A customer reported an error in the map used by Flight Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170418-00/?p=95985 <comment><USER2> It's an everyday occurrence during the development of our app (Infinite Flight).

We often get customers complaining about a misplaced sticker on a livery, a missing exit door in a particular variant of a the 737-900... That type of stuff is easily verifiable. But for things like the airplane not behaving in a way they expect in certain conditions, or perhaps a wrong approach speed or angle, discussions usually start with: "We tuned the airplane based on information available to us at the time we built the airplane. We are happy to make any changes based on an actual report from one or more pilots flying on this airplane, or better yet, the aircraft manual if you can get your hands on one."

The discussion usually ends there :)

One we get often is about why it's possible to do a barrel roll in a jet liner in Infinite Flight. We simply point them to the video of that test pilot who did one in a 707 ;-)

<comment><USER3> This was done in Seattle: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_khhzuFlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_khhzuFlE)

<comment><USER4> Boeing also did a near-vertical take off in the 787 during their initial tests (and a few times after at air shows) This video [1] from a past Paris air show, shows a 787 ready for a delivery to Vietnam Airlines doing a very aggressive & short (but not vertical take off). Pretty ballsy to do such a thing in such an expensive jet that's on its way to delivery to a client.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5_8D8HCnS4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5_8D8HCnS4)

<comment><USER5> According to comments, it was nowhere near vertical, which is why they didn't show it from a side angle. Apparently indicator light goes off at 30 degrees, indicating imminent engine stall.

<comment><USER2> What do you mean engine stall?

As long are you have enough thrust, airspeed and no system preventing you to go above a certain pitch or AOA, then the plane should fly just fine...

<comment><USER6> Excessive AOA causes streamline detachments in the diffuser that cause compressor stall: [http://www.free-online-private-pilot-ground- school.com/image...](http://www.free-online-private-pilot-ground- school.com/images/xcompressor-airflow.gif.pagespeed.ic.Sk_s8wyIqh.png)

<comment><USER2> Right, but there's no excessive AOA here... except during recovery maybe but I doubt they let it go that high...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of the funniest thing i ever read on the internet. I once played FS with a realism mod that would simulate passenger needs. One day someone appeared on our "virtual airline" forum asking for help:

" Hit severe turbulance over seattle on route to alaska. Didnt have seatbelt sign on. One dead, several injured. Am playing in-flight movie but passengers still angry. Should i serve meal early or wait until closer to destination?"

<comment><USER8> This quote was stolen from the comments section on the original article by Brian_EE

"I wonder how realistic the operations of the virtual airlines are. In the game, do you get to have local police come on your plane and beat up your passengers and drag them off before you take off on your flight route?"

<comment><USER7> FS is pilot-focused. They dont simulate the exciting world of ticket counters and baggage limits. But there is probably a german sim that, from the makers of AirportSimulator (see nerdcubed's coverage of that series). German simulators are a strange market niche.

<comment><USER9> I remember googling furiously once I discovered Euro Truck Simulator to confirm it wasn't some Steam Greenlight prank...

<comment><USER10> I heard that game has some cult followers in Korea. Some gamers buy steering wheels and gears, put on the monitor a sticker saying "Freight Union", wear fingerless gloves and a red Freight Union vest, and start driving while listening to radio...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> squeaky-clean This reminds me of a story I read in PCGamer long ago (I tried searching for the article, but I don't even know if it was published online). The author got into their seat for a flight, next to someone with a gaming laptop running a flight simulator. They chatted about video games for a while, and the gamer explains that they like to set up the simulator to play the same flight they are currently taking, and try to take off and land at the same time.

About halfway through the flight, the gamer remarks that the pilot is wrong, and not taking the best route for the flight. The flight sim path and real plane are going in slightly different directions. They try to tell a flight attendant who assures them know "the pilot knows what they're doing." The remaining half of the flight they complained to either the author or other attendants, acting like they knew more than the staff.

They never got to finish their flight-sim though, because the real plane landed 20 minutes ahead of schedule. I guess the pilot did take a different path after all!

<comment> squeaky-clean Actually I just remembered an even more relevant funny story. One of the services I maintain at my job is a list of airport locations and their names in various languages (for airlines to use) among other details. I get so many requests to change things from airlines that don't understand basic geography or even where they fly.

