Was flying over my little hometown in the Netherlands and I was fairly shocked at how low resolution the bing maps were compared to google, at least half the resolution. I hope Bing will update these maps as well as aerial images over time because this is underwhelming. 

Maybe Azure can improve the maps. 

It really depends where you look. There are places in Asia, for instance, where Bing is amazingly precise and GE shows a blur.  The three big sat map sites, GE, Bing and NASA Zoom Earth, are complementary when you do a search.

 

1 hour ago, 767lover said:

Was flying over my little hometown in the Netherlands and I was fairly shocked at how low resolution the bing maps were compared to google, at least half the resolution. I hope Bing will update these maps as well as aerial images over time because this is underwhelming. 

Maybe Azure can improve the maps. 

I'm also from the Netherlands and Google even has photogrammetry for my city.

The Bing resolution in large parts of Europe seems pretty low altogether compared to Google Maps. It's not just small villages, it's also large cities like London and Paris. 

But that resolution seems more than adequate when flying over at 1500 feet or something. Just look at the resulting screenshots from London and Paris. Now they might have footage that we don't have access to using Bing. They did also mention that updates to Bing will come over to the simulator, so there is still hope for the future in seeing a resolution increase over time.   

When looking at The Hague in map view you can actually see a lot of building shapes (in 3D) and even landmarks though, so we might see those reflected in the sim also. 

In simplistic terms, google is eons ahead of bing. But I don’t think it matters that much in terms of how good this flight sim will be, and also I’m sure bing will gradually catch up. 

I don't think it has anything to do with eons ahead of the other. Both Google and Bing purchase their maps from 3rd party sources and has open access to about the same data. Google does have the little car camera fleet that MS does not use. Google wants to navigate you to Joe's Pizza parlor so they know you like Joe's Pizza. They want to target you for ads and give you a great product to use so they can collect data on you and sell you things. Bing is building a near 3D representation of the world. Baring Flight Sim, do you know how much governments, commercial industries and gaming studios would pay for that? Totally different products and markets, and I suspect Microsoft has the high resolution data in the areas, they might not have released it yet because they are not competing with Google directly. 

Also remember that this is not GTA on a world scale, meaning that it isn't meant to be seen from a couple of meters above the ground. But that's a consequence of it's own succes, when you show people these amazing shots and details of cities you inadvertently invite them to do some real up close and personal inspection of said cities. I'm not too concerned to be honest (also still in Alpha).

4 hours ago, simtom said:

Also remember that this is not GTA on a world scale, meaning that it isn't meant to be seen from a couple of meters above the ground.

Many, many people fly low and slow and seeing things just above the ground is important for those users. 

Unfortunately the bing maps are not only of lower resolution than Google maps but they are also outdated!

In my area near Frankfurt in Germany the images are a couple of years old! 

I had a dream a couple of nights ago about seeing the sim close up. I was flying over Seattle and I had stalled the wing so that I was falling to the ground, and as I fell I saw about three distinct transitions as the LOD adjusted to being seen progressively closer up. And sure enough when I got down to about 50ft there were people walking on the streets and all sorts of the trivial details we see around us.

I see my sims in my dreams quite a lot, i suppose. It's a gratifying reflection of how enjoyable they are.

 

My house in Victoria British Columbia in google maps is a quite detailed 3d Model. You can see the roof the walls and count the windows. On Bing its a blurry plan view only.

You cannot generalize how good or bad a sat map site  from

- how clearly you see only one place on Earth (namely your house 😉)

- how many 3D buildings it has. It will be crucial for the new sim to have sharp imagery outside of the main cities of the world for the AI to recreate the autogen.

All the three sites I mentioned earlier in the thread are excellent and Bing is not anymore trailing behind GE and certainly superior in some places.

 

 

8 hours ago, Highmike said:

I had a dream a couple of nights ago about seeing the sim close up. I was flying over Seattle and I had stalled the wing so that I was falling to the ground, and as I fell I saw about three distinct transitions as the LOD adjusted to being seen progressively closer up. And sure enough when I got down to about 50ft there were people walking on the streets and all sorts of the trivial details we see around us.

You've probably seen the 2030 release of MSFS 🙂 As a teenager (>20 years ago) I had these dreams about flight simulation too and I can, at this day, still vividly remember a dream about operating a jetliner in VR. Once MSFS supports VR I think it will be pretty close to that dream. I thought X-Plane 11 with ortho's came word not allowed close to it but it still missed the lighting, atmosphere and clouds from my dream (which were looking close to reality). 

With the aid of drones and streetview and the progress of AI it should be possible to get photogrammetry and super high resolution aerials for much larger regions. The AI might then be capable to recognize way more details and to apply logic to them (like for traffic lights). So if they continue on this path we might actually see such details in a decade or two. If we get there I think that world will be used for more than just flight simulation though, you can then also visit cities on foot, be a bus driver in one of them, drive your car along the pacific coast,etc. That world will be used as a decor for many games and applications and maybe even for movies and advertisements. 

Bing would no longer be just a mapping tool, it would be a tool to visit other locations of the world without actually going there. There would be people in the streets and cars buzzing around, just like in the real world. We will get to that point some day.  

12 hours ago, DocBird said:

Unfortunately the bing maps are not only of lower resolution than Google maps but they are also outdated!

In my area near Frankfurt in Germany the images are a couple of years old! 

A couple of years, that's not bad. Where I live (Denmark) there are places that is more than 11, yes eleven, years old, so not much chance of Azure guessing what it looks like now.

Google is definitely miles ahead when it comes to photogrammetry. In Google Earth even my hometown is 3d and so are 100s or 1000s of other smaller and middle sized towns in Europe. I‘m sure the sim‘s going to look great, also in non-photogrammetry areas. Nonetheless, it would be great it they caught up on photogrammetry cities. 

On 10/19/2019 at 12:16 PM, MikeT707 said:

Many, many people fly low and slow and seeing things just above the ground is important for those users. 

Agree. That is what I am looking for primarily. Stick and rudder, low and slow baby. Just don't care about Tube liners, but of course many people do so there must be a balance..