The future of Flight Simulator Scenery?

[HighTowers 1,434]

Just saw this highlighted on the news from a company called Urthecast (earthcast).

 

Photo scenery might look decent but as we all know they dont line up from region to region depending on when they were shot. Different times, no day and night, and no seasons.  Perhaps this is the answer in the future.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRNI1XvzrqU

 

 

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Yikes...while very kwel...it's also an invasion of personal privacy.  More big brother watching over us.

 

Right now for instance I don't know if some gov't is reading everything I'm doing on my computer as I type it.  I know that already it's possible to listen to individual conversations in a residence through technology.

 

Fun, neat there is a social, societal dilemma surfacing.  I guess that ends my nude sun bathing in my own backyard.

[Bjoern 1,157]

Nifty, but useless for MSFS.

 

 

The future of scenery rendering in flight simulators depends on with which procedural variety and texture resolution a given set of scource data can be displayed. All depending on hardware capabilities, of course.

[HighTowers 1,434]

Just saw these links in the prepar3d forum that refers to dirextX 11.2

Prepard3d V2 is using dx11 so this is something different. Of course MS has it exclusive to Win 8.1 to force win7 upgrades but nonetheless the possibilities with this engine if someone used it for a flight simulator are pretty spectacular. A process called tiled resources. First video is from MS describing it, and you can even jump to 1:50 for the flight sim part. The second video is features of and details of whats capable.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EswYdzsHKMc#t=114

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQxOkkSbrcI

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Xplane then fsx and P3d will be the future for next 15 years. Will see OSM data being further improved with coding. Yet, think European 2 truck sim updates and mix in Orbx making airports almost feels the thing is needed. Platform to build vitural world at a rate they built transcontenial railroad is possible with right conditions.

[stans 702]

Guess I should not stand out in my yard and scratch myself. :lol:

[simmerhead 885]

This is the future:

 

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

This is the future:

 

This is definitely the way forward, and looks much better than a live webcam of some city. One of the biggest problems of photoscenery is it's just so flat and only works when flying from a high altitude. Maybe in a few years when OSM data has more buildings in, some clever developer will come along and get it somehow build scenery like this. :-)

[simmerhead 885]

This is definitely the way forward, and looks much better than a live webcam of some city. One of the biggest problems of photoscenery is it's just so flat and only works when flying from a high altitude. Maybe in a few years when OSM data has more buildings in, some clever developer will come along and get it somehow build scenery like this. :-)

 

Nothing is impossible. Just look how Flight Simulator developed in 25 years. The scenery from 1.0 up to FSX has seen some pretty amazing leaps. Looking at all the amazing 3D terrain engines now in development, I'm pretty sure that in 10 years one of them will be turned into a simulator.

[Bjoern 1,157]

This is the future:

 

It's not.

 

Unless, of course you have a cloud-based simulator and some very fast internet. But that won't be the case for another five to ten years.

 

Photo textures are awfully inefficient.

And considering how much of the globe is still a bandwidth-wasteland...

 

 

 

Maybe in a few years when OSM data has more buildings in, some clever developer will come along and get it somehow build scenery like this. :-)

 

This is much better and much more feasible.

 

Combined with photoscenery (*shudder*), one could even see this for FSX or P3D, but X-Plane and FlightGear are much better candidates for a less brutish approach.

[simmerhead 885]

It's not.

 

Unless, of course you have a cloud-based simulator and some very fast internet. But that won't be the case for another five to ten years.

 

Photo textures are awfully inefficient.

 

I've been a computer guy since the early 80s. I've constantly been amazed by the unexpected breakthroughs in technology. The choir of naysayers have been proven wrong again and again. Photoreal 3D of the whole world will happen at some point.

[Bjoern 1,157]

Photoreal 3D of the whole world will happen at some point.

 

At some po-...wait a second...!

 

 

"Interests: ...aerial photography..."

 

 

A-ha! Saw right through that one, phototapestry lobbyist! You're not fooling me! :wink:

[simmerhead 885]

At some po-...wait a second...!

 

 

"Interests: ...aerial photography..."

 

 

A-ha! Saw right through that one, phototapestry lobbyist! You're not fooling me! :wink:

 

Ha ha!

[FSX4Life 2]

 

 

One of the biggest problems of photoscenery is it's just so flat and only works when flying from a high altitude. Maybe in a few years when OSM data has more buildings in, some clever developer will come along and get it somehow build scenery like this. :-)

 

Probably break FSX trying, the biggest hurdle MSFS has is that it's 32bit and is built to cornhole a CPU...a x86 CPU, FSX doesn't know how to properly exploit x64.

 

As is FSX is at it's limits, that's why photoscenry is lacking autogen, as for seasons space is not as much an issue these days (4TB hard drives) but it's still alot of excess information FSX has to process (if you think 20min loads with MSE 2.0 were bad, try ^4 [for seasons] and put another ^3 on top for credible autogen [think Aerosoft US Cities..across the whole photoscene territory.])

 

Either FSX OOM's (with memory fix and texture load fix) or FSX makes your CPU 'squeal like a pig."

 

 

Unless Lock-Mart makes Prepar3d 2.0 accessible to the general public, X-plane is the only future.

 

Aside from that...

 

GA = ORBX

Heavy Metal = Photo scenery

 

If you do both, clone a clean FSX onto a separate terabyte range drive.

[Jerad 71]

UrtheCast is launching soon. I think November.