Microsoft held a Global Preview Event on September 19 and 20 for the new Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it's been NDA'd until today. Here's the official blog post, which doesn't say much itself, but there are a ton of detailed impressions articles and videos all over the internet today.

The major revelation is that they're using satellite data from Bing Maps and combining it with procedural generation and some other data sources (such as the ability to use live weather data) to make it so you can fly anywhere in the world and it will look extremely realistic. Being able to do this in Google Earth is already very cool (especially in VR), and this should be even better.

Here are a few of the articles - a lot of them have incredibly stupid titles because that's how internet journalism works now, so I'm just going to link with the site's name:

• Ars Technica
• Engadget
• FSElite (also, 35 mins of footage)
• PC Gamer
• Polygon

If there's a better or more commonly used term for this let me know, but my idea of an "expired classic" is a game that was acclaimed and beloved at the time of its release but that would be nearly unplayable or unacceptable by modern standards. Not just less impressive or weaker, mind you, but outright bad. Think "aged poorly" but like, REALLY poorly.

The quintessential example is Goldeneye 007. While absolutely landmark for its time, gamers that pick it up now would likely be baffled by its controls and appalled by its significant, unforgivable framerate issues. Even some people that used to love playing it have a hard time enjoying it now (myself included). It is a game that has "expired" over time.

The expiration doesn't have to be due to technical issues either. It could be due to cultural issues, design issues, or any other factor that makes the same significantly less palatable today, even to those that want to play it!

What are some other examples, and why have they expired?

The question follows the lead of our community name: LGBT in the title refers to the LGBT umbrella and isn't limited to the identities represented by the initials.

The character can be from any media source: shows, movies, anime, books, comics, videogames, even song lyrics, or anything else I've missed. The only criteria is that they have to be fictional.

• Who is the character and how are they portrayed?
• What do you like about them?
• Do they resonate with your own experience or those of people you know in any way?

SpaceX will hold a presentation today at 19:00 CDT / 00:00 UTC at their Boca Chica build site to present updates to Starship and show off their newly constructed full scale prototype.

SpaceX's website: https://www.spacex.com/webcast

Direct Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOpMrVnjYeY

Announcement on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1177938839949627392

Picture SpaceX posted: http://spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/starship_drone_sunset_7.jpg

Did something cool recently, and no one’s bothered to ask?

Got some stuff on your chest, and no one’s checking in?

Super passionate about a niche topic that not too many people think of?

Toss your question-hopeful here, and let someone pop it!

Here's the IMDB page for The Souvenir (distributed by A24). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6920356/

IMDB users give the score as 6.6, and the user reviews are stuffed full of people who hate it. The critic reviews are almost entirely positive though.

Here's the Cherry Picks page for The Souvenir. https://www.thecherrypicks.com/films/souvenir

They use reviews from "female-identifying and non-binary film critics", and as a result the film gets good reviews.

I find the reviews surfaced by Cherry Picks to be more thoughtful, more considered, and more useful to me than those surfaced by IMDB or MetaCritic (even though they all pull critic reviews from many of the same sources).

I've found some great films via Cherry Picks.