Microsoft Flight Sim (MSFS) 2020 is now out on Xbox Series S|X, allowing more and more people to explore the world by plane. Bringing together a vast amount of aerial imagery, the game can make flying anywhere in the world feel pretty realistic, but a few places have been given extra attention as ‘points of interest’. Over on Xbox Era, they’ve published an up-to-date list of all these locations, but a map was lacking – the following allows these places to be explored (hover over each for more info) without loading up the game, hopefully helping to guide a flight plan or two. To give the map some context, I’ve also added on the OpenAIP map layer, showing airports, flight zones and air traffic control areas. You de/select the points of interest (POI) and AIP data, and choose between a mixed satellite map or Open Street Map (OSM) mapping:
Data
- Flight navigation data from OpenAIP [map] – AIP = Aeronautical Information Publication [wiki].
- MSFS Points of Interest (POI) from Xbox Era – geocoded using Doogal.
Code
The map was made using Leaflet for R, with the following code adapted from Leaflet Extras – it’s important to get this right or the AIP data can present itself in weird ways:
addTiles(group="AIP", urlTemplate = "http://{s}.tile.maps.openaip.net/geowebcache/service/tms/1.0.0/
openaip_basemap@EPSG%3A900913@png/{z}/{x}/{y}.png", attribution = 'openAIP Data (CC-BY-NC-SA)', options = tileOptions(minZoom = 3, maxZoom = 14, tms = 'true', subdomains = '12', opacity = 1))
MSFS in action – a stormy sunrise landing in Puerto Rico.