Fun fact: you can fly through the entirety of the Great Wall of China!
Spent a long time as a kid doing so. I still use Google Earth "Pro" today, so much better than the webapp.
wwizo•Jun 15, 2026
Another nail to Xbox (MS game studios) coffin :)
gacgacgac•Jun 15, 2026
While this doesn't do anything to threaten MS flight simulator, it's still charming. Google Earth is a delight to experience in VR if you ever get the chance, and the flight sim mode is likewise.
sco1•Jun 15, 2026
I'm pretty surprised they brought something fun and charming forward instead of sending it to the graveyard.
maxlin•Jun 15, 2026
Took them long enough to add it to the web app too. Bit disappointing how lazy the implementation is though, you never fall out of the sky even with throttle at 0%. Making the most basic flight physics even ignoring aerodynamics really isn't that hard
I worked on this but left a year ago. It was a product formerly by Sidewalk Labs and ported to work within Google Earth for over 2 years. Pretty sure it's abandoned now.
mrhottakes•Jun 15, 2026
Google abandoned a product? That's strange.
smashah•Jun 15, 2026
Am I tripping or was this in Google Earth ages ago? I distinctly remember flying SU-27 on Google Earth map like a decade or more ago.
reaperducer•Jun 15, 2026
I think it was also a feature of the commercial version of Keyhole, which IIRC, Google bought and turned into Google Earth.
The place where I worked had a Keyhole machine for pulling up satellite maps and doing animations back when this was considered borderline science fiction.
Unfortunately, whoever did the controls for this doesn't understand how airplanes work.
6stringmerc•Jun 15, 2026
So much for hiring “smart creatives” and supporting their work I guess…source: Introduction section of 2014’s “How Google Works” (I returned it to the library after that, I’m not going to hate-read stuff even if it would give me some insight into Eric Schmidt’s career)
petee•Jun 15, 2026
Controls work normally for me on a desktop
hinata08•Jun 15, 2026
The first part of OP's page indicates
> Simplified flight physics: The flight simulator is designed for casual exploration rather than high-fidelity aerodynamic training.
Google made flying possible with 6 controls only, and it's a feature!
It works normally, but they indeed have no busines helping you prepare for ATP license exam with beautiful maps in the browser
It'a an arcade game and it's fun
thimabi•Jun 15, 2026
I wonder why Google doesn’t bother competing with Microsoft in the flight simulation niche. All that Google Maps data would be pretty cool to use for that purpose, but instead we’ve got only this toy feature inside Google Earth.
mschuster91•Jun 15, 2026
> I wonder why Google doesn’t bother competing with Microsoft in the flight simulation niche.
Because the competition is already fierce. There's MS Flight Simulator and X-Plane on the commercial side, Flightgear on the open source side and geo-fs.com on the free-to-play side.
There is not much Google can actually gain from making their own flight simulator.
kamil55555•Jun 15, 2026
High development and/or maintenance cost, low profit.
tantalor•Jun 15, 2026
What would be the point?
rvnx•Jun 15, 2026
Training drone operators ? It's literally one of the hottest segment now in the flying sector. Google Maps has one of the best urban map and now a flight engine.
Grand Theft Auto is now doing it, but Google Earth would make more sense because it can bring a more realistic environment.
I keep thinking about this and now your comment reminded me of it: did OpenAI have a "gym" 10(+?) years ago where autonomous cars were trying to navigate Los Santos in GTA5? If not, whose work was it and why did it come to an end?
neilv•Jun 15, 2026
This is fun, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone at Google did something like this a couple decades ago, as a 20% Project.
Outside of Google, around that time, I used Google Earth for a 3D visualization tool for real flight data recorders, integrated into a larger browser-based system.
