Project Crosskart revealed something I didn’t expect. I now fly somewhere, land, and spend time exploring the destination (city, landscape, fauna etc.) before continuing my journey to a new place. It has made “digital tourism” in MSFS2024 highly immersive: the combo of flying, driving and exploring places has significantly raised the shelf life of the sim for me, and I bet this is the case for others.
I recently flew to Adelaide, drove from the airport into the city, visited the stadiums, followed the freeway into the hills, discovered a small racing circuit and drove laps around it, then returned to the airport before continuing to my next destination.
That experience showed me that MSFS already contains the foundations of something unprecedented: a seamless, planet-scale flight and ground exploration platform.
The driving doesn’t replace flying—it adds more depth to the completed flight at the destination.
Because MSFS is built around a digital twin of Earth, I think continued effort toward improving the ground rendering experience (roads, photogrammetry cleanup, trees, collision, etc.) would unlock an entirely new dimension of exploration without changing the simulator’s identity.
The world that’s been built is too incredible to experience only from a few hundred feet above it…
while in its current state, I will continue to try driving through the rough streets and insane looking blobs that are meant to be trees, and hit invisible walls here and there. I’m also going to continue driving through different landscapes. But man, if cities in photogrammetry can be improved? MSFS would genuinely look incredible.
(See the Abu Dhabi example of what’s possible after a flight)
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