If you’re harbouring long-unrealized dreams of becoming an astronaut, F-Sim Space Shuttle 2 can give you a taste of life in the cockpit of a NASA space shuttle.

Its creators Sascha Ledinsky and Mario Cada came up with the idea for the game after feeling dissatisfied with the level of realism in other games. F-Sim Space Shuttle 2’s premise is simple: You must safely guide a space shuttle through its approach and landing from an altitude of several kilometres. But the game keeps things challenging with layers of depth and complexity.

We spoke to Ledinsky and Cada about how they make their flight simulator so authentic.

Executing a clean landing is demanding—the real-life NASA crews used to call the space shuttle “the flying brick” because of its enormous weight. You’ll need to keep tabs on the airspeed, altitude scale, and velocity vector simultaneously as you manoeuvre towards the runway.

“We wanted to have a realistic flight simulator, but one that’s also fun,” Ledinsky explains. That realism is immediately obvious when you enter the game. Ledinsky and Cada thank NASA in the atmospheric opening credits—the pictures of Earth in the game came from the space agency.

There’s also a lot of NASA know-how in the controls of the space shuttle featured in the game. “NASA offers an amazing amount of documentation to download, including the operations manual for the space shuttle,” says Ledinsky, who spent a lot of time reading and analyzing it while building the algorithms and procedures in F-Sim Space Shuttle 2.

“Even the auto-pilot of the space shuttle is documented in detail,” he continues. Without this information, replicating the steering of the space shuttle and the flight behaviour wouldn’t have been as authentic.

The hard work that Cada and Ledinsky have put in to achieving a realistic experience has paid off. “A lot of people from the aviation industry get in touch,” explains Cada, who’s responsible for the game’s design. They even had the approval of a group of air force pilots whose squadron plays the simulator.

Ledinsky and Cada also regularly spend time watching and analyzing clips from real space shuttle landings on YouTube. “Here you can easily see the instruments of the cockpit, which we also recreated,” says Cada.

This attention to detail has one disadvantage though: Whenever Cada watches films set in space, he can’t help but cast a critical eye. “If the cockpit doesn’t match the machine, I see that immediately. Then I realize that I’ve spent a lot of time with manuals!”

Thanks to the meticulous work of Ledinsky and Cada, everyone, pilot or not, can pull off an out-of-this-world landing. It’s your go!

F-Sim|Space Shuttle 2

Land the Space Shuttle

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