Exploring the real world in the Google Earth Flight Simulator

[mbauer]

Hi Leif,

Its your thread, ok to show us what you want! Besides, it would be fun to see what you want to show us.

BTW-Looks like those trees would be higher than how google shows them, probably not an issue, unless there are really bad cross winds.

Mike

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thank you, Mike!

Here's a one-installment adventure for your enjoyment, whether you just look at the images or wish to fly it yourself.


Norwegian woods - and mountains, and fjords

We are in Norway, in the Bergen area on the west coast, still high up in the montains. If you are flying yourself, you are actually coming from the Bomoen airfield a bit from here, but never mind that - at this point you will be thrown right into the action:



Above: Here we go - click this link, and be sure to immediately hit full throttle - you will need it to manage the climb necessary to clear the top of the ridge and arrive here:



Above: Entrance to a gorge between Hamlagrøvatnet and Torinnsvatnet. Descending this gorge will be the adventurous part of this flight, eventually taking you to Bergen airport Flesland (ENBR).



Above: The rock texture here is fantastic - if you have time to notice it during this very thrilling descent.



Above: We came from up there - can't descend as quickly as the gorge descends.



Above: Imagine living at the bottom of that gorge - how many hours of sunlight do you imagine they have? OK, the gorge opens up towards the south, so perhaps it's not so bad. There are several farms down there.



Above: The lower end of the gorge. Quite beautiful and dramatic sunlight, don't you think?



Above: The gorge opens up into the much larger Hardangerfjord, ulitmately leading to the sea and Bergen city with the main airport of the area.



Above: There are many small communities along the Hardangerfjord, here's Øystese.



Above: A bit further on, here we go again - taking a shortcut and diving into another small secondary fjord, to arrive at Bergen airport more directly than flying all the way out to the sea.



Above: Flying these fjords with bushflying techniques really would require you to know them like your own back pocket. Imagery here is fine, provided by "Bergen kommune" (Bergen city authority).



Above: Crossing this narrow peninsula, there was a series of lakes descending down towards the fjord; the last lake is in the foreground. There is no shortage of fresh water in these parts, that is for sure. Bergen area is on of the rainiest areas in Scandinavia. Today the sun is shining quite beautifully through a gap in the cloud cover.



Above: Looking forward at the same spot, the small community of Eikelandsosen is situated at the fjord's inner end. Final approach to Bergen will be over the next ridge/peninsula ahead, then turning right on a northerly course.



Above: To be filed under "strange things encountered when flying", this could possibly be a horse race court, or a training ground for horse racing. But at the end of a Norwegian fjord? I don't think so…



Above: There it is, Bergen airport Flesland, under the Cub's nose. A set of approach lights visible, unclear at what end of the runway. We'll see as we get closer. Fly this approach - continue the right turn descent and land. The runway number is 35, so it is almost straight north.



Above: There is this very strange anomaly in the Google earth 3D-data at the southern end of the runway. That is why I had trouble spotting the relative positon of the approach lights. Just disregard it and land a good bit further in on the runway - it seems to be smoother there.



Above: About to touch down, the anomaly is highly visible in the background. I have notified Google earth about it (you can do that, too, if you find similar anomalies during your own flights; use this form - lat/lon figures are obtainable from the sim). I asked them to flatten the whole airfield area while they're at it. We'll see…

[Leif Ohlsson]

Long time no flying in the Google Earth Flight Sim. But this I've got to report (and brag about): I have landed a fine specimen of the venerable DC3 Dakota at the most dangerous and difficult to land at little airfield in the world, namely Lukla Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal, closest airfield to Mount Everest and used by mountaineers as a starting point for their trek.

The airfield is situated on a ledge of the mountain at 9000 ft. You land upwards, on a fairly steep incline, straight into the mountain. If you manage to get down, you've got to turn right at the top (and also end) of the runway before you stop, in order to get to the parking space near the hotel before you run out of speed.



Above: Here's proof that I've actually got down safely. What you see is the Dakota parked, with engines still running, the yellow control tower at right, and the hotel at left. In the background the runway you land on upwards. Take off is downwards again, regardless of wind. The threshold is at the far end, almost over the precipice.



