The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
Planet Labs and Greenpeace turn Flight Simulator into a rainforest defense line
A Microsoft Flight Simulator MOD swaps in live Planet satellite maps, so players spot Amazon threats and report them — in-game coordinates equal real ones.
Planet Labs · Greenpeace
What it had to solve
Microsoft Flight Simulator lets millions of people fly over a beautifully simulated world, but the map is a static model. Greenpeace and Planet Labs wanted that play time to meet reality: the Amazon's illegal mining and deforestation were happening on the ground, largely out of sight.
How it works
Microsoft Flight Simulator is a beloved hyper-realistic game, but its map is a static model of the Earth. Planet Labs and Greenpeace saw the gap: the real Amazon was changing, with illegal mining and deforestation spreading, and almost nobody outside the region could see or act on it.
Their answer was a MOD that updates the game's map with near real-time satellite imagery from Planet Labs. Players fly over the Amazon as it actually is, presented in a gamified format, and every threat they spot can be submitted to the appropriate authorities because in-game coordinates equal real-world coordinates.
The same system funnels players toward action beyond the report: they can sign petitions and donate to Greenpeace from inside the experience. Flight time that used to be pure leisure now doubles as observation of a living forest.
The work turned the world's most-played flight simulator into a real-life environmental defense platform, and is recorded in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- It rides an existing audience of millions instead of asking people to install a new environmental app.
- Live satellite data makes the game map truthful, so the fiction and the threat occupy the same screen.
- Matching game coordinates to real ones converts a virtual flight into a report an authority can act on.
- Donations and petitions sit inside the same flow, so concern does not have to survive a switch of context.
What it did
Flying the simulator became a way of defending the real forest: every flight could surface a threat, with coordinates that matched the ground, and the same interface channeled players into official reports, petitions and donations.
What you can take
When an audience already spends hours inside a simulated world, don't build a new channel — update that world with real data so existing play becomes monitoring and action.
Since then
The MOD stayed true to its name: players became real-life environmental defenders who could fly over updated Amazon imagery, flag threats and support Greenpeace. The project entered the D&AD awards archive as an example of gaming technology applied to environmental defense — the case stands on the mechanism rather than on claimed results, since the archive page records the design and the intended actions, not the number of reports filed.
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