(Stack: Google Earth Plugin did the heaviest lifting, especially before there were better ways to render 3D in a browser window. The frontend used JS, HTML for instruments, and some kludges to work around some limitations of off-label use of Plugin. The backend was in Scheme, and retrieving and serving up cached data for this was one of the simplest of the things that the Scheme did in that large system. Aircraft 3D models were off-the-shelf, which I tweaked lightly in (IIRC) Google SketchUp.)
cactusplant7374•Jun 15, 2026
A lot of vibe coders and software engineers have created similar projects using the Google Maps 3D tiles API.
boshalfoshal•Jun 15, 2026
This _was_ done a couple of decades ago, it was available on the downloadable version of google earth (when it existed). I remember playing around with it in 2012.
burnt_toast•Jun 15, 2026
Can confirm, we used to play it in the high school I went to around 2012 because it was one of the few games that the network filters didn't block.
ssteeper•Jun 15, 2026
Google Earth pro is still available for download with the flight simulator, which is much better than the new web version. I played around with it last night after being disappointed with the web version.
rivetfasten•Jun 15, 2026
Cool, I'll have to try it in the next 18 months before they turn it down.
danbruc•Jun 15, 2026
This already existed ten years ago in the desktop version, not sure if it also was in the web version all the time.
rafram•Jun 15, 2026
It's been around since 2007.
MrCoffee7•Jun 15, 2026
It doesn't seem to work very well - my plane is spinning around like crazy and I can't stop the spinning.
recursive•Jun 15, 2026
Sounds realistic
chombier•Jun 15, 2026
Gimbal lock?
blinky88•Jun 15, 2026
If only they took this seriously as a competitor to Microsoft Flight Simulator... Or licensed the photogrammetry to X-Plane. But I guess that’s asking too much of Google.
lysace•Jun 15, 2026
I tried to get into MSFS 2020/2024 but couldn't stand the constant jank/missed frames. It's rated 55% on Steam, so I guess it still has issues :/
fragmede•Jun 15, 2026
Next up: Google driving simulator.
willguest•Jun 15, 2026
lovely, but needs sound and an altimeter. i went flying over NZ, the controls got really laggy, hence the chaotic experience...
Do people in the comments not realize this is a very old feature from desktop Google Earth that's just now being brought to the web version? I see so many joke comments or those simply out of the loop thinking this is something new, it's not.
16 Comments
Spent a long time as a kid doing so. I still use Google Earth "Pro" today, so much better than the webapp.
I worked on this but left a year ago. It was a product formerly by Sidewalk Labs and ported to work within Google Earth for over 2 years. Pretty sure it's abandoned now.
The place where I worked had a Keyhole machine for pulling up satellite maps and doing animations back when this was considered borderline science fiction.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnX8DLmjkCA
> Simplified flight physics: The flight simulator is designed for casual exploration rather than high-fidelity aerodynamic training.
Google made flying possible with 6 controls only, and it's a feature!
It works normally, but they indeed have no busines helping you prepare for ATP license exam with beautiful maps in the browser
It'a an arcade game and it's fun
Because the competition is already fierce. There's MS Flight Simulator and X-Plane on the commercial side, Flightgear on the open source side and geo-fs.com on the free-to-play side.
There is not much Google can actually gain from making their own flight simulator.
Grand Theft Auto is now doing it, but Google Earth would make more sense because it can bring a more realistic environment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1szcl5i/google_...
https://x.company/projects/wing/
Outside of Google, around that time, I used Google Earth for a 3D visualization tool for real flight data recorders, integrated into a larger browser-based system.
(Stack: Google Earth Plugin did the heaviest lifting, especially before there were better ways to render 3D in a browser window. The frontend used JS, HTML for instruments, and some kludges to work around some limitations of off-label use of Plugin. The backend was in Scheme, and retrieving and serving up cached data for this was one of the simplest of the things that the Scheme did in that large system. Aircraft 3D models were off-the-shelf, which I tweaked lightly in (IIRC) Google SketchUp.)
https://filebin.net/jltba21fn87ea5pm