Having the globe covered by hires imagery (we won't but let's suppose we do) is great. Of course. Except... Except it is a little flat 😊. Flying most of the time below 15k feet, I am also interested in having a convincing (I prefer the word convincing to the word realistic) overlay of buildings and trees over the map. Models, scale, textures.

OrbX and Turbulent have done an excellent job with TerraFlora, HD Trees and HD Buildings but the end result is still toyish because they cannot change the underlaying autogen models which are at least  20 years old.  Their tree textures are lovely  but the tree cross-shaped models are so dated, same for the small cubes called houses.

Anothe issue is geographic variation. I don't want to even speak of these dreadful FSX yew tree we see all over the world in the default scenery.  We need more diversity and accuracy in vegetation and buildings according to the latitude and altitude.  It would be nice to have flametrees and jacaranda in Asia for instance.

 I look forward in a next update to see how the FS20 works on this issue.

 

 

 

Edited August 1, 20196 yr by domkle

I am really hoping Microsoft dedicates a lot of devs to help construct this global rendering of the earth.  Azure may only be intelligent enough to place trees in areas that look greenon a satellite image.  It'll be up to the devs to tell Azure what type of trees to render in 3D.  Same goes for buildings, they need to tell Azure not to render wood sided ranch style homes in Cairo.

A big plus would be if the colours and sizes of any 3D stuff plonked over photo imagery was correct. As it stands in most flight sims, that stuff doesn't blend well at all with the image it sits on, and in particular, the preposterously overly-large size of most trees on scenery in FSX and P3D in particular, makes it look like you're flying over some kind of prehistoric rendering of the planet with gigantic forestry.

Dominique will probably recall my post over on Orbx's forums regarding autogen size.



As an example, the maximum permitted height of a two-storey residential building in NSW is 8.5m, which is 28ft per this U.S. 'mean roof elevation' shown in the image immediately above.

Unscientifically, I measured some two storey buildings around the world in P3D and got an average of 12.2m (40 ft) which is a substantial 43% taller than 8.5m. Single storey bungalows measured 10m (33 ft).

While noting that you can get Redwoods and Giant Sequoias reaching 107m (350 ft), they are tall and thin (relative in dimension to their height). Certainly not the oversized bushes we see in FSX and P3D. It appears that our trees all over the sim world are often far too wide and 'bushy' in appearance.

Oversized autogen gives the wrong impression of altitude and speed.

I think Azure AI will get it right for autogen proportions in the new sim. But as Heli points out, they need to ensure that we get region appropriate buildings and vegetation. That would be good progress.

it has always been possible from the beginning of FSX to use custom trees, autogen buildings and roofs.  just read the SDK...

developers choose not to for a variety of reasons 

The photo-imagery stuff will pertain to a tiny portion of the world only, of course, otherwise it would be necessary 40M Petabytes to have it all.

There is a post in this forum with an interesting 1h interview to an ex Aces Studio member 20 years expert of graphic of flight simulations, it is a very explanatory 1h tour into the images of MSFS 2020. 

Basically, MSFS 2020 it will not be the diamond and perls everybody are confident about, plase look for it !

 

 

Edited August 2, 20196 yr by Guest

This is why you will never see a downloadable sim with full photo you need a server to store it streaming will be the only way, Azure.

4 minutes ago, rjfry said:

This is why you will never see a downloadable sim with full photo you need a server to store it streaming will be the only way, Azure.

The autogen files, models and textures, have a very small overall footprint. There is no need for streaming even with more differentiation.

Here -> 

 

It will definitely be not the gem everybody is hoping for 

 

3 hours ago, Mark II said:

It will definitely be not the gem everybody is hoping for 

You don't know that.  The analysis you posted is actually fairly positive in it's outlook as many of the obstacles he highlights are surmountable with AI routines and algorithms, which he also points out.  We can expect compromises of course but the end result is very likely to be a far improvement over the tech we have today in current flight sims.

You definitely do not know FS2020 will be a dud, you are only being overly pessimistic with your guesses and predictions.

Agreed. An organic looking environment is more important than one covered in photo's, it most definitely helps, but its not the end all. Density itself can create a lively scene, hoping for a more optimized autogen engine this time around. 

I am very curious how will look a city which is not covered by photogrametry.

52 minutes ago, CaptainIronside said:

 a more optimized autogen engine this time around. 

LM has worked that out for trees so we can have dnow enser and larger forests with a minimal impact. Maybe the buildings will be optimized in V5 the same way, or I should say, in FS20 😉 ...

 

The leaps in tessellation and instancing alone in the last 13 years somewhat negates a decent portion of the comparisons to previous versions of MS FS.

17 hours ago, NotASenator said:

The leaps in tessellation and instancing alone in the last 13 years somewhat negates a decent portion of the comparisons to previous versions of MS FS.

Agreed. Tessellation should provide functionality that as a user gets closer to the ground or an object, details that are not visible at a distance on the ground or the object are visible.

For instance, when a user is on ground level details like grass, weeds, rocks, pavement, etc. but when the user goes up in elevation, those details disappear. When the user gets closer to the ground, those details appear. This is great for visual fidelity, as well as perceiving a sense of speed when close to the ground and moving.