Give me the world and I'll always find an excuse to come straight back home. Microsoft Flight Simulator offered up the entire globe, to a level of fidelity that still manages to take my breath away. And yet in the months since its launch, despite its promise of delivering a world that for many of us has been closed off, I still find myself patrolling the same skies I've been stuck under over and over again, taking off from either London City Airport or Biggin Hill to patrol the north downs and my little corner of south London.
Such has been the way ever since I started playing the beta of Microsoft Flight Simulator, but at least circling the same airspace has made it easier to chart the progress made by developer Asobo and its team in the months since launch. Back then I'd take the route from City Airport and dip left over the Isle of Dogs across Greenwich Park, Blackheath and then home to Lewisham, before perhaps setting off out to the Medway with the sun setting at my back. I feel almost naive for being so impressed by it all back then – Greenwich's Maritime Building was a nondescript block in the initial release, as were the cluster of now mostly empty skyscrapers that have risen around One Canada Square over the last few decades as London wasn't benefit to the same level of detail found in many of Microsoft Flight Simulator's other cities.
Now, though, everything's changed. The UK update that landed last week having been held in a holding pattern for a short while makes sweeping changes, bringing more photorealistic cities and a generous suite of new points of interest. There's been some understandable disappointment among players that this new level of detail is more frequent in the south east than elsewhere in the UK, but… Well, as a Londoner I'm afraid I'm not one of those complaining. Instead, it feels like I'm seeing the city entirely anew. And I can honestly say Lewisham's never looked better.