Geographies of simulation: Representational asymmetries in planetary computing. The case of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024

Abstract

The ambition to model the Earth at a 1:1 scale through planetary computing presents a challenge that transcends technical constraints. At planetary scale, this challenge becomes an epistemological dilemma: the tension between metric fidelity and morphological coherence. This article analyzes Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 not merely as a commercial product, but as a critical exponent of the Earth-as-interface paradigm, sustained by a distributed infrastructure of massive geospatial data and cloud computing. Employing an inverse geography methodology grounded in expert-based geographic evaluation, the study systematically assesses the system’s integrity across diverse landscape typologies and observation scales. The findings show that the simulation operates under a regime of selective realism: while achieving high levels of atmospheric and orographic plausibility at macro scales, it consistently breaks down at complex biophysical interfaces, such as fluvial networks and coastal environments, due to a functional decoupling between terrestrial and atmospheric processes. The article concludes that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 represents a shift from the simulation of environmental processes to the simulation of environmental appearances, revealing the representational asymmetries and data gaps inherent in global digital infrastructures. These results provide an operational three-dimensional framework (observation scale, process coupling, data density) for understanding the ontological limits of emerging planetary digital twins.