Above: You come up the valley along the same route as the professional pilots flying here regularly, early in the day before the valley below clouds up. Maintain 9000 ft hugging the western cliff wall on you left. The threshold will become visible behind the ridge just ahead (you can see it below the left wheel of the Dakota in this screenshot). Note that the runway heading is about 60°, so prepare for a right turn approach and final.



Above: Approach the threshold at - or even slightly below - the altitude of the center of the runway. Maintain 90 kts - do not try a low speed approach, just because the runway is short. You will need a reserve of speed to be able to make what in fact is a climbing landing. Professional pilots use a steeper descent from higher altitude, but they have more maneouverable small twin-engine aircraft...



Above: This is what I'm talking about. Your landing will in fact be upwards, possibly with full throttle, decreasing it as you pass the threshold to make your touchdown. Make your whole approach up the valley with gear down and ca 15° flaps (one notch); more flaps will make it difficult or impossible to get a high enough nose-up attitude when needed at touchdown. You don't want to start messing with flaps & gear when you spot the runway. By then you will want to have airspeed & altitude well stabilized.



Above: And we're down, more or less safely (my average is one successful landing in five abysmal crashes). Braking is not an issue on this upward slope. Taxying will have to be done switching between full throttle and none, in order not to slide backwards, while you juggle the aircraft into the parking space.

Want to try it? Be sure to practice with your choosen aircraft under more normal circumstances first. I can only make the GEFS online sim work satisfactorily with Google Chrome browser, but it would be interesting to know if others work as well. In the GEFS, just press "Fly". Then press location and type in your place of living, or favourite airfield. Choose your aircraft, and familiarize yourself with it for quite a while, getting to learn it's characteristics at different speeds, behaviour at landing, etc.

When you've got quite bored with that, you could try punching in "Lukla" & fly-over at 1000 ft. You will actually be flying away from the little field, but bring up the map in the "Nav" option, and click a bit south of it, in the valley leading up to Lukla. Try it from there.

Note: If you check your position as you approach the field, its position as shown on the map is actually wrong. This is one of the few persistent faults with the airfield data in this, and several other, sims that use the same set of airport data. As you will find out yourself, the field is just a tad north of the marked position. Not a problem, as long as you know.

A note on aircraft choice: You may find out - as I did - that the sim's standard Piper J3 Cub's performance is inadequate at these altitudes. Although technically below its service ceiling, you will find it very hard work to climb out of downwind areas you may encounter in the valleys, and you may even be unable to reach the required 9000 ft required for landing at Lukla. That's one reason for my choosing the seemingly cumbersome Dakota. I find this aircraft easier to land in general, and particularly so in this terrain & at this altitude - however unlikely that would appear at first.

Want to check out how the real pros do it? You will recognize the scene from this video:


(Youtube: No. 1 Most Extreme and Dangerous Airport: Lukla Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal)

Below is one demonstrating a landing from inside the cockpit of one of those small twin-engine turbos, like Twin-Otters or Dorniers. Note the high revs during the approach:


(Youtube: Landing at Lukla Airport)

Finally, below, a longer one, showing the approach up the valley from the cockpit, also with a bit more of background text, although shakier camera (understandably so):


(Youtube: Landing at Lukla, Nepal airport)

You will note that these professional pilots make a steeper final approach than I managed.

Final technical note: I can only fly the sim with keyboard controls, which should be an encouragement to all of you who wish to see the world as it really looks from above, but don't wish to bury yourself in the technicalities of various sims. For me, this is a way of enjoying the Earth, in my fantasy doing something else I have loved, without having to buy anything at all, or install anything new on my not-so-high-end, very regular Mac. The framerate is not great, but at least it allowed me to land at this extreme place!

I wish you luck as well, landing at Lukla!

- Leif

[Corvettenutts]

I just love that little Cub! Must have many hours on it hugh?

Bill :>)

[Leif Ohlsson]

Yes, Corvettenuts, I do love the Cub. However, I've also grown quite fond of the Dakota. It's a very stable flying platform, and the steeper approach, plus flaps, make landings quite a lot more precise, surprisingly so.

Allow me to get back to Lukla, just for a parting note:


… And you can get off, too!

Getting off is mostly a question of turning the aircraft around on the ground, without crashing into or destroying the buildings.



