Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
TravelRunner404

Phil Spencer Interview

Recommended Posts

https://www.pcgamer.com/microsoft-wants-to-bring-back-flight-simulator-to-show-it-supports-pc/

Couple quotes:

"Flight Sim was a game in our past that sold millions and millions of units and had a very, very passionate community—in fact, they're still out there," says Spencer. 

Spencer says that 2 petabytes of geographical data is used to seamlessly stitch together Earth.

Spencer warned the team: "You're going to have to put at the bottom that it's in-game, because nobody is going to believe that's in the game."

  • Like 9

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Very encouraging.  Looking forward to the full interview.



Doug Miannay

PC: i9-13900K (OC 6.1) | ASUS Maximus Z790 Hero | ASUS Strix RTX4080 (OC) | ASUS ROG Strix LC II 360 AIO | 32GB G.Skill DDR5 TridentZ RGB 6400Hz | Samsung 990 Pro 1TB M.2 (OS/Apps) | Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2 (Sim) | Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2 (Games) | Fractal Design Define R7 Blackout Case | Win11 Pro x64

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

2 petabytes (1024 terabytes) of geo data in play.  That pretty strongly suggests high-bandwidth streaming of scenery data.

  • Upvote 1

Bob Scott | President and CEO, AVSIM Inc
ATP Gulfstream II-III-IV-V

System1 (P3Dv5/v4): i9-13900KS @ 6.0GHz, water 2x360mm, ASUS Z790 Hero, 32GB GSkill 7800MHz CAS36, ASUS RTX4090
Samsung 55" JS8500 4K TV@30Hz,
3x 2TB WD SN850X 1x 4TB Crucial P3 M.2 NVME SSD, EVGA 1600T2 PSU, 1.2Gbps internet
Fiber link to Yamaha RX-V467 Home Theater Receiver, Polk/Klipsch 6" bookshelf speakers, Polk 12" subwoofer, 12.9" iPad Pro
PFC yoke/throttle quad/pedals with custom Hall sensor retrofit, Thermaltake View 71 case, Stream Deck XL button box

Sys2 (MSFS/XPlane): i9-10900K @ 5.1GHz, 32GB 3600/15, nVidia RTX4090FE, Alienware AW3821DW 38" 21:9 GSync, EVGA 1000P2
Thrustmaster TCA Boeing Yoke, TCA Airbus Sidestick, 2x TCA Airbus Throttle quads, PFC Cirrus Pedals, Coolermaster HAF932 case

Portable Sys3 (P3Dv4/FSX/DCS): i9-9900K @ 5.0 Ghz, Noctua NH-D15, 32GB 3200/16, EVGA RTX3090, Dell S2417DG 24" GSync
Corsair RM850x PSU, TM TCA Officer Pack, Saitek combat pedals, TM Warthog HOTAS, Coolermaster HAF XB case

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 minutes ago, w6kd said:

2 petabytes (1024 terabytes) of geo data in play.  That pretty strongly suggests high-bandwidth streaming of scenery data.

I think they are just referring to the total sum of Bing Map satellite data used, to create the final product, just so it sounds impressive on paper. All that data is compressed, lower resolution and much more sporadic. Bing struggles to give you consistent results in mainland Europe alone, so I'm going to guess a lot of interpolation work of data, perhaps even filling in blanks with basic 'textures' that matches, stuff like that. However, some form of streaming technology might still be at play, it's going to be interesting to see if they choose that route, as that carries a lot of potential problems with it.

  • Like 3

Asus TUF X670E-PLUS | 7800X3D | G.Skill 32GB DDR @ CL30 6000MHz | RTX 4090 Founders Edition (Undervolted) | WD SNX 850X 2TB + 4TB + 4TB

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
3 minutes ago, Samaritano said:

Unless Microsoft is planning to do something like this. 

Link

Except that turned out to be a major dud, complete PR fluff, like most of the "rendered by the cloud" promises. The final game is nothing like they showed or promised. We have decade old games that does destruction better.

Edited by Sethos1988

Asus TUF X670E-PLUS | 7800X3D | G.Skill 32GB DDR @ CL30 6000MHz | RTX 4090 Founders Edition (Undervolted) | WD SNX 850X 2TB + 4TB + 4TB

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Sethos1988 said:

I think they are just referring to the total sum of Bing Map satellite data used, to create the final product

Yup. As a reference point, in Adam Szofran's paper on FSX terrain, they had over 1TB of source data, which was compressed and culled down to less than 15GB in the install. Of course now they are using imagery much more heavily than in FSX so there's way more data and they are streaming rather than having everything coming from local storage, so it's a very different design with optimization needed not just to deal with the raw bandwidth but also latency.

In the past MS was pretty good about sharing details and opening the platform to developers (and where they weren't a lot of inquisitive hackers figured it out anyway), I hope they will continue to do that.

  • Upvote 1

Barry Friedman

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

If you have a look at the scenes with the elephants, giraffes and bush flying at 1:22 you will see that the scenery doesn't show satellite imagery but a new issue of classical landclass textures with clever use of procedural, probably shader based overlays. The slightly polygonal river in the bush flying scene shows that vector data are used as well.

My conclusion is, that thy showed in that trailer mainly the HD areas that are built up of a photogrammetric mesh (like the 3D cities in Google Earth, probably made from aerial imagery and not just satellite scenes) and the MD areas with satellite ground texture and some (auotgen?) trees on it, but in the abovementioned three scenes the were honest enough to show us what the huge rest of the world will look like.

