A convincing scenery is not only an aerial image

[Paraffin 2,197]

5 minutes ago, MikeT707 said:

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.

The essential requirement for that kind of thing, is absolutely smooth transitions to avoid immersion breaking "pop-in" and "pop-out" of scenery details. If it can't be done without visible artifacts, then it shouldn't be done at all.

Maybe some people are less bothered by it, but personally I really hate seeing scenery shifting artifacts in a flight sim or AAA game. With the amount of system RAM most of us have on modern computers and 64-bit software, there is really no excuse for it.

 

[DadJokeCinema 145]

19 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

The essential requirement for that kind of thing, is absolutely smooth transitions to avoid immersion breaking "pop-in" and "pop-out" of scenery details. If it can't be done without visible artifacts, then it shouldn't be done at all.

Maybe some people are less bothered by it, but personally I really hate seeing scenery shifting artifacts in a flight sim or AAA game. With the amount of system RAM most of us have on modern computers and 64-bit software, there is really no excuse for it.

 

There was so much talk about the pop-in effect with No Man's Sky when it came out, and it certainly was noticeable, but they've made improvements, and I also look at the transitions in a game like Star Citizen, going from space to a planet and they do that VIS range scenery without pop-in ruining the experience. I think it's definitely doable now.

[Mengy 814]

22 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.

Man I hadn't even considered tessellation being used close to the ground.  Now I really want some low flying pics from the new sim!

[n4gix 4,947]

5 hours ago, Paraffin said:

The essential requirement for that kind of thing, is absolutely smooth transitions to avoid immersion breaking "pop-in" and "pop-out" of scenery details. If it can't be done without visible artifacts, then it shouldn't be done at all.

The solution to that is already available through use of "fade-in" and "fade out" for such scenery details.

Bill

[Paraffin 2,197]

37 minutes ago, n4gix said:

The solution to that is already available through use of "fade-in" and "fade out" for such scenery details.

That's not a solution if I can notice it happening. Our vision in the real world doesn't work that way. We don't see things fading in or out, or popping in and out.

[n4gix 4,947]

I am speaking of fade in/out while still very distant. In addition, there would only be one or two objects at a time appearing, so not a massive eye full simultaneously. This is something that L-M are working towards from what I've been reading in their developers forum.

[LHookins 3,103]

If something fades in slowly enough and far enough away then it shouldn't be noticeable.  This works for ground objects, not as well for clouds.  In P3Dv4 I don't ever notice mountains fading in at a distance, so they've got that part right.  Autogen still pops in, and it's disconcerting to see a forest being populated in the distance, one square at a time, and it takes many seconds.  It helps to fly very low. 🙂

Hook

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 hours ago, LHookins said:

If something fades in slowly enough and far enough away then it shouldn't be noticeable.  This works for ground objects, not as well for clouds.  In P3Dv4 I don't ever notice mountains fading in at a distance, so they've got that part right.  Autogen still pops in, and it's disconcerting to see a forest being populated in the distance, one square at a time, and it takes many seconds.  It helps to fly very low.

My point is that this problem has been solved in at least one current civilian flight sim. I never see any visible change in the scenery when flying XP11 over either default landclass +autogen, or an addon like Orbx TE GB or WA state.

It might be due to the way haze is used in the distance to mask scenery loading? But even when using plugins or file tweaks to reduce haze, or plugins that reduce it like ActiveSkyXp, I never see any pop-in, changes, or transitions in the scenery. I think it's because XP is just using more of the available RAM to load stuff in the background, before it ever becomes visible. Which is how it should be done.

If one current sim can do it, then the new MSFS should be able to. Or else it's not keeping up with the state of the art in simulation.

[DadJokeCinema 145]

On 8/3/2019 at 6:34 PM, n4gix said:

I am speaking of fade in/out while still very distant. In addition, there would only be one or two objects at a time appearing, so not a massive eye full simultaneously. This is something that L-M are working towards from what I've been reading in their developers forum.

