@ bronchi, I'm with you on all the point you'r talking about, I think that this picture below is very immersive....I know it's probably the only detailed airport in XP-10....like I said it will take time, we can go on and on but we just have to wait and see, I still have my FSX and it's not bad at all.

I doubt why you need such detail 3d highway in a "flight simulator", when most of your time are several thousand feet above ground? Still, I am not sure how xp10 new system work, how about those areas without OSM data? is that mean those areas will be empty land? Those people who tried to create scenery for FSX know they can create different ground landclass texture for specific country and the ground will looks ultra realistic when you fly thousands feet above looking down. I am just not sure xp10 can create that kind of "feel" with its new system. Time will tell.

To be fair, I think they've said they have other databases to fill in the gaps that OSM doesn't take care of. What that looks like in practice, I have no idea.

@ bronchi, I'm with you on all the point you'r talking about, I think that this picture below is very immersive....I know it's probably the only detailed airport in XP-10....like I said it will take time, we can go on and on but we just have to wait and see, I still have my FSX and it's not bad at all.

No doubt, I've found their night environments presented to be fabulous so far.It's when they turn on the daylight that things get sketchy. There's a video posted right now where they are skirting a highway at night and it looks great. A few minutes into it the sun suddenly pops on and it looks pretty bad.While I hope the scenery shown was more of a tech demo then a video of what an actual real world location will look like, that's wishful thinking at this point. This thing is being released in a month and a half. What we see is what we are going to get for a while.

If we are speaking solely on graphical rendering methods, and those methods being agnostic of sim, I would prefer having accurately placed roads as a base and then autogen and landmark objects being rendered accordingly. For me, I do not like how autogen, landmark objects, and accurate roads (UTX) look rendered on top of fuzzy texture tiles that depict rooftops as is in the case of FSX and XP9. It just looks like a graphical shortcut, but I understand why it was used starting in FS2002, as well as earlier versions of X-Plane. I honestly thought that MS would have taken this approach with the successor to FSX, and I still have hope that they might take this approach as I have not seen anything looking like they will not based on the screenshots the Flight team has provided.Outside of the question regarding graphical rendering preference, my opinion is XP10 will likely come into its own after a fair amount of time. For many people, there are key things that are too important to give up, including airport buildings, advanced third party aircraft, a solid atc experience, realistic air traffic, and some of the amazing third party add ons that are available. There may come a day when all of these things come into being on the XP platform, and I certainly hope that is the case because the competition would benefit all. By the way, there is nothing wrong with liking and using more than one sim if one is so inclined.

I've read somewhere that the Open Street Maps coverege is better than the source that FSX is using. So I think it will be pretty realistic object placement - better then in FSX. For those areas that OSM is not covering, LR mentioned they have some other sources. I think the object placement logic described in the original post is related to those areas, where there is no data source. In this case it will be very smart to generate scenery that way for those areas.Now the question is what data source Flight is going to use... Can someone comment based on the released screenshots that it's a better source than in FSX, or is it the same?

I've read somewhere that the Open Street Maps coverege is better than the source that FSX is using. So I think it will be pretty realistic object placement - better then in FSX. For those areas that OSM is not covering, LR mentioned they have some other sources. I think the object placement logic described in the original post is related to those areas, where there is no data source. In this case it will be very smart to generate scenery that way for those areas.Now the question is what data source Flight is going to use... Can someone comment based on the released screenshots that it's a better source than in FSX, or is it the same?

Just for clarification, the OSM data that will be used initially for XP10 will be for road/rail/powerline data for the road grid, as well as coastline/lake/river data for water bodies. No individual building data will be used, but this could change in subsequent XP10 release updates.

Like Mike T I find that immersion is the result of realism compared to the real world, not a plausible world. To me, the closer the flight sim gets to the real world the better, but realistically it can only be done up to a point. Therefore the ideal flight simulator in my book would be one that is higly customizable and community developed (much like FSX has become today with a large "community" of payware and freeware addon developers, still, that community is rather small).It would have been great if the next flight simulator took some inspiration from Google Earth and Wikipedia. The flight simulator would act as a framwork where users can add more detailed content that can be shared in an organized fashion. To make that happen easy to use scenery and object creation tools needs to be developed. The technology is here, it just hasn't been put to good use in a flight simualtor. I mean, why should it be harder to create a city in FSX than it was in the old computer game Sim City in 1989? Current technology can even create detailed geographically and photographically accurate scenery on the fly: http://simmerhead.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/the-future-of-flight-simulator-scenery-design/

X-Plane may look a lot better in scenery aspects, but it's menus are too horrible. I could not find the airports I wanted to use, mainly due to how they were listed.It gave the attitude "If you're not into total simulation, too bad!" That's not the best way to get new customers.

