How realistic is Google Earth Flight Simulator? Sometimes I like to fly a bit in flight simulator in Google Earth (not the Pro version), and I was wondering how realistic it is. There are two planes you can fly. I included some stuff I personally tried.


F-16

Max altitude (starting from ground): 46200 ft (14081.8 m)
Max altitude (starting from the highest google earth let me start): 80000 ft (24384 m)
Max speed while falling down: 1450 knots (2685.4 km/h)
Max vertical speed: 980 knots (1814.96 km/h)
Flies rather stable, I can do some aggressive maneuvers without any problems. Difficult to land. When I'm very high, it's difficult to get control of the aileron.

SR22

Max altitude (from ground): 19800 ft (6035.04 m)
Max altitude (from highset starting point): 60000+ ft (18288+ m)
Max speed while falling down: 550 knots (1018.6 km/h)
Max vertical speed: 155 knots (287.06 km/h)
Not very powerful. Quite unstable (aileron always moves by itself). Easy to land.



Interestingly, Google Earth allows you to fly beneath the surface of oceans, and it flies exactly the same as in the air. The support for taking off from a real airport is rather limited, but it's there. It supports a full ROM afaik.
How realistic is Google Earth Flight Simulator?


It is very unrealistic in most respects.

I believe there are a number of important ways you can measure realism from a pilot's perspective:


view out the windows
appearance of instrument panel
mode of operation of pilot aids like autopilot, autothrottle
flying controls


physical character
responsiveness

interaction with ATC 
effects of wind, weather, turbulence, rain, ice
aeronautical characteristics of aircraft


It would be easy to focus solely on the last of these, but from my perspective this is not really the most important. 

Here's a few dissimilarities that occur to me.

View

The SR22 doesn't have a HUD.

I'm pretty sure the SR22 cockpit windows would take up a much greater area of my vision than my computer screen does. Especially peripheral vision. Also in a real SR22, there is important stuff to look at below the windows.

Instruments

Do these look alike?





Controls

In Google Earth you don't have anything like the range of controls that have to be used, where are all the switches, knobs and other dohickeys you find in the real SR22?

Waving a mouse around is nothing like moving a control column around. With a control column you have a much different sense of the position of the controls. Moving a mouse involves completely different muscles and different motions.

Moving a throttle lever is completely different to pressing PgUp and PgDn buttons to move a throttle position in increments

Feel

In Google Earth you don't hear any engine, you dont feel any vibration, you don't feel any turbulence, you don't feel anything in an uncoordinated turn or when pulling out of a dive, you don't feel the unevenness of a runway.

It's hard to really feel oriented in a simulator when your sense of balance and peripheral vision tell you you are sitting upright at your desk, not inverted and spinning towards the ground.

Disclaimer

I'm not a pilot, I have sat in the pilot's seat of a small Cessna and manipulated the control-column and rudder to make a few turns and attempt to maintain speed and altitude under the direction of a pilot. I've done the same in a glider, and I have done some take-offs and landings in a fairly amazing full (though static) commercial 737 simulator with full cockpit reproduction (all seats, panels, motorised levers, switches etc that you'd find in a real 737 cockpit, wired to a large rack of computers).

 A more realistic simulator

Google Earth is nothing like any of them in almost any respect.

It's a fun game though.