Obelisk Bug Found in Microsoft Flight Simulator Due to a Student's Typo

[Raevenlord]

In the list of typos with extreme relevance to the world, this one doesn't register unless it's at the "comical" side of the scale, but it's interesting, nevertheless, to look into. Recent reports on the recently-released Microsoft Flight Simulator mentioned the existence of an eldritch-esque obelisk in the in-game representation of Australia. This obelisk was nothing more than a 212-story building, which became a visual skyscraper, the top of which where particularly gifted flight simulator pilots managed to land on.

While one could think of this as a tribute to Arthur C. Clarke or as a manifest of Robert Silverberg's Tower of Glass, the truth, as always, follows Occam's Razor. Microsoft Simulator makes use of OpenStreetMap data for its Bing Maps service, which runs on Microsoft's Azure servers. The integration of OpenStreetMap featured a bug on that particular building that was introduced, as has been discovered, by Nathan Wright, a university student who, as part of his degree work last year, made an edit to that particular building's specifications. A 2 became 212, and thus the tower was born and manifested in-game. Other bugs have been found in-game, but some of them defy skepticism: turning Buckingham Palace into an office building seems like a particularly snobbish way of criticizing Britain's royalty. As a particular Disney and Pixar character would say, "Coincidence? I Think not!".



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[mouacyk]

Funny. Crowd production testing of a beta simulator.

 

[Bones]

Base jumper's wet dream - I wonder how much security they have to keep them all away?
Probrably not enough......

 

[AltCapwn]

Funny. Crowd production testing of a beta simulator.

Dude it's impossible to fly over the whole world and make sure there's no bug. The earth is huge fyi.
I don't live in Australia, I don't know if it's normal if there's a 212 story building out of nowhere .
I wouldn't believe someone from Australia sayin there's an animal out there that has a duck face and feet with a beaver body and is venimous on top of that.

 

[tripleclicker]

Hilarious . I'm sure there will be many more.

 

[windwhirl]

turning Buckingham Palace into an office building

In the joker's defense, at the very least it retained the basic shape of the palace?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Base jumper's wet dream - I wonder how much security they have to keep them all away?

I'd jump it! Hell yeah!

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

made an edit to that particular building's specifications. A 2 became 212, and thus the tower was born and manifested in-game.

Anyone who has done any kind of game modding (editing files) knows this is not an actual bug. So he took a POI (place of interest) and changed the files for it, yea its gonna be rendered (manifest). Typically the sky limit in most games is typically around 255 blocks and goes up from there.

This is not news.

 

[TheUn4seen]

I wouldn't believe someone from Australia sayin there's an animal out there that has a duck face and feet with a beaver body and is venimous on top of that.
View attachment 166233

Also, it's a mammal which lays eggs, has an unusually low body temperature of around 32°C. For many years is was thought to be a fake and classified along sirens. As it turned out it's stuck between being a mammal and a reptile. And it looks like a mutated offspring of a duck and a beaver.
I mean, it's Australia. Maybe they have a 200-story obelisk created by a dedicated group of half-ducks, half-spiders. I wouldn't bet against it.

 

[lexluthermiester]

This is not news.

Sure it is. It's funny, interesting and shows that the game can be modded, which is cool all by itself.

Maybe they have a 200-story obelisk created by a dedicated group of half-ducks, half-spiders. I wouldn't bet against it.

That's a bit of a stretch.. I would bet against THAT one..

 

[windwhirl]

shows that the game can be modded

Can it be modded, though? Because it looks to me that all that happened here was that someone made an edit on OpenStreetMaps, Microsoft copied that for their own use on Bing Maps, replicating the "issue" on Flight Simulator. And as fun as it can be to pop a skyscraper anywhere, I'd doubt it would be OK to do so by modifying OSM' data which a bunch of other people use and rely on.

I imagine that you could do that with the local data, though, but that leaves the question of whether FS checks if the files are "correct" or not.

 

[Vayra86]

No game is complete without a giant phallus sticking out somewhere. Apparently

 

[windwhirl]

No game is complete without a giant phallus sticking out somewhere. Apparently

Teens and young adults that get carried away by their own hormones?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Can it be modded, though? Because it looks to me that all that happened here was that someone made an edit on OpenStreetMaps, Microsoft copied that for their own use on Bing Maps, replicating the "issue" on Flight Simulator. And as fun as it can be to pop a skyscraper anywhere, I'd doubt it would be OK to do so by modifying OSM' data which a bunch of other people use and rely on.

I imagine that you could do that with the local data, though, but that leaves the question of whether FS checks if the files are "correct" or not.

That is an unknown, but I'll bet that like every other version of MSFS, this one can be added on to and openly modded. Microsoft would be very unlikely to break that tradition.

 

[Caring1]

It's not a bug in the game, it's errors in the mapping data they rely on.
But I agree with transforming Buckingham Palace for other uses, to me it looks like a typical housing estate and would be ideal for that use.

 

[Dave65]

Was going to buy this but I think I will wait a while.

 

[Naito]

As it turned out it's stuck between being a mammal [and] a reptile.

One of only four extant species of mammals known as monotremes. The other three being species of these little fellas:

 

[lexluthermiester]

Was going to buy this but I think I will wait a while.

Given your specs, you will run MSFS well. If you want it, get it and enjoy. It won't take long for expansions to come out.

 

[Condelio]

i hope no additional errors are added on purpose to openstreetmaps database to try to fly over them afterwards in-game, or at least i hope it doesn´t end up causing problems in the real world

 

[Deleted member 181753]

nah you all wrong, it's just the Trump tower.

 

[lemonadesoda]

I am impressed by the lighting and shadows on the building. There must be a lot of behind the scenes recalculation of map data to projection and light maps.

 

[mechtech]

I don't always typo the number 2....................but when I do, it's a 212.

 

[Frick]

Funny. Crowd production testing of a beta simulator.

There was a game crashing bug in an old, old version of Flight Sim, and it only happened when you did a real time flight from a specific airport to another specific airport (don't remember which ones, but it was one that was +10 hours or so). It went unnoticed for a very long time because people didn't do that flight in real time. If your difinition of release ready software is bug free then all consumer software is beta.

Teens and young adults that get carried away by their own hormones?

I'd say most people on the internet are teenage boys, no matter their age.

 

[BlackSun59]

Funny. Crowd production testing of a beta simulator.

Isn't that what Windows has been for ages?

 

[windwhirl]

Funny. Crowd production testing of a beta simulator.

Isn't that what Windows has been for ages?

Isn't that what all pieces of software ever known have always been under?
PS: Perhaps not so much in the DOS era and earlier in history, though.