An innocent typo led to a giant 212-story obelisk in Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator players saw a giant mountain-top obelisk in Australia this week. While Flight Simulator has done a great job at recreating the real world, this unusually great structure does not exist in real life. Players have now discovered that its existence stems from a simple typo.

University student Nathan Wright made an edit to OpenStreetMap data for part of his degree work last year, adding more than two hundred stories to a building that is actually just two stories. Wright intended type 2, but instead typed 212 in the data section for floors. “I find it so funny because it was the first time I used OpenStreetMap,” Wright said in an email to The edge. “I used it for a university assignment and had to add data for the class. I did not think I would see it again. ”

His university work is now famous on the internet, especially with the Microsoft Flight Simulator community. The typo made its way into Microsoft’s Bing Maps data, which Asobo Studio, the developers behind Microsoft Flight Simulator, used to map the world. Flight Simulator uses Azure-driven procedure generation technology, combined with Bing Maps data, to create virtual buildings like this 212-story story.

Another OpenStreetMap user has corrected typo since the date, but it has already been terminated Flight Simulator and Internet history. “I find it very funny that it made it into the game and that I was tracked down so quickly,” Wright says.

It’s a hilarious glitch, but it’s not the only one in it Microsoft Flight Simulator. Players have also discovered that Buckingham Palace was transformed into an office block, palms transformed into tooth-like structures, and trucks glued to the side of a bridge in Portland.

This particular mountainous obelisk is likely to disappear Microsoft Flight Simulator once Bing Maps absorbs the latest OpenStreetMap data from Australia, as if Microsoft decides to manually remove the gigantic structure. If you are interested in trying out the glitch before it disappears, there is already a YouTube video tutorial that even includes a successful landing attempt on top of the obelisk.