Bing Maps and FS2020

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

10 hours ago, noob123 said:

When the sim is released, it will be connecting to Bing servers to receive photogrammetry and satellite data to render onto the world.

I don't think that is correct. It has been my understanding that it connects to its own database of already AI processed and enriched Bing data? 

I can't imagine that the processing takes place at runtime. The resulting terrain data is the same for every user, so it makes much more sense to do that processing once and store the result, than to run a hundred thousand processing tasks at any given time. That seems like a massive waste of resources compared to just streaming pre-processed data. And consider the amount of data: just reading 2 Petabyte of source data from a flash storage area takes three weeks(!). Add to that the processing time, I wouldn't be surprised if creating the scenery database takes 2-3 months of constant number crunching. Doing this task all the time, despite being cut into tiny pieces will blow the CPU and data access times up by several orders of magnitude. (there is a good chance that when there are enough users, the platform would have to process the whole globe all the time).

Best regards

Edited February 15, 2020 by Lorby_SI

[GeoSkyman 59]

In my area south coast a marina is under construction in google maps is exactly as it is today. In bing maps not even exist while started construction two years ago

[Dominique_K 10,133]

Quality

Bing is just a brand name, MS doesn't collect itself the imagery but buy it from providers. That is to say they can change their portfolio as much as they want, they are not tied up with a specific hardware (satellites). And as @azulkb wrote above, there are places where Bing is better than Google. In another thread some time ago I  mentioned the Tamaklakan desert, Sulawesi, or some places in PNG for instance. You will tell me , who does fly there ? Well, some of us long to explore the world

Updating.

The updating ofthe imagery will become a new ball game in the years to come with the swarms of nano-satellites like the Planet Labs orbital fleet. Everybody has recently seen these Chinese streets deserted by the virus scare. Real time satellite imagery readily accessible. This will come to our sim (not the virus, a much more frequent update of the imagery 😉) within a few years.

There was, these recent years, a spectacular increase of GIS data but we have seen nothin yet 😎, we are at the beginning of a revolution. I think that only new engines like FS20 or maybe P3Dv5 (we'll see) will be able to surf the wave (NB I am not familiar with XP). FS20 is said to be on a 10 years trajectory. A lot of mutations coming up in these 10 years !

 

 

[noob123 57]

7 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

I don't think that is correct. It has been my understanding that it connects to its own database of already AI processed and enriched Bing data? 

 

It is of my understanding that only non-photogrammetry data like satellite imagery is preprocessed? Things like tree detection, building footprint detection, etc. There is probably some minor preprocessing going on with the photogrammetry data as well, but I don't think it would be anything game breaking if removed. If there was a way to replace flat images from Bing into photogrammetry data from Google, even if it is unprocessed, would add to a more complete world experience

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

49 minutes ago, noob123 said:

It is of my understanding that only non-photogrammetry data like satellite imagery is preprocessed? Things like tree detection, building footprint detection, etc. There is probably some minor preprocessing going on with the photogrammetry data as well, but I don't think it would be anything game breaking if removed. If there was a way to replace flat images from Bing into photogrammetry data from Google, even if it is unprocessed, would add to a more complete world experience

I'm not sure that I understand what you are saying. Which part is it that you want to replace with what exactly? And how do you know that the world experience in MSFS is lacking?

The way it looks like, this is all one pre-processed data stream - there are no parts that you can cut out and replace with something else. As is evident in the published screenshots, the visuals in the sim have very little to do with the original Bing source.

Best regards

[GlideBy 324]

2 hours ago, noob123 said:

It is of my understanding that only non-photogrammetry data like satellite imagery is preprocessed?

Just adding... Well, if they are doing seasons, then they need to detect the tree locations, which uses Azure.  Then they need to know if the trees leaves change color in fall, or fall off in winter.  For buildings they need to determine if the slope of the roof is flat or sloped to collect or not collect snow.

So I think a lot more processing is going on, even on photometry data.

 

1 hour ago, Lorby_SI said:

The way it looks like, this is all one pre-processed data stream - there are no parts that you can cut out and replace with something else.

I am not sure I follow this, sorry if I misunderstood.  They might want to cut out some trees to put in trees without leaves in winter time.  Otherwise I agree, even the photometry data will need some processing.  Hopefully they can get rid of the double shadows with processing as well.

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

25 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

Just adding... Well, if they are doing seasons, then they need to detect the tree locations, which uses Azure.  Then they need to know if the trees leaves change color in fall, or fall off in winter.  For buildings they need to determine if the slope of the roof is flat or sloped to collect or not collect snow.

So I think a lot more processing is going on, even on photometry data.

 

I am not sure I follow this, sorry if I misunderstood.  They might want to cut out some trees to put in trees without leaves in winter time.  Otherwise I agree, even the photometry data will need some processing.  Hopefully they can get rid of the double shadows with processing as well.

You also seem to assume that the scenery processing takes place at runtime. I very much doubt that is the case, it would be a massive waste of processing time. It doesn't make any sense to match tress and houses and roofs and whatnot to the underlying sat images "live", when the result is (has to be) the same for every client anyway. Plus it would be very hard to implement manual corrections to the data in this scenario.

