Microsoft Flight Simulator

[jenstar]

Has there been ANY evidence found to back up the claim that al-Qaeda's pilots trained on this for the WTC/Pentagon attacks? I remember this claim being made as pretty much solid fact in the immediate aftermath and I didn't believe it then, or now.

[WaldoMcFroog]

Personally, I don't know, but found the hysteria surrounding it ludicrous! All these so-called experts pontificating about a computer game like it was that that was responsible for 9/11! You can run around shooting people in something like Medal of Honour, but they don't claim that terrorists train on that, do they! ;-)

[sddsddean]

Don't know if you saw the TV prog shown over 2 weeks on Ch 4 about a fortnight ago. It took 7 newly trained RAF pilots and put them in a simulator to see if they could do the Dambusters raid on the Eder dam. Although the simulator didn't move, it was the same layout as a real Lancaster. The software used for that was MS Flight Simulator (as I recognised the various screens). If you can use it for that, I can't see why it couldn't have been used to practice for the twin towers, as the twin towers are in the MSFS version of New York.

[lisaj]

Flight Simulator is not a game, but an actual learning tool aimed at teaching you the fundamentals of flight. As someone who has run through most of the lessons on FS, I have to say I have a far better idea of what keeps the thing in the air than I ever did just understanding the physics of it. It is no replacement for the real thing though is it? I can therefore find it perfectly plausible that terrorists might have learnt the fundamentals using FS in their own home country, safe from potential capture, prior to entering the US and learning to fly for real. It no doubt would have accelerated the learning curve. As for the WTC bit... that's rubbish. Fly FS for two seconds and you know perfectly well that it cannot in any way prepare you to be able to fly a 200 tonne aircraft at 600mph into a building. You have no repsonsive feedback and no inertial effect on your body, making it impossible to fly extreme scenarios like that.