The Story Behind Flightgear Default Airport, KSFO (And also MSFS & X-Plane)

So while having some time to myself and flying around KSFO (San Francisco International Airport) region I thought to myself; is there any significance to using KSFO as a default airport for Flightgear?

Although there is not any official reason as to why KSFO was chosen as its default, here's what I got when I asked & searched around:There are probably some requirements for an auto-startup airport to make a good impression to newbies in flight sims, which is having good scenery of built-up airports, city objects, great landscape features.


KSFO, or San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, easily meets just such requirements. Surrounded by hills on one side, and a water feature (bay) on the opposite end, and some buildings and bridges. So no matter which part on the runway you spawn, you will see some features and details as visual eye candy. KSFO also offers some fairly advanced challenges for relatively new users, such as having terrain & structures to avoid during take off or landing, but still has the open water landing approach perfect for people attempting their first landing.

A short flight into the skies and a few turns in the correct direction and the world famous Golden Gate bridge will greet the new user, piquing his or her interest to go closer for a look, and there's also the famous Alcatraz island and various other landscapes / structures to buzz around and experiment with flying.

And once the user gets the hang of it, start flying to the other plentiful nearby airports around it, like KHAF (Half Moon Bay) or KOAK (Oakland International) both of which are just a really short hop from KSFO.

So, KSFO as single auto start place is a very good choice, for the first time users to experiment, and the place is literally full of other airports and airstrips to go to all within a short time.


What about MSFS's Meigs Field?

I don't know if you're old enough to remember the first few versions Flight Simulator, or even the Meigs Field, but the original MSFS's startup airport uses Meigs as its default starting airport. 

Although there wasn't an official reason ever provided by Bruce Artwick, the creator of the original Flight Simulators in the late 70s & early 80s, people surmised that Meigs was chosen partly because Bruce was from Chicago, and also Meigs is a very beautiful airport jutting out into the lake surrounded by a marina with boats, yatches (although none of those are depicted in the original simulators) and world famous buildings.

In fact it was probably a no brainer choice as the default back then, as upon startup on Runway 36, the first recognizable thing you will see after take off is Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center, and with nearby Chicago O'Hare International Airport & Midway International Airports to fly to.

It was a beautiful airport, but alas it didn't last. In 2003, the through a combination of some political madness, some post 9-11 panic and other reasons unfathomable to me, the Mayor of Chicago destroyed the airport by bulldozing the runway with large X's on it, even stranding some planes that are still parked the airfield.

What about X-Plane 10's Seattle-Tacoma International - KSEA?

 Well I can't find any info on why KSEA was chosen as the default start up airport in X-Plane, but it was a nicely detailed, nicely modeled airport, with an odd runway that slopes upwards so your horizon is shortened quite a bit. The scenery in X-Plane is also odd in that it comes with "built-up" data generated at random based on how the roads are and how likely a buildings are placed.

 Because I only had the X-Plane demo for a while, I don't know too much about X-Plane other than I love the demo, it has great visuals especially the lighting.

 X-Plane apparently also changes their default every version. In version 9, it is at LOWI - Innsbruck, Austria. In version 8 it was at KSBD - San Bernardino, California, USA.

A (Very) Brief Overview of X-Plane 10

 I have downloaded the X-Plane 10 demo lately.

All I can say is -- WOW! The dynamic lighting makes flying the night scenes so realistic! This, combined with the cars moving about on roads, it looks just like when I'm on a real plane, looking down towards the ground. Austin Meyer, founder of Laminar Research and maker of X-Plane says in an interview that the roads are based on OpenStreet Map, and based on that street map data they auto-generate the buildings and roadways in the sim. The effect is wonderful - even though the city we're flying over won't be exactly the same, the the sim loads up buildings in what it thinks are suburban areas and cities and place buildings accordingly. That means roads near a waterfront will have waterfront houses, densely packed areas will have tall buildings, etc. It is a wonderful result.

The dynamic lighting also makes the sim realistic, how the lighting looks depends on time of day, and it is dawn or dusk that is especially interesting, especially when all the light on the aircraft comes on, and all the city lights and cars went on.

The clouds are even better, never have I seen so convincing clouds in a sim yet - like in real life, you can have cloudy areas in one direction and clear areas in another direction.

The sim does have some problems though - if you treat it like a game, then it will be like a toy. For example, most obstacles and buildings don't have collision detection, you just fly through them. Landing on water, you will just float like a child's bath toy. You can even take off again from water....

But ultimately, we don't get simulations to do things such as those, we use simulations to fly, and the planes provided that I tried so far have been great.

Needless to say there are a lot more things to write about X-Plane 10 which I don't have time to (I'm working as I type this!) and it is my latest interest so far- other than Kerbal Space Program, and FlightGear of course.

The simulation runs quite smoothly in default settings on my late-2012 Mac mini. The demo will disable joystick input after 15 minutes.


X-Plane 10 Demo can be downloaded here

X-Plane 9 Simulator

Here's a nice video of X-Plane, one of the best simulators available for the home computer!