My favorite is when a customer was raising hell because London International Airport (YXU) wasn't appearing under the city listing for London, UK and demanding it be added immediately. I had to tell them you don't fly there... it's located in Canada.

<comment><USER11> Hah. The Y prefix alone should've been a tip off. I don't know a darned thing about air travel but I know Canada is stuck with the Y.

<comment><USER12> I think technically Canada is stuck with the "C" prefix (vs. "K" for USA) eg. CYVR, CYUL, CYXX

We also have airports with "CZ" (eg. CZBB).

I am not sure what the difference (if any) between CZ vs. CY codes is. Probably just sticking with convention (begin with Y or Z because everyone else does).

<comment><USER13> Yes, the entirety of C is currently allocated to Canada[1]. The parent comments were talking about IATA codes, though, which aren't allocated by prefix.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Civil_Aviation_O...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Civil_Aviation_Organization_airport_code#Prefixes)

<comment><USER11> While IATA codes do not require a consistent prefix, all the Canadian airports start with Y:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_by_IATA_code:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_by_IATA_code:_Y)

<comment><USER12> Interesting. I still see Canadian airports starting with Z.

But Y is heavily Canadian. We should all just start our own airport. Sounds like a good way to learn about naming. I imagine we will want an airport code staring with YC, so it'll have to be in Canada :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not funny but sort of relevant. Here in Ireland we just had an air disaster - an air sea rescue helicopter crashed into an island off the west coast and all aboard were killed. The accident investigation has determined that the island was not registered on the aircraft's mapping system.

<comment><USER4> This is why every air craft comes equipped with a set of MKII eyeballs. Not trying to make light of it, or anything, but this is a prime example of why good vision is a requirement of any pilot. Not familiar with this incident or whether it was night-time or during inclement weather.

Regardless of the circumstance, my apologies & condolences to the friends & family of the crew and any passengers. From your short description, this seems like an easily avoided accident and I hope actions are being taken to prevent a recurrence.

<comment><USER14> According to the recovered black box recordings, one of the crew did see the island, but not soon enough.

Probably the most shocking part is that there was a lighthouse on this island, which was operational at the time. This is shocking both because it should have been blindingly obvious to the pilot and crew that they were flying toward a lighthouse, and also that an island significant enough to have a lighthouse on it would not be on a digital mapping system. It's on Google maps - [https://goo.gl/maps/Xdt7rzUErX42](https://goo.gl/maps/Xdt7rzUErX42), even has photos and information. This is not some insignificant rock

How an aircraft mapping system can have such a huge omission is just mind- blowing

<comment><USER15> To be clear, the deficiency was in a warning system database of 3D elevation geometry (the EGPWS) not a "mapping system".

Something that is geographically notable but quite small, vertical and isolated (like Rockall) may very well also be omitted from that version of the EGPWS database.

NB Blackrock is a designated navigational waypoint on the standard charts etc. which is why they were flying straight toward it on autopilot.

<comment><USER14> > Something that is geographically notable but quite small, vertical and > isolated (like Rockall) may very well also be omitted from that version of > the EGPWS database.

Why are "small" and "isolated" good criteria for omitting something from a database of elevation geometry? It's evidently big enough to crash into and cause loss of life.

<comment><USER15> I'm not suggesting that those are criteria, just possible contributing factors. (And I'm not trying to exonerate the suppliers. We'll see what the final report says.)

If the source is some kind of DEM (digital elevation model) data, it will be a raster of elevation values at some limited resolution, so necessarily just samples of elevation. With a relatively small island/rock, the full height could be missed, and possibly then even further reduced by filtering (i.e. smoothing of DEM values, either in the process of measurement or some kind of processing). That likelihood is hinted at by this quote from the manufacturer:

"Honeywell's terrain data is sourced from our supplier [named supplier]. It is a digitized topographic map derived data set. It does not include Black Rock. We have looked at alternate sources, including SRTM and ASTER. While Black Rock is present in these alternate data sets, the actual altitude of Black Rock is considerably higher than what is indicated in these alternate data sets."

The data sources they refer to: [http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/](http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/) [https://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gdem.asp](https://asterweb.jpl.nasa.gov/gdem.asp)

Again, not coming to any conclusions from this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's hysterical. Flight Simulator was an incredible product back in the day. My father was a weather, IFR[0] certified small plane pilot.

