The Miracle of Flight Simulator: It was a wonder that the original video game worked at all. Decades later, it still enthralls millions

In 1999 Bill Gates penned a moving tribute to the Wright brothers. He credited their winged invention as “the World Wide Web of that era,” one that shifted the world into a global perspective. So it's only fitting that Microsoft later became the force behind Flight Simulator. ⊚ And, like the Wrights' original Flyer, the game's legacy has extended beyond flight to embody the shift of perspective that flight allows. Flight Simulator promised to fit the whole world into your computer, and the game kept its promise. That's why it has become the world's best-selling flight-simulation franchise: The latest edition has sold more than 2 million copies. ⊚ Although 2022 marked the 40th anniversary of Microsoft Flight Simulator, its lineage stretches a few years further back than its offcial release, in 1982. That makes it the second-oldest video-game franchise still in active development. (The Oregon Trail came out in 1971 and is still with us.) ⊚ The heart of the franchise isn't in gamification but in the technical spectacle it uses to simulate flight and the ground beneath you. The focus on true-to-life depiction reflects the background of the game's developers.