1. Seeing you is a blast from the past! Hope you're well.

2. Often the solution is to put the fade in distance greater or equal to an atmospheric fog render distance. Then you see that distance haze which helps obscure fade in, just as it does in in real life.

[n4gix 4,947]

1 hour ago, NotASenator said:

1. Seeing you is a blast from the past! Hope you're well.

2. Often the solution is to put the fade in distance greater or equal to an atmospheric fog render distance. Then you see that distance haze which helps obscure fade in, just as it does in in real life.

I'm doing well for an old(er) man, thanks. Yes, a combination of the two functions should mostly mitigate the issue.

[dtrjones 356]

On 8/2/2019 at 11:20 AM, Guest said:

Here -> 

 

It will definitely be not the gem everybody is hoping for 

 

Talk about somebody completely missreading the analysis! Kevin is pretty hyped for this sim.

I think it's pretty good actually that Microsoft are not affraid to use a few different scenery techniques, photogrammetry, othographic tiles and landclass / autogen including the use of 3d grass. It adds to the diverisity and allows the best possible solution to cover something as huge as planet earth.

[Trevor2497 19]

I'm more concerned to see how Azure will transition from the 3D photogrammetry to regular autogen. Will it look like Bing maps where the coverage just stops? i'm sure it would look good enough if the autogen was somehow placed accurately over the houses, and had various buildings to choose from. That way the coverage does not seem to just stop at the edge of cities!

Edited August 6, 2019 by Trevor2497

[Greazer 1,321]

On 8/5/2019 at 1:23 PM, NotASenator said:

1. Seeing you is a blast from the past! Hope you're well.

Since the news about a new MS flight simulator came out a number of ol timers came out of the woods.

[n4gix 4,947]

21 hours ago, Greazer said:

Since the news about a new MS flight simulator came out a number of ol timers came out of the woods.

In my case not so much as coming "out of the woods" so much as diverting some attention to the next "best thing." Otherwise I've been deeply involved in continuing development of new and exciting projects.

[gtaboncer 11]

Hello dear Avsim members, 

After watching MFS trailer for a 100th time it looks I found something new about autogen. Before I move any further I would like to say sorry if this information is already been found by some of you because I haven’t read all the posts here.

So let me get straight to the point. My personal opinion that we all have already seen autogen example in the trailer. It was on 0:46 with a great view on Palm Jumeirah. 

Here is the screenshot from the trailer.

Spoiler

If you look at the skyscrapers at the left corner you will notice that they do not look so unique. 
On the screenshot below you can find zoomed up view

Spoiler

I believe some of you may still have some doubts about whether it was an autogen because it looks so beautiful. So here another part when I can actually prove that all these building that are randomly generated. Please take a look at the picture below. Can you see this building above read line?

Spoiler

Do you agree that this building looks different from generated buildings with photogrammetry?

Let’s take a look on a Bing Satellite view. 
 

Spoiler

Oops, there is no such building on a Bing maps. Okay, let’s take a look on a google maps satellite view:

Spoiler

So, as you can see this building is actually present on Google Maps. Let us stop here for a second. What is clear at the moment that this building is not present on Bing Satellite view but it exists in the trailer. What are our options here? Maybe Open Street Map(OSM)? Thankfully we have a great OSM 3d map https://osmbuildings.org/?lat=25.10682&lon=55.15270&zoom=17.4&tilt=30. Let’s look at the screenshot from there:

Spoiler

And compare that image with Bing Maps(Road view)

Spoiler

Looks similar, isn’t it?

So, my opinion is that:

• Autogen is present on Palm Jumeirah (Dubai) in the MFS trailer (0:46). 
• Microsoft uses 3d generated buildings based on OSM data + Othophotos(ground texture) to create autogen for areas when photogrammetric generation is not possible. ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Bing_Maps) 

Thanks for reading, and sorry if you all have seen this before.
 

Edited August 7, 2019 by gtaboncer