Why are they only showing us Europe, Australia and America?

[FDEdev]

And  why on earh should a 'French guy' not be able to tell?

[AyserKalypzo]

31 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Because those areas aren't as popular.

The wow factor is the photogrammetry right now for them. It's all about marketing.

I understand that photogrammetry is shown because of the wow factor and for people who never played a flight sim, but for the advanced flight simmer it's more interesting right now to see what a big Asian city looks like, given the fact that we can be pretty sure that the western countries are covered good. 

[Noooch]

10 minutes ago, FDEdev said:

And  why on earh should a 'French guy' not be able to tell?

Maybe he thinks that French guys (like the Asobo team) are not very talented at knowing how the world looks.

[AyserKalypzo]

16 minutes ago, FDEdev said:

And  why on earh should a 'French guy' not be able to tell?

 

 

6 minutes ago, Noooch said:

Maybe he thinks that French guys (like the Asobo team) are not very talented at knowing how the world looks.

Of course they know what the world looks like, but be serious. If you saw a big middle eastern/north African mountainious city with an arid dry landscape with white/sand colored houses, would you be able to see which city it is? Unless you know the topography of each big city in that part of the world is, it would be very hard to determine. 

I hope that the AI is smart enough to  make a very accurate representation of its real life counterpart even if there's no sharp sattelite imagery available.  

[Noooch]

4 minutes ago, AyserKalypzo said:

 

 

Of course they know what the world looks like, but be serious. If you saw a big middle eastern/north African mountainious city with an arid landscape with white/sand colored houses, would you be able to see which city it is? Unless you know the topography of each big city in that part of the world its would be very hard. 

I was joking

[Dominique_K]

43 minutes ago, AyserKalypzo said:

  we can expect sharp sattelite imagery in China? Are those places as sharp as Europe's /US sattelite imagery?

 

Not everywhere obviously this is why they have AI working on the imagery. Some places in Asia are extremely detailed though. I gave two examples far from large cities.

28 minutes ago, AyserKalypzo said:

 I don't think a French guy can tell.  

As a French expat most of my professional life  with about 18  years in AsIa (FE, ME and India)  I resent that  ! 

[jymp]

 Kansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, NC, Alabama, Florida, etc., then Canada, Mexico etc., 

[Claviateur]

The part of MSFS world that will be procedural, won't have the accuracy we think about. The thing is, MSFS is the first simulator to introduce photogrammetry and this can be a little unfair for the procedural world. In comparison, some people would want the procedural part to be as accurate and this is almost impossible for so many reasons.

As far as I could see in the screenshots and based on the explanation of the dev team in the discovery videos, the procedural world of MSFS should be radically better, out of the box, than the procedural world of FSX (even if it was done in a different way) or even X-Plane 11 default.

The fact that MS has the tech to analyze the aerial imagery and generate footprints and estimate the infrastructure type is a huge plus. X-Plane relies on Open Street Map, same goes for addons. 

But we need to know that two factors are important to give the illusion of realism to a procedural city: 1) the building types (I think MS figured this out with their AI) and 2) the buildings/infrastructure height.

No matter how accurate the building types are, it is usually the height that makes an area really believable. However, this is something very difficult to guess from the aerial imagery as far as I know. Unless they analyze the shadows based on the time the image was taken from the air, other equations like landclass data are required to automate this.

So as a scenery developer myself, I know that if one gets the global buildings in their scenery to have close to reality types and heights at the right spots, the illusion of realism for a specific city/area will be already accurate.

Then of course, by working on the building textures that typical to that area and adding the main landmarks, the illusion becomes more interesting.

All in all, after the buildings types, the buildings height is a very important factor to give an accurate impression of an area. Hence the feedback I heard about some procedural cities not looking accurate.

And again, the Photogrammetry accuracy and richness, competes with the procedural world.

The most important thing to me is that MS/Asobo make some user friendly tools available in the SDK allowing us to improve and customize the procedural world.

[Johnny19]

While google maps are most up to date for Croatia, Bing is not that much. I wonder from the begining what will it look like in the new sim. 

[rhumbaflappy]

Dos Equis has scenery derived from satellite imagery, aerial imagery, and GIS data sources. Derived. All of it is scrubbed imagery. Clouds replaced, color corrected, sharpened, flattened object footprints and shadows removed and replaced by derived objects. It's what Azure does.

There isn't such a thing as sharp satellite imagery. Aerial imagery is sharp. But with objects and their shadows removed, what is actually seen? The ground. grass, rock, dirt, asphalt, concrete, ice, snow, water. Some imagery may pass through the process relatively unchanged. Other parts of the ground are simply made up.

And yes, Bing data was used, but so were other sources of imagery. As improved sources become available, Azure will add them to the pile.

[Bunkers]

I am also most excited about regions that have not been done in great detail before. I'm dreaming about crossing siberia in an AN-2 in MS2020, if the scenery is as good as I hope. And then to explore Asia, the Middle east, Africa and South America in appropriate aircraft.

All of this if the scenery is good enough to provide proper immersion. In that case it'll take many years before I park my aircraft at Heathrow or Friday Harbour 😄

[Gulfstream]

The problem when Microsoft/Asobo raises the bar to "the world", now many people are going to be pointing out the fact that there is some overlapping satellite imagery in a desert in Mongolia, or that a car drove through the grass on the side of the road on a rural road in Wyoming, or that there is a cloud overlaid on terrain just south of a remote village in Africa.

At the end of the day, this is a FLIGHT simulator.  These things are minor nitpicks that will easily be improved over time as the data and imagery in the cloud is constantly updated.

The fact that we have numerous levels of volumetric clouds that cast accurate shadows on the ground and on each other, plus a modern graphics engine and flight dynamics, is more than enough for me to give this a spin ... pun not intended.

[Krakin]

It is amazing/annoying to me how people on Avsim love assuming the worst. 747? "There's no way Asobo could have made that, it has to be PMDG and we'll have to get it as DLC!" And then you have this post concern trolling because they haven't shown certain places smh. You guys can be so exhausting at times. #Isaidit

[Noooch]

3 hours ago, Shack95 said:

I wonder how Auzre will handle areas with very irregular or pixelated satellite imagery, e.g.:

 

Just look at the "In-Game vs Satellite" thread, and look at the Kilimanjaro comparaison

[Shack95]

8 minutes ago, Noooch said:

Just look at the "In-Game vs Satellite" thread, and look at the Kilimanjaro comparaison

You're right. Amazing what they can do.