I've read somewhere that the Open Street Maps coverege is better than the source that FSX is using. So I think it will be pretty realistic object placement - better then in FSX. For those areas that OSM is not covering, LR mentioned they have some other sources. I think the object placement logic described in the original post is related to those areas, where there is no data source. In this case it will be very smart to generate scenery that way for those areas.Now the question is what data source Flight is going to use... Can someone comment based on the released screenshots that it's a better source than in FSX, or is it the same?

I made sure to confirm this is not the case before proposing this thread. What MikeT said is what Austin explained in his latest videos. OSM won't be used for building placement.

will probably give it a shot....

Microsoft's approach of using a 2d ground texture and then placing a 3d art asset ontop has largely worked for them since fs2002. Unfortunately it leads to the existence of roads which do not exist, and buildings which commonly sit ontop of roads. But to be fair this is a practical approach to take if you have limited road data. Austin's approach of using AI to build towns and cities from the ground up around existing roads eliminates those problems, however it requires a lot more data. I do think Austin's approach is a fresh new way of making cities and towns look a little more realistic. Will it be perfect? Probably not at first, but I think the potential is there for further refinements, whereas I think we've hit our limits with Microsoft's approach in fsx.

actually Ultimate Alaska X is the only addon I know that actually using vector data to build a city, rather than using the landclass bitmap approach.

I do think Austin's approach is a fresh new way of making cities and towns look a little more realistic. Will it be perfect? Probably not at first, but I think the potential is there for further refinements, whereas I think we've hit our limits with Microsoft's approach in fsx.

Totally agree with you. With FS9 and earlier the problems created by vector roads on top of generic landclass were less noticeable as the landclass textures were so low res. With FSX and it's 1024x1024 pxiel landclass textures the problem of roads cutting through buildings, ponds, golf courses, playing fields etc becomes more noticeable. The FSX system has reached an evolutionary dead end. Using higher res textures just can't solve the fundamental limitations of the system that FSX is using.XP10's vector road system looks like the way to go into the future. The screenshots I've seen so far have their limitations but at least there looks there is room for improvement. When MS Flight was announced I was hoping that MS would use a similar system but then I saw one of their screenshots with a golf hole cut in half by a coastline.

Does anyone remember FS Roads?It had 100% vector roads for all of US and Canada....in amazing detail.I modified my textures at the time to remove any bitmap-roads in the land class.As a strategy it seemed to work fine in MSFS too.But it's true my cities did have a lot of grass ;)

I don't think OSM is the way to go - at least not in its current state.MS have got it right up to now in my opinion.Yes, the XP10 shots look 'clean,' but absolutely nothing like real life. In my opinion, default FSX looks more realistic than most of what XP10 has shown. The cityscapes in XP10 are better, but for suburban/residential areas it's not up to scratch. Yes, the textures are sharper than default FSX etc, but that's only good if it looked like a good representation of real life to start with.

I don't think OSM is the way to go - at least not in its current state. MS have got it right up to now in my opinion. Yes, the XP10 shots look 'clean,' but absolutely nothing like real life. In my opinion, default FSX looks more realistic than most of what XP10 has shown. The cityscapes in XP10 are better, but for suburban/residential areas it's not up to scratch. Yes, the textures are sharper than default FSX etc, but that's only good if it looked like a good representation of real life to start with.

Hi Howard,Here is an example of what can be accomplished with scenery generated from vector-based data. Ok so you might not be able to see your actual house yet*, but at least we are to the point where you can find the street you live at in almost any country in the world -- and it's constantly being updated. Which is something you cannot do with procedural 2D textures representing streets. *Actually if you want to see your home, you go to OpenStreet Maps website mark the spot where it is located, and then have OSM2XP automatically place your house into the world for you. It should take less than 10 minutes to do.