Microsoft Flight Simulator Users Spotted Unusual 212-story Skyscraper Spawning in Melbourne's Suburbs

Users spotted a technical glitch that spawns a 212-story skyscraper in the middle of a quiet suburban area in Melbourne, Australia, in Microsoft's new application, MSFS 2020. Microsoft Flight Simulator boasts of big stuff coming with the app, but they did not expect the unusual sighting.

The community of users of the newly-released simulator questioned the unusual building that seems to not belong among the densely populated area. A 212-story monolith is seen amongst a group of small suburban homes, and users considered this peculiar.

This sighting led the community of MSFS to discover the reasons behind the erected tower. After some digging around, users were able to find what seems to cause the odd tower in Flight Simulator. End Gadget reports that Asobo Studio gathered data for the simulator from OpenStreetMap, known for its free world map that can be edited by anyone.

The sighting was discovered and popularized by MFS user, Alexander Muscat, which he publicized on his Twitter account (@alexandermuscat). Muscat is an Australian designer, researcher, teacher, and gamer that explore simulations and design ambiguous worlds according to his Twitter bio.

Muscat shared a tweet about what he saw unusual in Melbourne's northern suburb.

The MSFS community treats the simulator's "impossibly narrow" skyscraper as a tourist attraction to which they go and check out.

What caused the 212-Storey Skyscraper to appear in MFS?

With some users poking jokes and treating the simulator's anomaly hilariously, some have taken to their measures to know the reason behind it. Because Asobo Studios utilized data from the community-generated OpenStreetMaps, a contributor identified as "nathanwright120" is responsible for the 212-story landmark in Melbourne. The community of MSFS users discovered that "nathanwright120" added a tag in that area of the map that made a 2-story house turn into a 212-story narrow building. Users did not brand the contributor as "spamming," "trolling," or pranking the website, rather a minimal typo that replaced two with 212.

Users concluded that "nathanwright120" gave legitimate contributions to the website of the map. This led the community to believe that the tagging of the building was a typo, not a form of misinformation to deceive people.

This typo is corrected later on by other contributors but was too late to be updated from the data that Microsoft Flight Simulator gathered. Microsoft's Flight Simulator software promises a real-world experience for users to take flight and discover places, as seen on maps. However, this glitch portrayed real accuracy with the data provided.

Bing Maps, also a victim?

Screen Rant made mentioned that the game's data were not the only one compromised with the bizarre typo that a user-generated wiki maps website caused. Bing Map's data also shows the "Fawkner" area to be victimized by the typo as users captured this from their phone's map data.

Users argue that it's logical that Bing Maps is also affected by this typo because MSFS is based on the data of Microsoft's Bing.

Several hilarious contributions to the thread arose in the anomaly, with users trying to land in the building but succeeded after 38 tries. Being a typo, Microsoft Flight Simulator developers may remove the giant building in the middle of Melbourne, so users advise others to go now and see for themselves.

Written by Isaiah Alonzo