I was expecting, like, to just drive a bus around until I got bored. Forgive my amazement at all this: I know flight simulators and submarine simulators and space shuttle simulators have this level of detail, but this is a bus simulator. This is exactly what all simulations should be. The second thing about all the controls, and all the business you have to do just to simply prepare to drive the bus around is OH MY GOD THIS IS SO AWESOME. You use W-A-S-D to walk around, but have to use the arrow keys to drive, which when combined with using the mouse to look around, makes driving an awkward chore, both hands crammed to the right side of the keyboard. To open the driver window, press F2, and the air vents is the Insert key. The blinkers are the comma and period keys, but the hazard lights are the G key. To kneel the bus, you press K, but to lift the bus, you press F4.

First, they're all mapped to the keyboard completely intuitively if you happen to be a psychic multi-tentacled alien squid. Two things about all these controls, these fiddly little details, the immense amount of things you can do with your bus. If you've ever wanted to drive a vehicle with two different kinds of brakes, you're out of luck: this bus has three. I can open the front and rear doors independently, and I can lower and raise the bus to allow easier access for passengers. I can turn on the light over my seat, or turn on the lights in just the passenger area. I can slide open my driver's side window for added ventilation. In fact, there are roughly a million little toys to play with. To repeat: there is a button you can press to defog the windows. Windshield wipers, obviously, solve the water issue, but what about the fogged interior of the windshield? Well, there's a window defogger on the bus. Hey, that wasn't so hard!Įxcept, I'm faced with the issue I mentioned at the start of the column: It's raining and humid, so I can't see through my windshield. Then, I turn off the parking brake, put the bus into gear, and hit the gas.

Then, wait for enough air pressure to build up in the system to actually operate the bus, which takes a couple minutes. Next: turn on electrical power to the bus. First, I have to pry open the outer door of the bus, slowly, bit by bit, then enter the bus and sit in the driver's seat. We can laugh about that prediction later.įor now, it's time to get on the bus. I pick a short route from 10th & Mission to Townsend Street, which promises to be a quick seventeen minute journey. It's obviously tempting to pick one that crosses the Golden Gate Bridge or some other picturesque location, but I consider the fact that it's taken me a half-hour to even get to work and decide to start small.

At last, I reach the bus depot and find an office containing my supervisor, who gives me a selection of dozens of bus routes to choose from.

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