Microsoft Flight Simulator lets you explore Hurricane Ida firsthand

What you need to know

• Gamers used Microsoft Flight Simulator to fly over and through simulations of Hurricane Ida.
• Microsoft Flight Simulator has a real-world weather feature that uses Azure AI to simulate weather based on meteorological data.
• Hurricane Ida was one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the continental United States.

Microsoft Flight Simulator provided a unique perspective of the destructive force of Hurricane Ida. The game has an option for live weather, which many players enabled to fly over virtual versions of Hurricane Ida (via PC Gamer). The game gathers weather data from Meteoblue and uses Microsoft's Azure AI to simulate real-world weather. While the game doesn't create an exact replica of real-world weather, it provides some insight into the nature and size of the recent storm.

Hurricane Ida was one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the continental United States. On August 29, 2021, Ida hit land as a category 4 hurricane. It traveled over 1,500 miles and hit 22 states. On the day it made landfall, several gamers flew through or over simulations of Hurricane Ida.

The video above shows a timelapse of the simulated storm building up over the Gulf of Mexico.

A second video shows a player flying over and then through a simulation of Hurricane Ida.

Yet another video shows what it could look like above the storm, giving a gauge of the size of Hurricane Ida.

A fourth video shows a player flying into and out of the storm several times.

Unfortunately, in the real world, at least 26 people lost their lives in the storm. Power outages continue in affected regions.