He used MS Flight Simulator to train to get his license back after several years of having let it lapse and to train for his IFR certification. To this day, other than watching him play Pac Man at K-Mart in the 80s, I had not before, nor since, seen him play any video game on his home PC.

[0] Most small plane pilots have basic licenses - VFR - or Visual Flight Rules. IFR is for pilots who have instrument ratings. It's not all-together rare, but not necessarily common and is usually reserved for pilots who fly in a more professional capacity, as my father did. He was certified to fly a single engine aircraft (he flew a Cherokee -- 6?) and had more hours on him some years than some commercial pilots.

<comment><USER17> I pretty much only play X-Plane as well. Don't really play any of the other games anymore. X-Plane is probably the only game I played that has over 300 hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Shower curtains are often terrible. My periodic table shower curtain is a jarringly awful mixture of Arial and Helvetica: [http://fanf.livejournal.com/147327.html](http://fanf.livejournal.com/147327.html)

<comment><USER19> How is that even possible? I mean, unless it's intentional.

<comment><USER20> The information was copy-pasted with a "smart" formatting tool.

<comment><USER19> Eh, that doesn't explain how the letters _in the same element name_ end up having different font...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's very impressive to me that Microsoft took the technical details of Flight Simulator so seriously that it fielded questions from customers like this. What's doubly more impressive is that Bill Gates got directly involved with what is essentially a bug report.

<comment><USER21> It's interesting certainly, but should we be impressed here? In the end, the team's time was wasted and a nonsense issue was escalated to _the CEO_.

<comment><USER22> They fielded the question and did a lot of work because they cared about the quality and details of their product at a level that I would agree with OP was impressive.

That it turned out to be a nonsense issue is immaterial to that judgement.

<comment><USER21> There are exemplary aspects to the story, but I think the only real lesson to be learned is "don't blindly spend a bunch of time/effort on an issue unless we're sure it's actually important".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The story may be a bit exaggerated for entertainment purposes, but this seems like a classic case of "try to fix first, ask questions later". They could have saved a lot of time by asking the customer for clarification first.

<comment><USER24> Totally this. Funny story, but if it's real this only talks of Microsoft's incompetence rather than the customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This reminds me of a story I remember hearing a few times as a child:

During WW2, British, and later, American forces set up base in Iceland. On some of the maps they had created, items of note had been added with symbols. This included lighthouses and there were little lighthouse symbols littered around the coast. However for some reason there also was a lighthouse symbol in the middle of the Icelandic highlands, far from any seashore.

The explanation was that this supposed lighthouse was by the volcano Askja, who's largest crater is called "Víti" (Hell), while the Icelandic word for lighthouse is "viti". Since English doesn't have the accented letter "í", they would have been spelled the same in English.

I could have sworn this was a true story up until now when I tried to find sources for it, but came up empty. In any case it makes for a good story.

</comment><comment><USER26> Given that an incorrect map caused Windows 95 to be banned from the whole of India, it's understandable that BillG was worried about an incorrect border :)

Story here:

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/01/how_microsoft_offen...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/01/how_microsoft_offended_millions/)

<comment><USER27> Not really incorrect, just disputed.

<comment><USER28> This is how Google handles disputes (give everyone what they want) [http://slightlywarped.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/google-...](http://slightlywarped.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/06/google-maps-different-borders-depending-on-country- you-are-viewing-from.jpg)

<comment><USER29> I would prefer they'd show actual reality on the ground instead of trying to win political points though - for the sake of people who're actually trying to use it for navigation.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, I'm not sure how travel in the affected areas worked, but if I'm travelling in an area occupied by Pakistan, I want it to show Pakistan on the map. If I'm stopped while visiting that region, I'm sure I'm not going to get any brownie points for showing the Pakistani military an Indian visa.

<comment><USER29> Elsewhere, driving into a wrong area might cost you your life. Specifically not referring to particular areas to avoid offtopic flame war, but other apps would alert you about it - but not Google Maps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone know why Microsoft killed off Flight Simulator?

I really liked that product, and it has the legacy of being one of Microsoft's oldest product lines.

There's also a very vibrant community about adding mods and additions onto Flight Simulator, I'm really curious as to why it was killed off. Was the the Flight Sim team really that big of a drain on Microsoft's balance sheet?

