FSX-MS What it's like to fly over 3D Photoreal Scenery

[TechguyMaxC 516]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

Before we get too excited about that FSX demo using Google Earth, try a little experiment: 

Boot up Google Earth Pro, move it to your hometown, and enter the flight sim mode (Ctrl Alt A). If your hometown has good elevation data for buildings, it might look as good as that FSX with Google Earth demo. And if it doesn't...

I just did that over my small town about 100 miles from Seattle WA, out on the Olympic Peninsula. Flying the Google Earth Pro "flight sim", the scenery of my hometown is all flat as a pancake, just like normal ortho-based scenery with everything squashed. Apparently, Google has no elevation data for this area. Which is curious, because I know there is at least partial Open Street Map data here. They must be using another database for places where they do have elevations.

I had all the 3D settings enabled. Just to make sure I hadn't messed something up, I moved Google Earth Pro over to Tampa, and suddenly had 3D buildings to fly over. And with the same fugly trees. I'm starting to think it's not a resolution issue with those trees, but that Google never has measured elevation data for trees like they do for buildings in some places. All those trees are just a fudged guess for height based on the 2D satellite imaging.

So the bottom line is that you can't generate and stream 3D autogen buildings automatically from a satellite photo, if you don't have corresponding elevation data. It's not hard to imagine how much elevation data will be missing in most parts of the world. Like my squashed hometown, even in a tech-heavy area like WA state.

For what it's worth, XP11 uses available OSM data to generate autogen 3D houses and other buildings in my hometown. The building types aren't quite right, and some landmarks like a local lighthouse and some downtown buildings are missing. But at least the town is covered with 3D autogen buildings and they're all in the right place. Flying at low levels, it looks more "plausible" to me than the squashed ortho scenery in Google Earth, even though the Google Earth version does show my actual house... after the Jolly Green Giant stepped on it.

If the X-Plane "plausible world" model addressed the desires of most users, we wouldn't need to have this conversation because we would have all transitioned to X-Plane years ago.

I want real buildings in my sim, in the correct locations, exactly as they appear in the real world.  Autogen on top of ortho doesn't cut it (for me).  

[ca_metal 2,024]

23 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

If the X-Plane "plausible world" model addressed the desires of most users, we wouldn't need to have this conversation because we would have all transitioned to X-Plane years ago.

 I want real buildings in my sim, in the correct locations, exactly as they appear in the real world.  Autogen on top of ortho doesn't cut it (for me).  

X-Plane can use OSM data to build the overlays (buildings, trees etc). All buildings will be in the right places, but they won't match the colors/textures/type of roofs of the real ones (unless you have more accurate data which isn't available for free. Also there's not data for the whole world as it depends on the users to improve the data.

The step forward/improvement we see here isn't having buildings in the right place, it's having each building/scenery object in the sim looking exactly like the real one. And being the owner of the Maps service, AI service and being a Huge company, the Flight Simulator Studio can have access to data no other developer can (Lockheed Martin, but they never showed interest in doing so).

Edited June 17, 2019 by ca_metal

[TechguyMaxC 516]

2 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

X-Plane can use OSM data to build the overlays (buildings, trees etc). All buildings will be in the right place, but they won't match the colors/textures/type of roofs of the real ones (unless you have more accurate data which isn't available for free. 

The step forward/improvement we see here isn't having buildings in the right place, it's having each building/scenery object in the sim looking exactly like the real one.

The statement you quote is a multi-part conditional statement.  Part 3 of that statement was "exactly as they appear in the real world".  

That correction aside, you are telling me that by default X-Plane uses OSM data for the entire world?  I am skeptical of this.  

Edited June 17, 2019 by TechguyMaxC

[ca_metal 2,024]

8 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

The statement you quote is a multi-part conditional statement.  Part 3 of that statement was "exactly as they appear in the real world".  

That correction aside, you are telling me that by default X-Plane uses OSM data for the entire world?  I am skeptical of this.  

Yes, they do. Also there's a freeware that improves it (HD Mesh V4). But the base scenery doesn't use all the OSM data available (they don't use the data of each house to place them correctly), they cut it and use part of it (if I'm not wrong, they use the roads, rivers, forests, eletrical grids, some other objects etc). By default nor Laminar, nor HD Mesh use the data to put every house on the default scenery, but they use, if I remember it right, to place Skycrapers and higher buildings.

Even thought they don't use the whole data for the scenery, as they have to fill in the gaps where there is not enought data, there are softwares/add-ons that will do it for you.

X-Europe is an example of freeware you can install and see how amazing OSM + Orthos can look. But again, it's nothing compared to the accurancy we are seeing here with the Microsoft FSim.

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by ca_metal

[Murmur 3,941]

7 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

That correction aside, you are telling me that by default X-Plane uses OSM data for the entire world?  I am skeptical of this.  

Correct.

[Paraffin 2,197]

7 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

The step forward/improvement we see here isn't having buildings in the right place, it's having each building/scenery object in the sim looking exactly like the real one. And being the owner of the Maps service, AI service and being a Huge company, the Flight Simulator Studio can have access to data no other developer can (Lockheed Martin, but they never showed interest in doing so).

Sure, but you don't get it looking exactly like the real one when it's squashed flat on the ground, like my hometown in Google Earth.

There has to be a solution for the rest of the world, because unless there is some magic technology that we don't know about (and Google doesn't either), the height data to automatically generate the 3D buildings in that FSX Tampa demo may only be available in a limited number of places in developed countries, possibly only the major cities, and not everywhere. I'll be interested to see how MSFS handles that.

