Autogen Analysis

[flyingcarpet89 36]

Appreciating the fact that the simulator is still a year out and still being worked on, I was interested to know how Azure AI generates autogen in areas where photogrammetry data is not available. I found that London and Newcastle does not have photogrammetry data in bing map while it is available in google maps. So here is compilation of screenshots I took from b-roll to compare the differences between google, bing and sim.

London 1 Bing

London 1 Google

London 1 MSFS

London 2 Bing

London 2 Google

London 2 MSFS

Newcastle 1 Bing

Newcastle 1 Google

Newcastle 1 MSFS

Newcastle 2 Bing

Newcastle 2 Google

Newcastle 2 MSFS

 

That's all I have. I found it interesting so decided to share it. Feel free to let me know what you guys think.

 

[yanfeng12342000 132]

Microsoft should work with Google, and we will have a perfect world.

[erocfx 4]

Nice work!!

 

[bonchie 2,305]

1 hour ago, yanfeng12342000 said:

Microsoft should work with Google, and we will have a perfect world.

You might as well be asking them to work with the devil. They are direct competitors.

Edited October 23, 2019 by bonchie

[Mucker 93]

Yes other than the visuals being reliant on bandwidth the fact that Bing has so little photogrammetry that it doesn't even include London and only smattering of random European cities is a drawback.

They probably won't see that way though as they will probably make future photogrammetry regions available as payware add ons.

[b737800 470]

2 hours ago, flyingcarpet89 said:

Appreciating the fact that the simulator is still a year out and still being worked on, I was interested to know how Azure AI generates autogen in areas where photogrammetry data is not available. I found that London and Newcastle does not have photogrammetry data in bing map while it is available in google maps. So here is compilation of screenshots I took from b-roll to compare the differences between google, bing and sim.

{your images were here]

That's all I have. I found it interesting so decided to share it. Feel free to let me know what you guys think.

 

Very nice work.

What this tells me is that....

1.) Google imagery is typically far better than Bing. Remember that Google are moving more to aerial imaging rather than satellite images from the likes of DigitalGlobe.

2.) The Asobo folk are absolute magicians to get that level of fidelity while using Bing sources (and others) rather then Google.

(edited to remove all the images from the quoted post, to reduce scrolling)

Edited October 23, 2019 by b737800

[guenseli 1,577]

Some points you should consider:

 

There is no real "rivalry" between Google and Microsoft. They are both big, mature companies and work both for money. If the money is made in collaboration with a "rival" they will do it also. Both share several projects, both work for each others "Platform"

 

These are not Googles or Microsofts airplanes. These are air picture companies wich provide the datas and they could probably be also obtained from other companies. Such a company would be dumb if they wouldn't consider to sell their data twice. Theres also Apple which need some data.

 

So, in conclusion, I wouldn't imply that what we see currently in Bing Maps is the end result in MSFS2020. Consider it could be probably vice versa that Bing Maps profits in the end from the MSFS2020 world. Microsoft would be dumb not to use this data for other applications and games at least.

[jcomm 5,890]

Google will probably launch their own fully-fledged flghtsim one day...  for the Android platform 🙂

And... yes I know there's been one already for quite some time now... 

 

Edited October 23, 2019 by jcomm

[Raymond.Groenendijk 255]

Nice comparisons! See it this way, if you know an area really well (because it's your living area or because you've visited it a few times) you'll see the errors in the automatically generated scenery. But for the other 99,9% of the world it will actually pretty much suffice because the estimated representation is accurate enough and you don't know the area (that well). You can clearly see this in your comparisons, not all buildings match up completely, but the general picture is pretty close to reality. Also take into account that their algorithms for automatically generating buildings and objects probably aren't even finished yet, so we could still see a big improvement here. 

That said MSFS will get updated when Bing gets updated and if MSFS really takes off and attracts lots of people from outside the flight simulator scene (I know a few people who will start simming when it's released for example) maybe Bing and MSFS will start working together even tighter. If MSFS with its marketplace and/or subscription (if there will be a marketplace or subscription at all) generates enough revenue then they might actually buy better aerial images and more photogrammetry to attract even more people to the platform. I'm pretty sure that we'll see photogrammetry for all the larger cities in the world eventually (at least comparable with what Google has on offer), though that may take half a decade.

[suncoastflyer 685]

This was actually really cool to see. As expected, the Azure AI isn't perfect when compared to areas Google has photogrammetry for, but what I do see, is something that looks convincing. Even if 90% of the world uses Azure for buildings, I still see a great upgrade coming up.

[OSJJ1985 134]

14 minutes ago, suncoastflyer said:

This was actually really cool to see. As expected, the Azure AI isn't perfect when compared to areas Google has photogrammetry for, but what I do see, is something that looks convincing. Even if 90% of the world uses Azure for buildings, I still see a great upgrade coming up.

No more boring monotonous repetitive landclass based terrain, no matter where you are(!!) is more than enough for me to look passed any buildings that might be "mis-created".

[aleex 551]

Hope to see Bing 3D updates more frequently now. 

It’s true that not only the number of cities, but the size of the coverage it’s much bigger in Google than in Bing... at least in EU. 

Edited October 23, 2019 by aleex

[NG_Aviator 39]

The autogen buildings are very impressive indeed!  Although they don't match reality like photogrammertry would, they are very convincing and there is a wide range of shapes and textures.  What made me smile was the bales of hay (Newcastle 1) have been replaced with a building!!  But unless it's your farm you would never know the difference!

[ca_metal 2,015]

43 minutes ago, NG_Aviator said:

The autogen buildings are very impressive indeed!  Although they don't match reality like photogrammertry would, they are very convincing and there is a wide range of shapes and textures.  What made me smile was the bales of hay (Newcastle 1) have been replaced with a building!!  But unless it's your farm you would never know the difference!

As far as we know this is the A.I.'s first time doing that kind of work for a simulator. Give them time, they will "teach" the machine and with time it will spot things better.

As they said, the world will be constantly changing. As Bing updates, the sim scenery will be updated. They might be planning to scan the data and imagery with the A.I. often. And each time they scan I'm sure the A.I. will do the task better (it's the way machine learning works).

Edited October 23, 2019 by ca_metal

[Casualcas 830]

Omg. Bing is old! I put the RV in the barn already for the winter!!!!! 

Sheesh. Come on. This is 1000 times better than anything in the past, or currently.  Come on people, you sound like clucking chickens already