Byline: Mary Lou Pickel
Nov. 28--Paul Higginbotham scans the flat Florida terrain from the pilot's seat of his Cessna 182.
He just took off from Cedar Key, Fla., in balmy 89-degree weather. Blue seas break against the beach as he climbs to 2,500 feet.
The flight is progressing smoothly when a strange noise enters the cockpit. It's the sound of workmen building Higginbotham's house addition. Then Higginbotham's white cat races by.
The illusion is shattered. Higginbotham is back in the real world at his dining room table in Peachtree City, looking at a computer screen and using a joystick to control his virtual plane.
Scores of flight simulator enthusiasts --- don't call them gamers --- take vicarious flights every day in metro Atlanta. Many, like Higginbotham, work in aviation or have a pilot's license.
Most use Microsoft Flight Simulator, one of the biggest-selling entertainment software programs ever conceived. The giant technology company has sold 21 million copies in the past decade. It recently issued an update, subtitled "Century of Flight," to take advantage of the hoopla surrounding the upcoming Wright brothers' 100th anniversary of flight on Dec. 17. It includes virtual versions of various historic planes, including the Wright Flyer.
Flight Simulator has spawned a huge online community of spinoff sites, shareware and add-on products.
Enthusiasts can join virtual airlines online, receive flight schedules and respond to instructions from virtual air traffic controllers. A Flowery Branch man flies online with a friend from Tennessee, talking on the radio back and forth. A retired Delta pilot in Cobb County puts on his 3-D glasses and jumps back into the cockpit.
Flight Simulator aircraft, which range from Cessnas to Boeing 747s, are as difficult to maneuver as the real planes --- more or less --- and include realistic engine sounds.
Higginbotham, 44, flies about 14 hours a week. He's taking his Cessna around the country and started in Maine two months ago.
"My wife knows this is an obsession with me," the Delta Air Lines mechanic explains.
"I don't drink, and I don't smoke," he adds. "My wife says it keeps me off the streets."
On a recent morning at his house, he switched from the Cessna to a Learjet and glided over the Ford plant in Hapeville to land at Hartsfield-Jackson International. His landing wasn't perfect. The plane slid off into the grass beside the runway but quickly recovered.
Pilot friends have given Higginbotham old approach plates for every airport in the world, and he has navigational charts that help him set his course.
Higginbotham also likes to tool around in a Lockheed Vega 5B (pilot Wiley Post flew one around the world in 1931), a McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantom fighter ("You can go really fast in this thing") and a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter ("I love vertical flight").
Higginbotham used to fly hot-air balloons and says his goal is to take a few helicopter lessons.
"I know I could jump right in and fly it. I just have the feel for it."
Flight simulation software was created by a company called Sublogic in the 1980s. Microsoft later bought the program, which has become a huge business in itself.
The latest version comes on four compact discs and contains 5 million lines of code. Teams of flight engineers, pilots, navigation data companies and artists work to create the most realistic flight experience possible, Microsoft spokesman Darryl Saunders said.
The open architecture allows fans to add planes and scenery from the Internet.
Steve Halpern, 43, of Atlanta has built a business around that idea. He first started using Flight Simulator in 1993 and was dissatisfied with the quality of the clouds. They were too two-dimensional, like billboards.
His quest to create a better virtual cloud developed into a company called Flight1.com. Halpern and his six associates now create virtual planes, cockpits and scenery and distribute it from a Marietta warehouse as well as online commerce sites here and abroad. The company sold at least 50,000 units last year.
"It's a great little fantasy world," Halpern says. "It becomes a way of life for many people. This becomes their main hobby."
Chris Buff, a 43-year-old computer consultant in Suwanee, decided to create a reproduction of a Lockheed L-188 Electra. He's one of the many freeware creators.
More than 8,000 people have downloaded his plane so far, he says. "I've received feedback from people in Brazil, Taiwan, England, Holland, Canada and Australia. You find out that people all over the world share that same passion and sense of awe about flight. It really has a universal appeal."
Some "simmers" around the country supplant their joysticks with real yokes, rudder pedals, throttles and even multiple screens. The New York Times recently featured a California man who acquired an entire Boeing 737 nose, put it in a shed and set up his simulator inside.
Buff has the yoke and pedals but draws the line there.
"Even I look at some things and think, 'I don't think so.' "
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(c) 2003, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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