 

4 minutes ago, TechguyMaxC said:

The statement you quote is a multi-part conditional statement.  Part 3 of that statement was "exactly as they appear in the real world".  

That correction aside, you are telling me that by default X-Plane uses OSM data for the entire world?  I am skeptical of this.  

It uses OSM data for the entire world where that data is available, which is increasing every day. Of course it's compromised in how well it can generate autogen buildings by having limited regionalized building types. 

[ca_metal 2,024]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

Sure, but you don't get it looking exactly like the real one when it's squashed flat on the ground, like my hometown in Google Earth.

There has to be a solution for the rest of the world, because unless there is some magic technology that we don't know about (and Google doesn't either), the height data to automatically generate the 3D buildings in that FSX Tampa demo may only be available in a limited number of places in developed countries, possibly only the major cities, and not everywhere. I'll be interested to see how MSFS handles that.

It will depend on how much Phil Spencer wants to spend on the simulator, they have the tech in-house to do it widely.

But being a little realistic, I don't expect it to have a large coverage of this tech, not at least on the V1.0. In places they don't want to spend time and money, they will figure out a way to make real enought. I woudl prefer to wait for more details in that matter before commenting further.  

[bonchie 2,305]

4 hours ago, Paraffin said:

Before we get too excited about that FSX demo using Google Earth, try a little experiment: 

Boot up Google Earth Pro, move it to your hometown, and enter the flight sim mode (Ctrl Alt A). If your hometown has good elevation data for buildings, it might look as good as that FSX with Google Earth demo. And if it doesn't...

I just did that over my small town about 100 miles from Seattle WA, out on the Olympic Peninsula. Flying the Google Earth Pro "flight sim", the scenery of my hometown is all flat as a pancake, just like normal ortho-based scenery with everything squashed. Apparently, Google has no elevation data for this area. Which is curious, because I know there is at least partial Open Street Map data here. They must be using another database for places where they do have elevations.

I had all the 3D settings enabled. Just to make sure I hadn't messed something up, I moved Google Earth Pro over to Tampa, and suddenly had 3D buildings to fly over. And with the same fugly trees. I'm starting to think it's not a resolution issue with those trees, but that Google never has measured elevation data for trees like they do for buildings in some places. All those trees are just a fudged guess for height based on the 2D satellite imaging.

So the bottom line is that you can't generate and stream 3D autogen buildings automatically from a satellite photo, if you don't have corresponding elevation data. It's not hard to imagine how much elevation data will be missing in most parts of the world. Like my squashed hometown, even in a tech-heavy area like WA state.

For what it's worth, XP11 uses available OSM data to generate autogen 3D houses and other buildings in my hometown. The building types aren't quite right, and some landmarks like a local lighthouse and some downtown buildings are missing. But at least the town is covered with 3D autogen buildings and they're all in the right place. Flying at low levels, it looks more "plausible" to me than the squashed ortho scenery in Google Earth, even though the Google Earth version does show my actual house... after the Jolly Green Giant stepped on it.

They are using some kind of autogen overlay process for non-3D scanned areas. You can see that in a few scenes in the trailer.

It reminds me of XP11's process with Ortho4XP but much more polished.

[turnandbank 243]

10 hours ago, bonchie said:

They are using some kind of autogen overlay process for non-3D scanned areas. You can see that in a few scenes in the trailer.

It reminds me of XP11's process with Ortho4XP but much more polished.

I see that too. I think that is how MS will need to fill in the blanks (which will be most of the planet) -  something akin to Orbx True Earth Scenery on a global scale. They will need to do a good job If they want to avoid jarring transitions between full 3D areas and generic areas with autogen. They need to address a lot of color inconsistencies in the satellite imagery too. Perhaps they can do that using the so called AI. For now I am cautiously optimistic.

[ckyliu 1,749]

@Paraffin The 3D cities are not constructed from OSM data, they use photogrammetry; the area must've been captured by multiple cameras a known distance apart, and from a few directions (usually they use overlapping photos for that), and you can use this to calculate the location of various points on the photo and thus the objects size and shape, and terrain features. You can't generate that from standard top down "ortho" aerial imagery and OSM data, you need an aircraft with several cameras and specialist kit set up to fly over. Trees look weird because they move and are kinda translucent, you get a solid general outline and not leaf detail.

If you use OSM and other data over standard aerial "ortho" imagery to place autogen objects appropriately you end up with something that looks like ORBX TrueEarth. This requires a separate terrain elevation mesh which is sometimes satellite data from space, sometimes it's from the same aerial photo session using lidar or radar.

Edited June 18, 2019 by ckyliu

[cmpbellsjc 2,961]

On 6/18/2019 at 3:18 AM, ckyliu said:

@Paraffin The 3D cities are not constructed from OSM data, they use photogrammetry; the area must've been captured by multiple cameras a known distance apart, and from a few directions (usually they use overlapping photos for that), and you can use this to calculate the location of various points on the photo and thus the objects size and shape, and terrain features. You can't generate that from standard top down "ortho" aerial imagery and OSM data, you need an aircraft with several cameras and specialist kit set up to fly over. Trees look weird because they move and are kinda translucent, you get a solid general outline and not leaf detail.

 

I though this was done using LIDAR technology or is that the same as photogrammetry?

[ckyliu 1,749]

I thought it was LIDAR scanning too but apparently it's all done with multiple offset photos and then a lot of computer processing. I think they do sometimes capture laser or radar data too but more for terrain elevation? 

When you think about it, it makes sense, lidar scanners typically move quite slowly through a space to build up a model of it and their range is limited. Hardly practical to get data for many buildings from several thousand feet up.

Found a video at

 explains it better than I can.

Edited June 20, 2019 by ckyliu