Google announced 1 billion downloads of Google Earth that has become much more than just a virtual 3D world map.

Our regular visitors may have already read here about GE Flight Simulator, taking advantage of the popular tool of google, and now available in its version 0.7.

“It’s been a little while since the last release and I have been hard at work at improving the general experience flying GEFS. As the number of users and the complexity of the planes grow, I had to spend some time doing optimization to make sure things keep running smooth. Here is a list of changes in this new version.

• more realistic flight model based on thin airfoil theory (aka. lifting-line theory)
• adjusted all aircraft configuration for a more realistic behavior
• introduction of the “time slider” to set time of the day (enable it from the Weather Option panel)
• added Airbus A380
• added Sukhoi Su-35
• 3D scene-graph has been rewritten (performance)
• new hosting
• new default airport: LAX
• bug fixes”