Hi guys, making IFR flights around FL360 and FL380, looking at the horizon both from inside the cockpit and externally, I noticed the visual effect of the roundness of the earth, I was wondering, this visual effect in reality, is not seen at levels of fly much higher?
Alessandro
So it’s realistic. The flight levels you mention is actually right about when you can start to see the curvature of the earth on good days. It will be very slight though, not very pronounced.
It’s very dependent on your field of view.
Nah must be a bug… The earth is flat? ;-p
Pfft. Millions of people all around the world know THAT.
Concur. May latest flight was in Kansas. As far as I am concerned it is empirically proven the earth is indeed flat.
Glad you posted this, because this is exactly the reason that we should believe facts instead of trusting what we might think. Our senses will deceive us and things aren’t always what they seem of course! 
Your line is yellow. Bananas are yellow. Bananas are curved. Case closed. : )
Makes it even better! I just wish people who think the earth really is flat would use facts instead of ideas.
Your yellow line us curved.
I never thought that the earth is flat, having seen documentaries on television and videos on YouTube that both civilian and military aircraft reached very high levels of flight beyond those that usually use airliners, I had read on the internet that for to see the effect of the earth’s roundness you go up to about 18-20 km from the earth’s ground so about 60,000 feet, I asked a real friend of mine Airbus pilot, that when they fly at FL390 the perception of the earth’s roundness is very little; finally he reminded you that I had simply asked a question, thank you.
Alessandro
In reality air refraction slightly decrease visual roundness
I’ve been in Kansas. Even if the rest of the world is round, that bit is flat. For sure.
“Very flat, Norfolk”. Noel Coward, Private Lives (1930).
Perhaps the world’s made of lots of flat bits, stuck together.
Must be a bug. The earth is flat.
even on your low air VFR flight, the curvature is noticeable, albeit not easily, to the eagle-eyed.
upon release of MSFS2020 back in August, some crazy simmers had shared their experiences on youtube videos, testing how much farther they can go up on MSFS2020 and I remember one could fly up to 240.000ft at most, showing us our planet as a teeny weeny round ball down there…
Bit of an extreme example, but here’s two photos from approximately FL13000…
I’d guess that the first is reasonably representative of how it looks to the eye. The second shows how different it looks with a wider camera.
I was actually surprised that after ‘slewing’ or teleporting great distances then the ‘view from behind’ camera was a bit slanted and needed to be reset. For me that proved (or i assume) that the sim is dealing with a round earth.
The ‘real’ shape of the earth is not anything i even speculate about.
Keep in mind that your FOV is much smaller when you look outside a cabin window compared to the external view of the sim.
