Microsoft Flight Simulator Google Earth/Satellite Data Comparison

[Major_Majestic_X 7]

 

Some personal observations:

It appears that the LOD & Mipmaps in Microsoft Flight Simulator scale pretty similarly to Google Earth. Although at high altitudes & over long distances, the Mipmaps used by Google Earth are extremely low poly & of low quality. Maybe Bing 3D does it better, I don’t know, because I didn’t use Bing Maps. I found their app super janky & inconvenient. I’m more comfortable with Google Earth. Regardless, it appears that Microsoft is running some algorithm on top to clean out the low poly buildings, trees, etc. at high altitudes and over longer distances, to make them appear much better and give the impression of better LOD. Of course this is just speculation. Maybe the LOD is actually spectacularly higher, but my opinion is that Azure is doing that for them, thus saving on computation costs. Nonetheless, it’s still incredible.

Areas that are not covered under 3D satellite imagery data, The Sim seems to be using good old autogen system, although vastly improved over ESP platforms and seen to blend in well with the rest of the world.

FSX vs FS2020 - Screenshot comparison: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/556466-screenshot-comparison-fsx-vs-fs2020/

Scenery Locations: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/555678-e3-trailer-scenery-locations/

 

[Noooch 1,084]

Did you find any place which was not covered by satellite imagery? ( I found some in China)

[Major_Majestic_X 7]

26 minutes ago, Noooch said:

Did you find any place which was not covered by satellite imagery? ( I found some in China)

You can find examples such as these:

[aleex 551]

You hyped me again 😩

Now seriously, good work! 

 

Edited July 31, 2019 by aleex

[Villagedefrance 3]

It will be interesting to see if oceans and seas have tidal variations.

FSX always had many clipping glitches when water textures were being applied to terrain, ... and certainly no tidal effect.

Just imagine Barra airport (Wales) where you can only take-off and land at low tide 😉

Great comparison!

[Noooch 1,084]

1 hour ago, Major_Majestic_X said:

You can find examples such as these:

I was talking about satellite imagery.

Satellite imagery doesn't provide 3D mapping (except for terrain elevation), aerial photos and autogen do.

[edpatino 1,975]

It looks fantastic.

I would like to know if we can expect from FS2020 some sort of compatibility with some existing scenery airports, aircraft and other type of add-ons (like weather) made for P3Dv4, at least. This could be an important issue if we want to populate the new simulator.

Cheers, Ed

 

[Major_Majestic_X 7]

3 hours ago, Noooch said:

I was talking about satellite imagery.

Satellite imagery doesn't provide 3D mapping (except for terrain elevation), aerial photos and autogen do.

Oh sorry, I misunderstood. I guess a lot of places don't have satellite imagery, maybe because they are secret bases and don't want to show the world what they hiding haha. China is a very reserved country in that regards so makes sense to me they'd have some agreement to not map certain places for their own national security. In these cases FS2020 will probably use local data from the sim to fill these gaps in, while azure insures they are as well blended as possible.

[AddictedToFlying 0]

In case the developers are reading these forums, I would like to say that I sincerely hope I will be able to get some reasonable performance with this simulator on my i7-6700K 4GHz, GeForce GTX 970, 16GB ram setup.