Microsoft has done something that I think only a company with its vision and resources could. It has made a program that is genuinely revolutionary. They’ve built a Flight Simulator which is as big as the world. They’ve taken map data and aerial photographs for the whole of the globe and put it on their servers. Then they’ve added Artificial Intelligence that infers the shape of buildings from the overhead photographs and built servers that can stream this data into your computer as you fly around the planet. You can stick a pin anywhere in the world map and take off from there. The program includes pretty much every airfield on earth to land on.

The realism is astonishing. You get fantastic fluffy clouds and even rainbows. It’s a social game too. You can meet up with friends and take a spin around London, or New York, or Mont Blanc, or Chernobyl. It’s all there. Some of it is quite as you might expect though because the AI doesn’t always create the right buildings. Buckingham Palace is an office block. And at the moment Hull is missing a proper Humber Bridge (see above). You’ll also need quite a pricey PC and a fast network connection to get the best out of it. But it is going to totally change the way we regard video games. If indeed it is a game at all. There is so much detail that you some folks reckon that you almost learn to fly from the program. And I’ve been surprised how much fun it is to go flying with a bunch of friends.

One piece of great news for Hull residents is the fact that we have some of the best networking in the world, which makes heavily connected games like this really sing. In the future more and more experiences are going to be supplied over fast network connections and the KC LightStream service works a treat for this.