Resilience & Flight: Lessons from the Cockpit: In this series, I explore how the principles of aviation can help us build resilience. Like pilots facing turbulence, we can learn to stay steady and adapt to whatever comes our way.
Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) was launched in 1982 and has now lasted for 42 years, becoming a legend in its own right. It is actually the longest-running Microsoft product, predating Windows by three years, and is one of the longest-running video game series of all time.
Over this time, it has become a tool used by many pilots, including myself during my limited private pilot experience. It can help prepare for navigation flights, build automation in key procedures, learn your checklists, and allow you to fly a large variety of aircraft at around 24,000 airports.
I use it to prepare for visual flights, regain proficiency after a longer break, test emergency procedures, and familiarize myself with different aircraft. Other pilots I know are equally enthusiastic about it, and many flight instructors recommend using it as part of training.
What Makes Microsoft Flight Simulator so Resilient?
I was wondering about this questions and I think that there are two main reasons for that.
Broad Application Beyond Gaming
MSFS's broad application makes it much more than a game. This diversity creates a level of resilience through its varied uses—a key feature of resilient systems. A program that is as valuable to a gamer as it is to a pilot fosters a diversified community around the product.
Community Involvement
Community involvement is enhanced by a formal software development kit (SDK), which facilitates third-party efforts to create add-ons and customize the simulator to the users' wishes and dreams. This involvement can go very far. For instance, the most expensive home flight simulator cockpit, included in the Guinness World Records, cost around $200,000.
This vibrant, proactive, and dedicated community continuously improves the product. While it is not entirely open source, MSFS is sufficiently decentralized to make it resilient. Bottom-up, informal networks often create more resilient systems than centralized entities (Zolli & Healy, 2012).
Time Span as a Measure of Resilience and Future Performance
Nassim Taleb makes an interesting observation in Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder.:
Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy.
According to the Lindy Effect, the future life expectancy of non-perishable items—like technologies—is proportional to their current age. Essentially, the longer something has lasted, the longer we can expect it to last.
He extrapolates this into all areas of life, including technology. The resilience of an item is proportional to its lifespan, so the life expectancy of aging technology is, quite surprisingly, much longer than that of novelties. While there are exceptions, and some technologies may survive much longer, the point is that it's impossible to forecast which ones will endure because new technologies haven't been around long enough to judge.
Is Microsoft Flight Simulator on its way to another 42 years? Who knows? Statistically, it seems to have a good chance of reaching that milestone.
Let's see how it evolves. Forty-two years is already very impressive for a computer game; surpassing 80 years would make it a cross-generational phenomenon. I keep my fingers crossed.
Very well done, Microsoft!
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References and Notes
Taleb, N. N. (2012). Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. Random House.
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