The pilot had been missing for about a week, last seen taking off from an airport in Covington, Washington, heading home in his Piper Dakota to Puyallup, about 36 miles south of Seattle. Though he had gone down in the heavily developed and densely populated suburbs, no one had been able to find him or his small aircraft.
This was 2007 and Khoi Duong was on an air mission as part of a search and rescue team. He’d already gone up once that day looking for the missing pilot, eyes continually scanning the landscape below, looking for something, anything, that could lead them to him and his aircraft.
Duong, who was raised in Seattle, was a high school intern at Microsoft. After he graduated from the University of Washington, he returned to Microsoft and is now a full-time quality engineer within Xbox Game Studios.
His professional and volunteer worlds intertwine constantly. As a tester, he lent his search and rescue expertise to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which released Nov. 19 on PCs (Win 10/11 and Steam) and consoles (Xbox Series X|S).
Fans of the sim have asked repeatedly for search and rescue situations, and they’ve gotten their wish with this release. MSFS 2024 is as close as someone can get on a computer or console to flying all kinds of aircraft, from gliders to Cessnas to vintage fighter planes and commercial airliners.
In this newest version, flying search and rescue missions is a career option, complete with step-by-step guides that allow players to take what they’ve learned and apply it to each stage of becoming a first responder.
Find out more about Duong’s search and rescue experiences, along with others’ perspectives on this part of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, on Microsoft Source.
