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It seems that the latest release of Google Earth has some hidden features that Google didn’t tell anyone about! In addition to Google Sky, a flight simulator mode has been added too. It’s been possible to fly around in Google Earth using a joystick for a while now but this is more of a full on flight sim with two aircraft to choose from.

Your probably better off starting with the SR22 as the aircraft can be hard to control with the keyboard. You can view a full set of the controls and instructions in the Google Earth documentation. When in flight sim mode you have a Head’s Up Display (HUD) which shows your direction, rate of climb, altitude, speed and flaps setting.

It’s much more playable when using a joystick as with most flight simulators. It’s not on a par with MS Flight Simulator quite yet, however with Google looking to compete with MS on every front, who knows where development on this might go in the future? Will Google allow people to develop add-ons in a similar fashion to MSFS?

There are utilities that allow you to plot your location from MSFS in Google Earth and the free Flight Gear using Google Maps data for it’s own multiplayer servers and I’ve always wondered if someone would ever develop an add-on to Flight Simulator 2004 or X to use Google Earth or Maps data as scenery within the game itself. Now it appears there might not be a need. You can find more information and some more screenshots at Marco’s Blog and the Google Earth Blog.