This is basically the goal of every major game engine, or at least have the tools to make it feasible, and we have already seen quite a few "open world" games but nobody really wants to make an actual Earth simulation per se  because firstly it is incredibly complex but secondly and more importantly it is a waste of resources because there are no games that require the whole world to be modelled in high fidelity, air, ground and sea. 

Even in a flight sim which is the fastest way to travel a simulated Earth you are only required to see one tiny part of the Earth and generally from the Sky. Spending money to ensure a songbird is correctly animated and sound recorded in Australia when you are flying London to New York is not a good investment of resources.
 

So what you are really asking for is a game engine that can be adapted to incorporate any aspects of Earth simulation rather than an Earth simulation and we already have those and they are getting better all the time but many devs still decide to build proprietary engines or heavily modified existing game engines that are tailored to their specific needs. 

You don't build the world and then games/simulators that can work within it you build the world around the game/simulation you are making.

A good current day example would be Star Citizen which is so heavily refactored version of CryEngine3 it is basically a new engine which they call Star Engine and it is still being built and modified. No doubt if that game is ever released the engine will be used for other projects but for each specific project it will need to be tailored toward that specific game/simulation.

Eventually I expect we will just have one engine that can do it all but it is some way off as yet.

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by Mucker

24 minutes ago, Mucker said:

Eventually I expect we will just have one engine that can do it all but it is some way off as yet.

*cough* (outerra) *cough cough*

On 11/8/2019 at 10:06 PM, tarere said:

TLDR ; We don't need a new flight sim, we need a 3D replication of the whole real world and atmosphere so we can build any app on it (including flight sims).

There should hopefully be some information soon about what MicroProse are up to. The fabled simulation company is back producing PC military simulations of various on land sea and air and using an all encompasing 'global' engine. This could easily shake up PC mililary simulation space in the same way Microsoft are about to shake up the civilian flight sims.

I quote the comment from David Lagettie in September 2019 PC Pilot issue 123 recently.

"MicroProse is current developing games that will use the entire planet in real-time. Our background in simulation is an advantage, as we take in all aspects of simulation into consideration."

The background in simulation David was referring to is his past as he's the founder of two of the biggest military simulation training sims (MilSim) on the market. The VBS series and the world rendering Titan IM.

http://titanim.net/www/index.php/page

http://virtualsimulationsystems.com/site/

After what MS/Asobo showed, I think synthetic earth engines (a la Outerra) are the past and headed for extinction. The satellite + big data + AI finally allow for a faithful whole earth representation. MFS is the first product of that kind and probably other (powered by Google data?) will follow in the future. Outerra... Too little, too late.

12 hours ago, Mucker said:

So what you are really asking for is a game engine that can be adapted to incorporate any aspects of Earth simulation rather than an Earth simulation

No I basically claim the opposite. We had dozen of game engines since mid 90s and we still don't have the earth modeled. Seeing Asobo's work, I would say they are not far from it though.

12 hours ago, Mucker said:

is a waste of resources because there are no games that require the whole world to be modelled in high fidelity, air, ground and sea

That's because you narrow your thinking to games, I don't. That's not what I presented in my post. WORLD SIM as an API, that goes far beyond gaming, that cover basically every industry. Look at basic mapping project started late 90's, let's consider Google Maps (because it is still way ahead Bing in use). Do you have any idea of the number of applications it is used and licenced for ? You would be surprised. From business location, to bike trip, bird spotting, live traffic, urban developpement strategy, etc. Any app that need a geolocation use, so limitless. WORLD SIM is kind of a Google (Bing) Map in 3D where you can inject your own objects, life, events. Even social networks would find a way to leverage such a tool.

There is definitely an infinite market for the first mover in this field, provided it's done correctly (evolutive open platform).

I'm pretty sure you are not the first person to think of this, devs would have thought and dreamed about this many times.  But the truth is, although everyone wants it, it's not so easy to do.

Remodelling the entire world in good enough detail is just an insane task, that I think would take more time and money than any company could afford.

What MS has done is actually a great step closer to that dream, by utilising bing data, but even that will have massive limitations (especially as you get closer to the ground and realise how much more work it still needs).

14 hours ago, Claviateur said:

One indie group started a planet earth engine and it's called Outerra. They've been slowly evolving it since few years now, but of course, they do not have the budget to develop it to the level of what Asobo did with their engine...

Well I heard about Outerra but I did not know their plan was a planet engine. That's definitely cool and that's definitely what I would envision.

"Fractal refined transition from imagery to procedural surfaces". Yes, exactly !

Sure the money might not be MS level, so maybe they lack funding for making it what it should be. But MS does have "MS level" money 🙂

Looking at the demo video, there must be someone who have tried to send X, Y, Z position from P3D or XPLANE to Outerra to benefit from the better visuals ? I would say it seems to be ready for a real world use as visuals for a flight training device.

I will follow Outerra, I like it. Still I sure hope Asobo is thinking beyond flight simulation.

17 minutes ago, KillerKlient said:

What MS has done is actually a great step closer to that dream, by utilising bing data, but even that will have massive limitations (especially as you get closer to the ground and realise how much more work it still needs).

Sure every developper has dreamt of it. And the work Asobo has presented sor far is why I'm getting the subject disscussed here again, because what they propose is a major shift from every precedent projects, and that's because recreating the world was an impossible task before.

The major shift has two components : the massive AI augmented data from aerial imagery, which permit to cover the whole world without manual user input, and the streaming of this data. Because the Cloud thing and data transfer ability is now far ahead previous years, developper can envision such a project which need not to be stored (and one day not even calculated) by the final user computer.