Above: Ready for take-off down the slope. I'm afraid I may have caused some irreparable damage to the control tower in the background during a few of my attempts. The smoke coming out of my right wing and engine was not pretty, nor was the considerable cut into the brick structure. Above, it has miraculously been repaired in next to no time…



Above: Full throttle down the strip and you will get off at the end. Taking off is easier than landing. It's just that if you want to try a take-off, you've got to manage a landing first…

On the route out of Lukla, the course was set for Kathmandu, the airport from where all scheduled flight for Lukla have as their point of origin & return.



Above: Kathmandu is a dreary place, at least from the sim point of view. The runway is long and pleasant, though. Quite a change from Lukla…

You could very well use Kathmandu for a realistic starting point, if you plan a flight to Lukla. Take a course due east out of Kathmandu, and check the map. The flight takes about three-quarter of an hour in the DC3, and you will have time to get used to flying the Himalayan foothills. 14,000 ft recommended if you want to fly on autopilot a part of the stretch.

- Leif

[Tex]

Howdy Leif!
Gee - thanks a whole lot for this thread! Had I known something like this existed, I'd have "lost" a lot more time ...
I used to have the MS Flight Simulator ... 1995, I believe, but I can't rightly recollect; anyway, I've never been all too happy with it, since it had very little to do with the "real world". What I've seen on here looks a lot more realistic, and I'm quite sure I'll give it a thorough try on Easter Sunday (I'm at work all other days).
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU !!!
- Tex

[Leif Ohlsson]

I hope your first steps in Google Earth sim flying went well, Tex! Meanwhile, to encourage you if your first steps were a bit staggering (mine were, and still are at times), I invite you and everyone to this little flying adventure. I will not tell where we start, since that's part of the intrigue...



An urban adventure

You can enter the adventure at any point you like, by clicking on the caption links under each photo. The adventure starts very quietly:



Starting from pure farm land: This is where the adventure starts. Any way you look around, there is just farmland, uniterrupted, from horizon to horizon. Note the double-track railway right below and in front of you. This we are going to follow, straight east. No telling where we are going as yet (easy to find out, but please don't; not just yet - it's more fun this way).



Suburbia and urban sprawl: Just one minute into our flight we hit upon this - urban sprawl and typical signs of well-to-do suburbia.



Metropolis - and a golf course: Three minutes more of flying along the railway, and we are clearly entering a huge metropolitan area. But there is still a golf course below. And looking forward from here, you will notice a basepall park (not captured in the photo).



Switchyard and a huge car-park: Again, just a few minutes of flight along the railway, and we come upon a large industrial area. The railway temporarily branches out into a switchyard, a huge car-park. Is that what the are loading onto the trains - cars?



Very dense small housing area: The railway winds its way through areas of ever more dense small housing. At this point, you can see nothing but small houses, which ever way you are looking. Less than ten minutes ago, all you could see, in any direction, was farm land. Quite a difference.



On the horizon, a metropolitan centre: Looking ahead, across that ocean of small houses and suburban areas, we can now distinguish the outlines of the true center of the metropolis we are flying over. Now you may guess - but don't take a peek on the map just yet… Note also that there is still room for the occasional golf course among the residential areas. Clearly a well-to-do area.



Smaller and denser houses: Crossing the huge ring traffic system, the residential areas are quite markedly denser, and with smaller houses. Is this a less well-to-do area? I think so, even though - somewhat perplexing - it is closer to the center of this metropolis. Perhaps this is the middle-distance area where the least well-to-do live - still a long bit from the center, and not as spatious as the residential areas farther out.



Chicago on the horizon: I guess that by now you've figured out that it is Chicago looming on the horizon. My point with this flight is that Chicago is not just the skyscrapers on the horizon, but the endless ocean of suburban houses. Have you got a feeling for that yet? Keep experiencing it - there's still quite a bit to fly until we get to those skyscrapers. Just keep following the railway.



Reward time - river ahead: We have now followed the main railway line all the way to the city center limit. This marks the point for reward time - get low, hook onto the river ahead and follow it to the right as it enters the maze of skyscrapers.



Sharp left at Chicago Sun-Times: The first turn is left between the first two high-rises in the photo above. Soon after that, however, comes a very sharp left turn at Chicago Sun-Times. Try it if you dare. I failed once (crashed into the building on the right-hand shore at the turn), and decided to follow the river branch straight ahead instead…



Hotel Riverside Plaza: Going straight ahead I can do. Freezing the image, I believe I can read "Hotel Riverside Plaza" on the large building to the left in the photo. I keep looking for where the Chicago General hospital might be - seen so much of this river area on TV (ER, fond in memory…).



