It seems that “Besiege” is a physics-based “game” that allows you to build castles and medieval siege engines and then go at it. But it also seems that it has enough functionality to let you build things up to and including aircraft and surface to air missiles, allowing you to play act as Russian-backed separatists, ready to blow jetliners out of the sky. Someone has done just that and posted a number of videos of game play showing a variety of jet aircraft – including, oddly, a Boeing 2707 SST – getting swatted. A *few* of them actually make it to a seemingly survivable landing, but most fall apart in flight or plummet to a crash.
The aircraft are built out of something akin to Legos, so accuracy as to how such an aircraft would respond in the real world to such an attack is minimal. Additionally, some of the physics doesn’t seem quite right… blow the wing off a plane and it *should* promptly begin an impressive roll, but that doesn’t usually happen here (never mind that aircraft built like these would never fly). Additionally, some of the aircraft begin the game with bits already falling off, which, depending on your airlines maintenance practices, may or may not be accurate.
Right now it’s just a game. But something like this could, with further refinement and computational horsepower, become a reasonably accurate simulator of real-world aircraft and other structures. It will not be too long before a downloadable game would allow you to accurately replicate the 9/11 attacks, up to and including the subsequent fires and structural collapses. Imagine how freaked out the anti-video-game scolds will be *then.* But beyond the basic urge to just see things kerplode, that sort of readily available simulation would be useful for architects of, say, nuclear reactor confinement vessels and naval warships, along with FAA crash investigators.