Someone recreated macOS landmark wallpapers in Microsoft Flight Simulator

Macos Big Sur In Flight Simulator (Image credit: Matt Birchler)

What you need to know

The Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 game is ridiculously realistic.
Someone used its impressive graphics to recreate some of the iconic macOS wallpapers.
They look every bit as great as the originals.

Apple's macOS updates come with some pretty great new wallpapers and the upcoming macOS Big Sur is no different. Anyone wanting to recreate them would normally need to hire a helicopter and have a pretty impressive camera. But Matt Birchler was able to recreate them using nothing more than Microsoft's latest Flight Simulator 2020 game.

Using nothing more than a keen sense of direction, Birchler was able to find the right spots and then fly there from the nearest airport in-game. And because Flight Simulator gives gamers control over the time of day and weather conditions, he was able to create multiple versions of some of the Big Sur wallpaper. And Apple should probably have used one of these instead of their photo!

Macos Big Sur In Flight Simulator At Night (Image credit: Matt Birchler)

So how'd I get these? Well, as far as I can tell there isn't a centralized place where you can get the GPS coordinates for these places, so you kinda have to figure it out yourself. Thanks fully, that wasn't too hard for a couple these since they were on the coast at very specific places.

Adobe's Lightroom was employed to add the finishing touches and the results are pretty impressive, I'm sure you'll agree!

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.