6 hours ago, domkle said:

What they have done so far is lovely but not "well past what many thought possible,". Photogrammetry, raytracing etc.  have been with us for some years now. They are known techniques including in games for some. 

 

What they are doing with autogen over Orthos is new and it’s solving problems we’ve been talking about in the XP11 world for years.

 

Edited August 31, 20196 yr by bonchie

 

4 minutes ago, bonchie said:

What they are doing with autogen over Orthos is new and it’s solving problems we’ve been talking about in the XP11 world for years.

 

I do not know very well XP11 but autogen over orthos is what I see in OrbX TE products. What is new ?

24 minutes ago, domkle said:

 

I do not know very well XP11 but autogen over orthos is what I see in OrbX TE products. What is new ?

What Orbx is doing is different. They are using things like OSM data and similar overlay processes to Ortho4XP, along with lots of hand annotation. Just like Ortho4XP, there are inherent issues. It produces a decent result but it’s nowhere near what we are seeing from MSFS on a global scale. The main issue to be dealt with is accuracy of overlay placement.

The technology behind filling in the gaps where orthos are lacking and streaming orthos worldwide is also new. 

Orbx isn’t going to do a region with bad coverage or where tiles need anything more than color correcting.

Edit: to better understand what I’m saying is new and vastly improved, look at the breakdown of the Aspen shot here: 

 

Edited August 31, 20196 yr by bonchie

If they do I hope they readjust the beginning of the seasons for regional differences.

In FSX and P3D both Spring and Fall textures start to show up way too early for central Europe.

I paid close attention to the coloration of the trees during the last 3 years. You start to see the first coloration on the leaves at the end of September, but it doesn't manifest fully until the second half of October and stays that way until the the middle of November during which the final leaves have fallen. So in real life full coloration lasts only one month, not two like in the sim.

Leaves then come back depending on prevalent temperatures. The earliest is beginning of April, but usually they don't show up until the second half of April.

In the sim both these events happen at the beginning of September and March. That is waaaay too early.

Edited August 31, 20196 yr by Farlis

15 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I wouldn’t worry about it. The backlash from the community would be huge if they didn’t include seasons.

However, the backlash would not just suddenly get us seasons. We would have to wait likely years before they could be implemented. Better to have backlash now!

Besides, shouldn't this topic not be merged with the one (Exact same with the exception of a question mark) I started precisely about this back June 20th?🙂

 

10 hours ago, Greazer said:

Unless they plan different sets of Ortho to be sucked down depending on the time of year, but the question is if the Ortho is even available for that.

That's the problem. Ortho-based scenery is always Endless Summer in the northern and southern latitudes, or Endless Dry Season in the Tropics, because that's when there are the fewest clouds for satellite imaging. 

Shaders could be the answer for adjusting the orthos. Ideally, we would have a choice of manually selected seasons, and also a "live" version that worked with METARs and other data to track snowfall on the ground as it comes and goes in real time. 

I certainly hope that the new MSFS will have some seasonal variations in the scenery.  I say "seasonal variations" because I don't believe that satellite imagery is available for all seasons.

I think what we'll get is texture color changes, autogen vegetation changes, and perhaps snow accumulation on a very local scale using shading techniques.

We still face the problem of determining what the current season is in a particular location on a particular date.

Dave

13 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I’m confident that they won’t go backwards and release a sim with no seasonal variations. The blow back would be too great. Granted X-Plane has gotten away with it but I doubt very seriously that MS won’t have a solution for it.

Did Flight have seasons?

9 minutes ago, Ident said:

Did Flight have seasons?

No, and it didn't matter because that game focused only on separate regions with no connection. Hawaii has very little seasonal variation to begin with, and they could choose the more "challenging" seasonal weather for Alaska. It wasn't a world sim where you might expect changing seasons.

Flight has seasons. And it now has the world.

 

Edited August 31, 20196 yr by rhumbaflappy

And at least in that picture it still seems to operate with the old weather system. I know it's early development, but man that is underwhelming if it stays that way.

7 hours ago, Farlis said:

And at least in that picture it still seems to operate with the old weather system. I know it's early development, but man that is underwhelming if it stays that way.

That is a picture of MS Flight. Not the new sim.

Others have pointed out why ortho/satellite makes this a new challenge. If there's a company that can innovate in this department, it's certainly Microsoft, but it's not at all obvious. 

It's concerning that we haven't seen pics/videos with snow at lower elevations. The most promising pic is of a mountain valley, lake and river with (really nice) grass in the foreground. The location still looks like it's at high elevation though.

As someone who likes to simulate bush flying, I really hope they can pull it off.

 

I am a bit worried that this won’t have seasons, at least not on day one. It seems like a massive challenge with the rest of the tech they seem to be using, but a) I dint know what I’m talking about, and b) they’ve shown lots of other things that people doubted so maybe they’ve cracked this too. 

Why would they not have seasons?  Previous releases have, even Flight did.  People keep saying this but Microsoft know better.