I’ve often wondered how hard it would be to do this. Apart from the Google Sky feature, the latest version of Google Earth contains an Easter Egg, of sorts. It turns out that if you press Ctrl-Alt-A on a PC, or Command-Option-A on a Mac (making sure that the focus is not in a text field), you’ll enable a flight simulator. It’s not particularly well hidden, and once you’ve successfully flown one of the planes it actually shows up as an option on the Tools menu in Google Earth, but still it’s a pretty cool feature.
You get the choice of flying either an F16 jet or an SR22 prop plane, with the obvious speed difference. It is worth reading through the Flight Simulator Keyboard Controls, but if all you want to do is get off the ground, press Page Up repeatedly then press the Down Arrow key a few time as the plane’s velocity increases. This will effectively pull back on the plane’s joystick and vault you into the air. Good luck!
The controls are pretty delicate and difficult to master, particularly on a keyboard. It appears that Google Earth actually supports joystick input for the flight sim mode, although we haven’t had a chance to try it yet. Most of the world’s biggest airports are represented in the list of starting spots, but you can also choose to start at the current position you were viewing in Google Earth before invoking the flight sim mode.
Tweet This