Japanese Airline Sells Flight Sim On-Board

Thanks to GameSpot for their report that a Japanese airline are selling a PC flight sim on-board their domestic routes, allowing resourceful laptop owners to buy the game in mid-air, and then replicate the flight they're currently taking. According to the article, "This game, called 'A Flight with Skymark,' allows players to take control of a Skymark badged 767 and fly any of that airline's routes", and this PC budget software "will be featured in in-flight videos and the airline's magazine as being available for purchase during the flight."

Comments

Sounds like fun.

[WTFmonkey]

I was talking to an old-timer pilot a while ago who tells stories about getting into the bubble of the plane and taking sextant sightings to figure where to point the plane. It wasn't uncommon to be WAY off-course when you were out over the middle of the ocean, only to be corrected once overland. He was complaining that the new airbusses actually land the plane for you-- the pilot only has to land every 10 or 12 times to make sure he remembers how.

Somehow, autopiloting a plane for hours doesn't seem like a real fun game. "Okay, folks, we'll be cruising at this altitude for the next six hours, sit back and enjoy yourselves..." while the pilot does the same thing. Whee.

real cameras

[Jahf]

I would much more enjoy being able to see actual video out of the front of the cockpit ("pilot's eye view"). I fly frequently and am always wishing I could see that view, and perhaps a wide-angle down view, while craning my neck out the window.

Re:real cameras

[Yakman]

I recently flew Lauda to Europe from Australia, on one of their 777s, and they had exactly this as part of the entertainment system. There was a channel that was a "pointing down" camera and one that was a "Pilots Eye" view.

The downwards pointing one would have been a lot cooler if it was a bit more wide angle, and the pilots eye was kinda useless most of the time since in cruise the nose is usually angled slightly upwards, so all you could see was sky.

However, when coming in to land the nose cam was very cool, especially coming in to a windy Vienna and seeing the whole view skewed by about 5-10 degrees as the pilot had to yaw the plane to correct for crosswind.

Both cameras had the downside that they weren't very high quality (both resolution and image quality) and so didn't cope well with low ambient light levels.. landing was cool at night though, because you could see just the runway lights.