This absolutely makes sense as in most areas of the tropics due to cloud cover there is even a lack of medium resolution satellite imagery - have a look in Google Earth or elswhere. Moreover, natural landscapes with trees as photogrammetric 3d mesh look not soo good closeup as the trees look quite blocky and completely intransparent. It would also be a waste of bandwidth to stream thousands of km² of uniform tauiga forest instead of using the conventional texture and autogen tech. So, a mix of techniques for terrain depiction is the right way to go.

It also will open a lot of possibilites for scenery addon publishers, provided a SDK (which we will see in time, I'm sure - they will have learned from the FLIGHT desaster).

  • Like 2

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
2 minutes ago, meerkat said:

If you have a look at the scenes with the elephants, giraffes and bush flying at 1:22 you will see that the scenery doesn't show satellite imagery but a new issue of classical landclass textures with clever use of procedural, probably shader based overlays. The slightly polygonal river in the bush flying scene shows that vector data are used as well.

My conclusion is, that thy showed in that trailer mainly the HD areas that are built up of a photogrammetric mesh (like the 3D cities in Google Earth, probably made from aerial imagery and not just satellite scenes) and the MD areas with satellite ground texture and some (auotgen?) trees on it, but in the abovementioned three scenes the were honest enough to show us what the huge rest of the world will look like.

This absolutely makes sense as in most areas of the tropics due to cloud cover there is even a lack of medium resolution satellite imagery - have a look in Google Earth or elswhere. Moreover, natural landscapes with trees as photogrammetric 3d mesh look not soo good closeup as the trees look quite blocky and completely intransparent. It would also be a waste of bandwidth to stream thousands of km² of uniform tauiga forest instead of using the conventional texture and autogen tech. So, a mix of techniques for terrain depiction is the right way to go.

It also will open a lot of possibilites for scenery addon publishers, provided a SDK (which we will see in time, I'm sure - they will have learned from the FLIGHT desaster).

Yeah, was actually giving this some thought earlier and even wrote out a post in the other thread, that I decided to skip for the time being. While not a clear-cut case, the image that kinda stood out to me was this;

https://i.imgur.com/ywmHFW5.jpg

Beautiful scene for sure but there's something about how those mountain textures look, how the snow looks and sits, how it stops and blends that reminded me of what you see in FSX / P3D with OrbX. Then I noticed the corner of it;

EKMiT2N.jpg

That looks exactly like photoscenery with a hard edge into textures. I've seen that jarring transition many times in X-Plane when using Ortho4XP. It doesn't even look like a seasonal transition, only the mesh matches up, rest is just completely different.

Though I don't mind at all, I have nothing against the texture approach if done well. All I'm hoping for is nice, blended transitions.

  • Like 1

Asus TUF X670E-PLUS | 7800X3D | G.Skill 32GB DDR @ CL30 6000MHz | RTX 4090 Founders Edition (Undervolted) | WD SNX 850X 2TB + 4TB + 4TB

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I also saw this tiny triangle of misfit ground - appears to me like a seam in the satellite scene: main part was taken during winter while that small piece shows a summe scene. You can see it on the lake that is half ice covered, half water colored. This is one of the obstacles in establishing a seamless worldwide satellite ground coverage.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 minutes ago, meerkat said:

I also saw this tiny triangle of misfit ground - appears to me like a seam in the satellite scene: main part was taken during winter while that small piece shows a summe scene. You can see it on the lake that is half ice covered, half water colored. This is one of the obstacles in establishing a seamless worldwide satellite ground coverage.

But you would have two ways to overtake this obstacle: By hand, Using AI. They have Azure to correct those issues. As I said before, if microsoft provide them enought time on the supercomputer, they can do the magic. We will have to see if Microsoft is willing to go this deep in the immersion aspect.

Edited by ca_metal

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

With all respect, I don't think it's possible to change a winter satellite image to a snowless one that convincingly (if not correctly) shows what the satellite would have seen in summer, and that even without manual retouching but only AI procedures. The other way round would be much easier and still seems very hard to do as we get no winter season in satellite scenery.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 minutes ago, meerkat said:

With all respect, I don't think it's possible to change a winter satellite image to a snowless one that convincingly (if not correctly) shows what the satellite would have seen in summer, and that even without manual retouching but only AI procedures. The other way round would be much easier and still seems very hard to do as we get no winter season in satellite scenery.

Orbx did it with their True Earth Netherlands, they took one set of orthoimagery and using their own technique they managed to convert the single-season imagery in four more seasons (they claim TE NE has 5 seasons).

Also you can use shaders (white and green) to turn summer into winter or vice versa. Xenviro is doing it to create seasons for X-plane, with shaders they can change the textures and orthoimagery.

Edited by ca_metal

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Just now, ca_metal said:

Orbx did it with their True Earth Netherlands, they took one set of orthoimagery and using their own technique they managed to convert the single-season imagery in four more seasons (they claim TE NE has 5 seasons).

Also you can use shaders (white and gree) to turn summer in winter or vice versa. Xenviro for X-plane is doing it to create seasons for X-plane, with shaders they can change the textures and orthoimagery.

Think he means turning winter-only to snowless, that is definitely impossible to do right, as you lose all data underneath. If you start with summer, it's easy to run through some filters to mimic all the seasons.


Asus TUF X670E-PLUS | 7800X3D | G.Skill 32GB DDR @ CL30 6000MHz | RTX 4090 Founders Edition (Undervolted) | WD SNX 850X 2TB + 4TB + 4TB

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Just now, Sethos1988 said:

Think he means turning winter-only to snowless, that is definitely impossible to do right, as you lose all data underneath. If you start with summer, it's easy to run through some filters to mimic all the seasons.

Hmmm Maybe you are right, but I saw a lot of wonderful stuff Nvidia could do with their supercomputers. I don't think Microsoft's tech would be far behind.

  • Upvote 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...