I don't have Flight Simulator, but someone on Facebook posted a screenshot of a friend's house in a suburban area in Florida, and I duplicated the image in Google Earth. It's just one data point, but here's what I noticed.

- The water looks better in Flight Simulator. A large pond has ripples and reflections in Flight Simulator but it's just flat in Google Earth.

- Trees and houses look better in Google Earth. Flight Simulator put trees in the middle of a house and in the middle of a street, and they seem a bit more crumply.

- Neither one gets palm trees right. On a major road with palm trees next to it, Flight Simulator turned them into green stalagmites and Google Earth didn't model them at all, leaving them as flat shadows on the ground.

It seems like if you like good-looking water or clouds (which Google Earth barely has) then Flight Simulator would be better, and obviously clouds are important for flight simulation. But if you just want to see the sights, Google Earth is pretty good and Flight Simulator isn't necessarily going to model things better.

[user_501238901]

Half the point is the delay of gratification. If you want to see the different islands of Hawaii, there will be some downtime while you're cruising. The tension starts building once you get closer and closer, until you finally get to see the absolutely epic view.

Comparing Google Earth vs Flight Sim is the same as watching 3D images of hiking trail end points vs actually walking through the trail.

[skybrian]

I guess, but in practice, wouldn't you speed up the simulation for the boring parts? Can't you put the plane wherever you want and start flying?