Left towards the lake: Having completed the run through the tight center river area, we may now take a left down towards the lake, leaving the river. I took Roosevelt Road, it's very broad, and you can edge through two scrapers to reach the lake on the other side.



Meigs field?: Yes, we exit the high-rise buildings at a place I believe once, not so long ago, was the nice Meigs airfield, one of the most central airfields I know of… or, no it doesn't seem so:



Monroe Harbor: Looking the other way from the exact same position, there are several fine old buildings. Could the pier in the background in fact have been Meigs field once? Yes, that's it - a quick check on Google maps confirms. The field was in use as late as 2003!



Ferris Wheel: Flying along the shore we come to this pier with its wonderfully detailed ferris wheel. To the left is the main river outlet. Let's take that as an entrance to a new round of the obstacle course.



Red building: Can't really read the sign on the top of the tower, but this kind of flying is really exciting. The computer performance, of course, is abysmally low with this kind of detailed structures. But it is still so much fun. Next, the original failed turn at Chicago Sun-Times is coming up. A left again, and we are set for another round. A right turn, and we'll be back into the open space. Your choice.



Chicago Sun-Times - again: I took the left - and made it first time around, now that I knew what was coming. Note the open bascule bridge in the background (there's a new word learnt!). That's where we came from, originally, but I didn't have time to notice the bridge then.

I'll leave you here. I'll go around the course a couple of more times to really get the hang of it. Thanks for accompanying me on this exploration of urban sprawl and the Chicago metropolis centre.

Leif

PS. I made this flight more than a year ago, but was shy to publish too much at the time. Now I think it would be a waste just to leave it on my hard drive. Hope it can incite you to similar adventures around your own neighborhood - or somewhere you'd really like to go.

[SCEtoAUX]

The sign at the top of that red tower reads "Britannica". It was or still is the headquarters for the Encyclopedia Britannica in Chicago. There is a very good restaurant called Fulton's On the River there, also. The building itself is the old Reid-Murdoch Building built in the early 1900's.

[Leif Ohlsson]

Thanks Doug! I take it you are from those parts, then?

Here's another little box of eyecandy, this time from California:



California highlights

It just is a fact that the most high-resolution images and complex 3D-buildings are to be found in the US. Here are a few of my highlights from Californa.




Hollywood Reservoir - you are ideally positioned for a flyby past the classic Hollywood sign. Note the Hollywood reservoir below. After your flyby you can take a tour any direction over Los Angeles to enjoy the amount of 3D buildings added.




Hollywood sign - close fly-by. This is fun, and safe - in the sim. Couldn't, and wouldn't do it in the real world, of course. The detail work on these 3D structures is really amazingly good.




More Hollywood landscape - I'm sure that's a very famous building up there, but I'm more impressed by the sculpted landscape and meandering roads in this area.




Sunset boulevard - couldn't resist it, and I'm pleased I tried. This has got to be one of the most detailed scenes I've flown. Note all the trees, and the detailed work around the church. Continuing to fly at this altitude along West Sunset Boulevard is quite an adventure!




Mount Palomar Observatory - a fly-by of the classic observatory building, situated in beautifully detailed mountain terrain.



Cannery Row, Monterey - you are set up for a low-level fly-by along Monterey's Cannery row, straight ahead. I was trying to find John Steinbeck's and 'Doc' Ed Rickett's Pacific Biological Laboratory at 800 Cannery Row. Not sure I really identified that small shack, but it ought to be there…




Half Moon Bay - you are set up for landing in the southerly direction. If you wish, make a touch and go, and then turn around heading for San Francisco and Golden Gate.




Golden Gate - of course. A classic fly-by, over or under. And then awaits the city of San Fransisco, with myriads of 3D-buildings. But don't forget the beautiful landscape in the foreground!

Hope you were able to enjoy some of it at least flying your own choice of aircraft from the GEFS offer (use Google Chrome for the sim if nothing else; this is not a promotion, just good advice)!

Leif

[SCEtoAUX]

Nope, not from Chicago but I have been there quite a few times. Spent a few years in the area while in the US Navy. Lately to go to Wrigley Field and watch the Cubs play a reasonable facsimile of baseball.