So I would say from now year 2020 modeling the world seems possible. And MSFS can be a starter, constantly upgraded, if we think mid to long term, in a near future 5 to 10 years from now there is no obstacle to transitionning from aerial imagery to procedural plausible world based on real data on surface level. Think how Google Street View data could be leveraged in 3D by AI in 10 years, even is only 1 side of a building is correct, the 3 other sides might be plausible. It's doable.

Edited November 10, 20196 yr by tarere

3 minutes ago, tarere said:

Sure every developper has dreamt of it. And the work Asobo has presented sor far is why I'm getting the subject disscussed here again, because what they propose is a major shift from every precedent projects, and that's because recreating the world was an impossible task before.

The major shift has two components : the massive AI augmented data from aerial imagery, which permit to cover the whole world without manual user input, and the streaming of this data. Because the Cloud thing and data transfer ability is now far ahead previous years, developper can envision such a project which need not to be stored (and one day not even calculated) by the final user computer.

So I would say from now year 2020 modeling the world seems possible. And MSFS can be a starter, constantly upgraded, if we think mid to long term, in a near future 5 to 10 years from now there is no obstacle to transitionning from aerial imagery to procedural plausible world based on real data on surface level. Think how Google Street View data could be leveraged in 3D by AI in 10 years, even is only 1 side of a building is correct, the 3 other sides might be plausible. It's doable.

I don't think so, X-Plane as far as I understand can already model the entire world based on real world data.  Asobo is doing exactly the same thing, albeit late and in better detail as they have more detailed data to work with.

It works well for flight simulation where you look at the generated objects from great distance, but it does not work well for a first person game, a driving game, etc.  The detail level is no where near that and being able to achieve that is going to take a lot more time.  It's not impossible but we are still very far from being able to do that (or even having the hardware to be able to handle that).

7 hours ago, dtrjones said:

 

The background in simulation David was referring to is his past as he's the founder of two of the biggest military simulation training sims (MilSim) on the market. The VBS series and the world rendering Titan IM.

http://titanim.net/www/index.php/page

http://virtualsimulationsystems.com/site/

What a surprise, not! Guess what planetary engine those two use?

 

5 hours ago, Murmur said:

After what MS/Asobo showed, I think synthetic earth engines (a la Outerra) are the past and headed for extinction. The satellite + big data + AI finally allow for a faithful whole earth representation. MFS is the first product of that kind and probably other (powered by Google data?) will follow in the future. Outerra... Too little, too late.

Maybe.

I know when I saw the initial Ms2020 videos, the first thing that struck me was that we now had two potential world engines, approaching the problem from totally different directions.

One has crawled along on a shoestring budget, programmed by essentially two guys, and the other has Microsoft sized moneybags behind it and over a hundred programmers.

I'm driven to wonder what would happen if they had equal resources.....?

Which technique would be more versatile?

I suspect Outerra, but it's an open question whether the world will ever find out. Ah, well.

It might be nice, though. I would eagerly explore both.

 

 

On 11/10/2019 at 7:30 AM, dtrjones said:

There should hopefully be some information soon about what MicroProse are up to. The fabled simulation company is back producing PC military simulations of various on land sea and air and using an all encompasing 'global' engine. This could easily shake up PC mililary simulation space in the same way Microsoft are about to shake up the civilian flight sims.

I quote the comment from David Lagettie in September 2019 PC Pilot issue 123 recently.

"MicroProse is current developing games that will use the entire planet in real-time. Our background in simulation is an advantage, as we take in all aspects of simulation into consideration."

Oh I did not know MicroProse are planning to be back to the simulation market! This sounds interesting.

Is it me or the global flight simulation trend is kind of returning? 

We saw the trend of vintage game consoles / games being sold again and now perhaps legendary civilians and military flight simulators are making a come back.

What next? EA Jane's will announce being back as well?! 🙂 just guessing of course....

All this sounds interesting, because flight simulators are in the collective memory and nostalgia of all those (like me) who saw since the early 90s, the rise of PCs visuals and capability demonstrated by military simulators as well as MSFS. Flight Simulators were in my opinion the benchmark software for PCs tech before the Web based Apps and Mobile eclipsed the desktop PCs market.

Edited November 11, 20196 yr by Claviateur

MICROPROSE ??!! OMG so much memory. And they kept their logo !

From their homepage : "Microprose future projects covers various developement areas including WHOLE of EARTH GLOBAL RENDERING FPS games and simulators."

The microprose thing is the best bit of this thread. The only application I can think of a world simulator would be simulators. I don’t think the only reason open world games don’t use the real world is because it isn’t available, I think it’s also because truncated or abridged versions of real places tend to work better in game design. That, and as I said before, many (if not the majority) of games are based in fictional locations, partly because it’s more creative. 

On 11/11/2019 at 6:23 PM, Claviateur said:

Is it me or the global flight simulation trend is kind of returning?

Well, generally speaking simulation games have always been popular (just look at the continued succes of Euro Truck Simulator). It's just that none of the major publishers have thrown money at it (except MS in the past and obviously now). And I don't blame them, an FPS, strategy or free roam game is much easier to sell than a simulation game. You do have mods for existing games that gives it some simulator features (GTA V for example). People tend to have misconceptions about that ("only nerds play that"). That's why I find the succes of Airforceproud95 a good thing. Sure, it's nowhere near a realistic representation of flight simming but it does appeal to a larger audience who might give it a shot after viewing his videos. The fact that Xbox is now also pushing MSFS can only be good in the long run. The biggest obstacle of selling simulator games is that it isn't easy to play or understand, it's not something you necessarily play to relax (in comparison to Battlefield or RDR2 for example). Good to see that Asobo will introduce a feature to help newcomers learn all the basics (like the automated checklist).