Just really sad about spending hours on a product dying off... :(

<comment><USER32> > _Does anyone know why Microsoft killed off Flight Simulator?_

From an external perspective, it seems most likely due to IEB's leadership at the time wanting to focus all their resources behind the upcoming Xbox One, in hopes they could replicate the success of the Xbox 360, and the misguided belief that PC gaming was dying out.

Neither of those bets worked out particularly well for them.

> _Was the the Flight Sim team really that big of a drain on Microsoft 's > balance sheet?_

Rumor has it that it consistently turned a small but not insignificant profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Speaking of flight simulator war stories... A friend once smashed into a giant wall during take-off in a flight simulator he was testing, since the runway in question crossed either the equator or the null Meridian, and the cumulative altitude rounding errors caused a sizable discontinuity.

<comment><USER34> I hope that you mean Greenwich, aka meridian _zero_ rather than _null_ meridian. I don't really think that the latter exists unless you are an old C programmer flying _quite high_ right now.

<comment><USER33> Heh. I hadn't realized that the German usage in this case did not transfer directly into English. Yes, I meant the prime / Greenwich meridian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I worked in the mapping (GIS) pipeline for MS Flight Simulator. The amount of tools we wrote just for QA was on par with what countries use for their census (I also worked on those st ESRI). I try to be of the philosophy of love and obsess about your customers, but every industry has fellows like this that make you question your beliefs. Still love them though... (mostly)

</comment><comment><USER36> How many thousands of dollars could MS have saved if they had asked that question first?

</comment><comment><USER37> I love the Boeing management anecdote being referenced in comparison to Bill Gates nudging you off'f an email he receives![0]

Great nugget to pull out if you have a manager with a penchant for stating the obvious!

[0] - [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100705-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100705-00/?p=13503)

</comment><comment><USER38> Because the customer is always right.

<comment><USER39> "The customer is frequently misinformed." \- More realistic variation I came across, can't remember attribution, paraphrased anyway.

<comment><USER40> "The customer hired you for a reason." Make their needs a priority and don't talk to them like they're idiots, but by all means recognize when you're the expert who needs to make the right things happen for them to be successful.

<comment><USER39> "There are some customers you just don't want." The 80/20 offhand calculation of 80% of obligations can be traced to 20% of customers is pertinent.

Or, as I learned over time, trying to save a drowning person without the help of a flotation device just might pull you down into the abyss as well, good intentions not withstanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nommm-nommm Next bug report, "non-existent islands shown off the coast of Australia" \- [http://worldmapswithout.nz](http://worldmapswithout.nz)

</comment><comment><USER41> This reminds me of the story of the navy ship and the lighthouse.

</comment><comment><USER42> This made me laugh

</comment><comment><USER43> clearly fake 'cause bill gates doesn't email with under a billion worth people.

</comment><comment><USER44> This shows poor leadership by Bill Gates. Did he not value his team's time?

</comment><comment><USER45> This is not a Flight Simulator story. This is an end-user that cannot separate software from reality. Similar to the just released Facebook AR Studio, I've spent time in "personalizing technologies" which manipulate imagery of people. The types of bug reports common to that type of work reveals the lack of understanding everyday people have with their own vision system and how basic physics in the world work. It's hard to describe the disconnect some have in their relationship with software - almost like it's a magical authority to them. Cartoon effects like classic loony tunes bombs and dazed-dizzy-stars scare some people as if the effects are real.

</comment><comment><USER46> How does this even matter or is relevant at all? I'm confused it received upvotes. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER47> Preach it! Humor should be disallowed on HN. I come here for uberserious discussion only.

<comment><USER48> Or uplyfting insights.

Hey, we've got company: in the MS blog's comments, there's a fellow who archly informs the peasants that "I usually archive & star (bookmark) articles that have an amazingly interesting or peculiar technical aspects. With this one, I'll gladly make an exception."

Dammit, Raymond Chen is out of pocket for a refund on that guy's subscription.

<comment><USER49> > Dammit, Raymond Chen is out of pocket for a refund on that guy's > subscription.

?!? That sounded like a positive review from somebody who liked the article. He says it's neither amazingly interesting nor technical, but still good enough to bookmark.

<comment><USER50> Woah, I misread it too and in retrospective, it looks like an honest mistake to make. That pessage could mean the both things (could give positive or negative intent). I wonder what other such good examples can be. And does such phenomenon is called with some name?

<comment><USER51> It's called a backhanded compliment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>