After reading about some of FSX's spectacular places and various glitches I thought I'd head over to S28 - International Peace Garden Airport, North Dakota, USA, to have a look at the "Mother" of them all; The Hole.

 

For those wondering it's a Terrain Mesh Glitch in the FSX code - there are quite a few of these types of glitches and errors dotted around all over the World including runways under water, huge spiky columns of rock extending upwards to 18000 feet, big holes in the gound, as well as the more mundane trees on runways, etc - some people get mad about them but I think they make FSX more interesting. I can understand how a major glitch like this would ruin your sim if it was on your home airport.

The glitch at S28 is basically a huge rent in the terrain; two enormous slits that extend down to who knows what depth. Some have reported 6000 feet, others that it's even deeper.

 

With my trusty Bell 206 fuelled to the brim it was time to find out...

 

I arrived in the morning - it's a reasonably spectacular sight to behold - even though it's a glitch - above ground there are two features; the first is a spike extending up to approx 1500 feet, the second is a long ridge of about 300 metres in length and extending from ground level up to 1700 feet.

 

 

It changes shape and morphs as you fly around it...which is odd and disorientating...

 

 

Below each above ground feature are the holes - the larger is about 250 x 50 Metres, the smaller is 80 x 50 Metres. They disappear vertically downwards.

 

As you get near them they interfere with the aircraft to such an extent that normal procedures go out the window and we have to SLEW some of the time.

 

 

 

 

 

One has a road that goes over the edge and tips down it - driver beware!

 

 

 

Anyway, time to go in...

 

I start with the smaller of the two - the one with the road.

 

 

The road continues down in a staircase staggered fashion (like an Escher painting) for about half a mile before terminating.

 

 

And then there's just the Abyss beneath your feet...

 

 

 

I retreat from that hole and begin my descent of the other much larger one...

 

 

 

Down the rabbit hole we go...

 

Deeper....

 

 

And deeper...

 

 

 

 

Until we get near the bottom it's just vertical walls from 6000 feet on.

 

 

At 6000 below sea level it's getting dark and the walls are moving in. However, it's still light enough to make out basic contours and the colours are pretty odd. Altogether very weird.

 

After what seems like an age I finally get to the bottom - a whacking 32560 feet below sea level! The hole is reduced to about 20 x 2 Metres.  Every time you touch the sides your aircraft pokes through to the other side and it's just white space - incredibly bright after the gloom. Sometimes you see random Autogen.

 

 

Although we're in SLEW mode my Eye-point won't go lower than this. The whole simulator has gone a bit screwy and nothing is quite working as it should.

 

 

There's a kind of rocky corridor you can catch sight of if you jump out of SLEW for an instant and back in - sorry no screenshots; wasn't quick enough.

It's very lonely all the way down there, spooky too.

 

However, because by this point I'm in SLEW mode - escape is a gentle nudge about 25 Metres across and we are instantly back on the surface. All be it out of control.

 

A fun trip to do and highly recommended if you're getting a bit bored with IFR. Certainly not your run of the mill trip from EGKK to KJFK.

 

Thanks for coming along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to investigate and share! More than 6 miles down... impressive glitch. Most of the time helicopter pilots are concerned about hot & high performance, not the hot & low! I dread to think what kind of temperatures occur that far down in the Earth's crust.

 

I guess the fracking operation got a tad out of hand....  :Shame On You:  

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to investigate and share! More than 6 miles down... impressive glitch. Most of the time helicopter pilots are concerned about hot & high performance, not the hot & low! I dread to think what kind of temperatures occur that far down in the Earth's crust.

 

I guess the fracking operation got a tad out of hand....  :Shame On You:  

 

 

It's strange. 

 

From surface down to approx. 2000 feet below sea level Temps are normal. Then they began dropping rapidly. At approx. 10000 feet below sea level they started to rise so, yes, I guess we were starting to get in to the vicinity of the core.

 

Great trip. Still buzzing from it and will definitely do it again.

 

Glitches like this have become amazing after CPU's and Graphics Cards have overtaken the original core programming parameters. ORBX FTX was handling terrain by the way so that probably changed things from the original glitch. For instance; when I first learned about S28 I didn't see any above ground mesh - so that is probably an ORBX thing...

 

It's well worth getting to the bottom. You'll see an odd corridor of rock - which cannot be screen captured - as you're in SLEW mode, etc, well worth seeing - I was looking out for MS Programmers - I'm sure they're down there somewhere - or maybe it's where FSX ATC hang out. It's an odd place. Do try it.

Haha nice post! Reads like an adventure story

WOW this is such a great capature.

Post of the year! Reminded me of the Tesseract scene in Interstellar. You truly raised the nerd level. 

Thanks for the comments. 

 

Here's the negative altitude proof...

 

The truth is down there :ph34r: