Number of 3D cities in MS2020? - use Earth View 3D to see them!

[mazex 419]

On 8/20/2019 at 10:23 PM, ganter said:

"Never ever call it a plane. A plane is something with a sharp cutting edge that you skim across wood to shave material off and make saw dust.

It's an Aeroplane. Or, for our much-loved American Cousins; an Airplane. But what it ain't is a Plane" Okay? Clear? Good.

Never forget that.

Well, being from Sweden I'm pretty happy with my English vocabulary ;) Not beeing a native English speaker can be a bit confusing sometimes, as a lot of words are similar in Swedish and English. You loaned (loan is one of them) quite a bit when we raided England back in the days. Some examples of English words with Scandinavian background from those days:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_Norse_origin

For example "wing" is borrowed from our "Vinge"... And naturally words releated to how we handled nosey trolls (also from us) back then like: Anger, Die, Slaughter, Ransack, Scare, Skin, Skull, Take and finallly "Wrong". 

So don't come here and tell me what is right or wrong ;)

And with that, some words are used a bit differently in Swedish even though they are very similar in English. For example flygplan = airplane, but the short version of just "plan" is used a lot more frequently than in English, even in high quality newspapers etc. But in a text from a crash investigation or similiar you would naturally use Flygplan so you are not all wrong ;)

[raymar 969]

I spent a couple of hours visiting most of the small towns and airports within a few hundred miles of my house.  I am surprised at how many of the smaller towns have 3D buildings.  Most of the airports do have 3D hangars, terminals and gates and such.  All the expected cities are well developed along with the airports. 

These are Nashville, Memphis, Jackson, Gulfport, New Orleans, Mobile, Florida panhandle, Atlanta, and Birmingham.  Charlotte is flat, but Jacksonville, Daytona, Orlando, Tampa/St.Pete are well done and solid along the Atlantic coast from Boca to South Miami.  Keys are flat except for Key West.

There are some strange holes in the system but it is still Alpha stage.  Houston City is very well done, but Bush and Hobby airports are flat.  Dallas is flat but Ft. Worth has high rises and stadiums.  Airports are developed in Ft. Worth, but, not in Dallas.  duh.

The down side is the maps are quite old. My guess is 6 - 10 years old in my part of the world.  Also, the scenery is winter from medium to high altitudes but switches to green spring or summer as you get lower.  Trees, cars and aircraft are very blocky with parts missing.  Maybe all these areas will look like Houston and San Francisco when published next year.

Regards,

Ray

[Pastaiolo 1,688]

And that is just the States. Get out of it and you'll find that their coverage in photogrammetry is quite lacking compared to Google, by A LOT.

[aleex 551]

I wonder how often MS update 3D data

[raymar 969]

It is hard to know for sure, but the largest update seems to have been in 2010 and 2014.

California and Florida have the most locations, CA 30, FL24.  Only 36 states are represented and the norm is 1 - 4. Other exceptions are TX 11 and AZ 6. 143 total list in the search box of the app for the US.

Outside the US, there are 77 cities listed. Germany 18, Canada 11, Italy and Spain 10 each, France 7, AU 6, Great Britain 2, with Brussels, Copenhagen, and Zurich the single city in those 3 countries.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,945]

21 hours ago, raymar said:

Outside the US, there are 77 cities listed. Germany 18, Canada 11, Italy and Spain 10 each, France 7, AU 6, Great Britain 2, with Brussels, Copenhagen, and Zurich the single city in those 3 countries.

For GB to have only two “cities” represented is an absolute shambles. And when you consider those are not major cities by any stretch of the imagination it just rubs salt into the wound. Southampton and Portsmouth are the two I believe. What about London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and so many others I could list?

Whoever is responsible for making this data available needs to pull their finger out and get better GB representation. Without it sales may be less than they imagine.

[highflyer2020 607]

56 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

For GB to have only two “cities” represented is an absolute shambles. And when you consider those are not major cities by any stretch of the imagination it just rubs salt into the wound. Southampton and Portsmouth are the two I believe. What about London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh and so many others I could list?

Whoever is responsible for making this data available needs to pull their finger out and get better GB representation. Without it sales may be less than they imagine.

 

Hopefully it won't matter much - if you have a look at these screenshots it seems they must have some other 3D available to them which is not publicly available yet or their AI  is good enough to provide us with believable 3D building generation.

 

London:

 

 

 

Newcastle:

[Ray Proudfoot 8,945]

@highflyer2020, I appreciate you posting those images but if you notice they never flew over the City of London where so many iconic buildings are located. The Shard, The Gherkin, Tower of London and House of Parliament to name but a few. The Millennium Dome is not typical of London’s buildings.

If those were present in the sim I’m sure they would have been used instead of a large tent. I remain to be convinced that London will be as well represented as some of Spain’s cities. Quite why Bing ignore some major European cities but (with respect) include some American ones I’ve never heard of is a slap in the face and suggests a heavy US bias.

[jpc55 185]

I can’t imagine what people think (a work in progress) is talked about as if it were a finished product. I’m beginning to think that if they badger these Developers enough that they will get there way. Good luck with that!

I think that Tears for Fears had it right, “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

3 hours ago, highflyer2020 said:

Hopefully it won't matter much - if you have a look at these screenshots it seems they must have some other 3D available to them which is not publicly available yet or their AI  is good enough to provide us with believable 3D building generation.

Those cities you listed are indeed created by Azure using satellite and map data to calculate building height. Those should look believable enough, but not as accurate as areas with photogrammetry.

[Paraffin 2,197]

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I remain to be convinced that London will be as well represented as some of Spain’s cities. Quite why Bing ignore some major European cities but (with respect) include some American ones I’ve never heard of is a slap in the face and suggests a heavy US bias.

It's not a "US bias." The only bias is in the available data sets. 

The reason so many US cities are well-represented with realistic-looking buildings instead of autogen, is simply a result of the available photogrammetry, which is different than the satellite data. If there is only satellite data available, then you'll get autogen buildings instead.

One would think that London would have good photogrammetry data, but sometimes there are issues with getting access. Like having to deal with private companies where it might have to be paid for, or a security concern with military bases, government buildings, etc.. Microsoft doesn't operate its own satellites and aerial survey teams, it has to get data from 3rd parties. At any rate, I'm going to assume that London is a work in progress and will show up with full photogrammetry data eventually. 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,945]

@Paraffin, I doubt security concerns over London are any different to major US cities. I won’t speculate what the reasons might be for lack of photogrammetry data. Hopefully things improve.

[ca_metal 2,015]

As I understand, the guys behind Bing is a totally different group and they have their own roadmap and budget which probably won't be affected by the new simulator development needs.

As soon as the Bing maps is updated, the sim scenery will be updated, that was said by the sim devs. They also said more photogrammetry areas are on the pipeline. So the sim scenery updates relies on the Bing updates.

That said, we can just hope that Bing Maps developers need more photogrammetry areas to fulfill their future plans.

[Baber20 1,438]

Did some folks actually believed that we would get an exact replica of the world out of the box day one ? Its a huge undertaking and albeit some areas might not look as good as others right now, they will improve gradually in a couple months or years time. Its a 10 year project. 

[ckyliu 1,749]

2 hours ago, Paraffin said:

It's not a "US bias." The only bias is in the available data sets.

One would think that London would have good photogrammetry data, but sometimes there are issues with getting access. Like having to deal with private companies where it might have to be paid for, or a security concern with military bases, government buildings, etc.. Microsoft doesn't operate its own satellites and aerial survey teams, it has to get data from 3rd parties. At any rate, I'm going to assume that London is a work in progress and will show up with full photogrammetry data eventually. 

It is though, because the data does exist and has for a long time, there's loads of European photogrammetry coverage on Google Map; even my town of just 100,000 people is 3D on Google. Google's aerial photography (it's really not satellite at these higher resolutions) is more up to date and more detailed.

Edited December 26, 2019 by ckyliu