Just imagine a world where......

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Computing power and resources make creating synthetic worlds with this level of detail relatively trivial.

 

The only thing is that that might be far enough in the future that sims will be of spaceships rather than planes...........

 

[ubersu 78]

Look at what you have now vs what you had 25 years ago. You might be surprised at how soon the future will come.

 

DJ

[tonywob 4,768]

That is incredible. I have this game and enjoy it, but I have no idea how he has managed to recreate New York with such accuracy. 

[scotchegg 4,170]

I'm not entirely sure what the wow is here. I see great draw distance and some recognisable features, but is it that it's a totally accurate representation of NY?

 

Otherwise I see fairly flat textures and overall, a less inviting environment than GTAV. 

 

Happy to be educated otherwise, but...

[tonywob 4,768]

I think what makes it special is that everything is mostly dynamically generated (unlike say GTA V which was built by hand). You place roads and zones in the game (and landmarks) and it fills them out with realistic buildings, cars, people etc. I can't imagine such a thing would work on a large scale because of performance, but compared to Simcity 4 this is a big step forward.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

I'm not entirely sure what the wow is here. I see great draw distance and some recognisable features, but is it that it's a totally accurate representation of NY?

 

Otherwise I see fairly flat textures and overall, a less inviting environment than GTAV. 

 

Happy to be educated otherwise, but...

 

It depends. 

 

Do you know anything about Cities, Skylines and the underlying things it does? The traffic AI, people Ai, the boat Ai, the urban calculations for population density, road use, garbage disposal etc, etc.

 

Realtime placement of objects, sculpting of land, multi-level highways....

 

There's actually an awful lot going on here, and it's all the more impressive when you think of how ai brings our current sims to a crawl. Then there are the buildings themselves, which rather than being just flat boxes are actually pretty detailed, and can dynamically grow and change according to population density and other factors......

 

Believe me, taken as a whole package it's pretty darn impressive!   :wink:

 

(Not to mention the time the guy who built this must have taken)

[Sebjo89 33]

What about this for sky and weather. Would be amazing!

 

[HiFlyer 9,343]

What about this for sky and weather. Would be amazing!

 

Yup, Unigine.

 

Beautiful, but I never have been sure if it would make a good Flightsim engine. Playing around with the demo provided by NGIS gave me mixed feelings, but there's no denying the attraction of the eye candy. (Though at the time it had no round earth)

[Sebjo89 33]

 

Google 3D 

[HiFlyer 9,343]

 

Google 3D 

 

Actually somebody also did this exact same thing with Outerra as well. It might be an interesting path, the physics of older sims driving the graphics that are possible now.

[Clutch Cargo 384]

That is simply stunning!  Why wouldn't everyone just sim that way?  Or is this just a sample for Tampa only?

[HiFlyer 9,343]

That is simply stunning!  Why wouldn't everyone just sim that way?  Or is this just a sample for Tampa only?

 

Its far from being worldwide 3d coverage. Only very selected areas....

 

Which would be fine with me, but for some, not having the whole world can be a deal breaker.

[tonywob 4,768]

I've been playing around in Google Earth using a KML file that shows all the 3D areas. I don't recommend it, it has the effect of making you realise that even the best flight sim scenery there is just can't compete with that  . Google Earth can even add shadows and clouds (with realistic sky and constellations).

 

Maybe one day we'll see it in a real flight sim, but probably not any time soon

[angeli662 43]

Very unrealistic, I know I live in NYC :Shame On You: