Edinburgh -> Wolverhampton

Right. Time to get some real miles behind us!

This is a night flight, and my first encounter with the night time graphics engine in the game. It's amazing! As we lift into the clear night air out of Edinburgh and turn south, I see street lights, houses, red collision lights on high structures, and gradually the glow of Glasgow and the Clyde Estuary.

So far the game has amazed me - as someone who played flight sims as a boy where the graphics were at best evocative of a 3d space, to see what we can do in 2020 is beyond cool. But this is the first moment that enchants me.

I top out my climb at 8,000 feet. It takes my little Cessna a full 15 minutes to get there, barely 1/4 of the height an airliner flies at. Which I like, because it means your altitude feels like an achievement as you adjust the fuel mixture hitting the engine to account for the thinner air.

As I hit that height and level the nose, the moonlight reflects off the engine cowling out there in front of the windscreen. The outside air temperature is -1 degree C, and the weather is still holding clear and crisp. My eyes are drawn to the horizon where, 80 miles ahead, the moonlight is also reflecting off the distant Solway Firth. And even beyond that, the hills of the Lake District cut up into the last thin strip of twilight left by the sun which set almost two hours earlier - nothing but the reflected glow of the sunset happening far out into the Atlantic at that moment.

It is magical. So magical that I forget to take a screenshot.

The funny thing is how immersive it is. An hour later, the lights of Manchester and Liverpool are laid out in front of the windscreen and the earth below is positively luminous. I trace out the M6, a road so often travelled since I was a boy. I can see where it crosses the Manchester ship Canal, The junction that you take to head towards Chester & north Wales, and on the horizon the midlands glow. Just like in real life, the screenshots I take don't do it justice - in the cold light of day they just look underexposed.

But I was up there. And as I rolled the wing round to make my final approach into Wolverhampton airport just 10 miles from where I was sat playing the game, I could almost imagine the faint sound of a propeller engine drifting over on the night breeze.