You generally only do live processing if the result needs to be different for every client - but that is not the case, every simulator is running exactly the same scenery data. The obvious approach to a problem like that is to invest the processing time only once, months in advance, save the complete result to a database and then stream it. That reduces the online infrastructure to a mere data storage and transport medium, which makes total sense since the rendering, inlcuding lighting, weather etc. can be easily done on the clients. So seasons would have to also be "created" on the client, using shaders or similar, as would the autogen (trees etc.). That may prove quite the challenge for this technology.

What I meant by "cut out" is that you can't "just" subsitute any part of the scenery data, satellite images, photogrammetry etc. with data from another source. I don't think that the simulator even makes that distinction - the source data has been processed by clever AI algorithms into a consistent internal format, so the sim doesn't have to concern itself with any of this (we want it to concentrate on other things).

Best regards

Edited February 15, 2020 by Lorby_SI

[GlideBy 324]

44 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

You also seem to assume that the scenery processing takes place at runtime.

I did not say that, nor did I even mention runtime.  I assume the server side is preprocessed before demand.  The client side some is and some isn't.  I agree the roof slope was not the best example.  Of course it wouldn't come pre built with snow.  Maybe a better example, is that you have photometry data, Azure identifies the house and factory chimneys.  That data is sent to the client.  The client then takes wind direction, wind speed, temperature, and humidity and then calculates if there is visible smoke/steam and what it looks like.  So the point being that even photometry data needs server side processing preprocessing.

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

1 hour ago, GlideBy said:

I did not say that, nor did I even mention runtime.  I assume the server side is preprocessed before demand.  The client side some is and some isn't.  I agree the roof slope was not the best example.  Of course it wouldn't come pre built with snow.  Maybe a better example, is that you have photometry data, Azure identifies the house and factory chimneys.  That data is sent to the client.  The client then takes wind direction, wind speed, temperature, and humidity and then calculates if there is visible smoke/steam and what it looks like.  So the point being that even photometry data needs server side processing preprocessing.

"Server side processing": that is exactly where I'm having my doubts. I don't think that there is any live server side action beyond client management and streaming data. Because: why do this? Why invest millions of dollars in number crunching infrastructure every year when you can just do the processing once and always simply stream that very same result? You don't have to identify the house and factory chimneys every time somebody runs the sim. And naturally, the sim does all the rest, just like it always did - like they all do (=weather, lighting, shading, water, sound and of course the FDE). And also naturally, all that data is transformed into a format that the simulator understands without having to think about it or process it any further - that would also be a waste of resources.

Personally I think this whole platform is a lot simpler than people make it out to be. The scenery data that we used to have locally is now in the cloud instead on your local machine - that's it. The scenery itself has been pre-constructed by machine learning algorithms from real world data, combining satellite images, photogrammetry and other sources as well (mesh!) into the sim format in advance (months ago) and has been frozen in that state. All the platform has to do is to stream it to the sim clients. Once in a while the central data will be updated, possibly once a year. Shorter update periods IMHO are just too dangerous, if the AI processing screws up and the scenery is off, there would be a lot of very unhappy customers. The scenery is an asset that needs to be built, tested and verified before shipped to the client. I wouldn't be surprised if the current "Alpha" testing infrastructure and process are here to stay.

Best regards

Edited February 15, 2020 by Lorby_SI

[GlideBy 324]

2 minutes ago, Lorby_SI said:

live server side action

Once again, I never said it was live, or processed on demand.  This is the second time you have implied I said something that I did not say.  I agree it is preprocessed.  I have never said otherwise.  I keep repeating myself...

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

Just now, GlideBy said:

Once again, I never said it was live, or processed on demand.  This is the second time you have implied I said something that I did not say.  I agree it is preprocessed.  I have never said otherwise.  I keep repeating myself...

OK, sorry, I misunderstood. The present tense made it sound like you meant "live", and that made me overreact. 

We don't really know what the platform is doing when. Out of habit I am looking for the most efficient solution design, but there is no rule that anybody has to implement it that way.

Best regards

[GeoSkyman 59]

8 hours ago, Lorby_SI said:

OK, sorry, I misunderstood. The present tense made it sound like you meant "live", and that made me overreact. 

We don't really know what the platform is doing when. Out of habit I am looking for the most efficient solution design, but there is no rule that anybody has to implement it that way.

Best regards

Hi, because my so little knowledge, as I understood this should not be live and it’s like the sceneries we purchased for example in p3d?

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

20 minutes ago, georgiosgiannoukos said:

Hi, because my so little knowledge, as I understood this should not be live and it’s like the sceneries we purchased for example in p3d?

No, it is nothing like P3D. I think that it is one big seamless scenery of the whole world in an online location, and that data is streamed to your PC in varying levels of detail. Only addons will most likely have to work somewhat like they used to. 

Best regards

Edited February 16, 2020 by Lorby_SI

[ILSFREAK 56]

I am really trying to make sense of this all, but being not at all familiar of a lot of concepts, I am still sort of in the dark with many things. (I  read almost everything thats posted here to get a better idea, but its still most of the time greek to me)

I will be simming offline most of the time, so here are my questions

If most of the processes are done in the cloud, like rendering etc. how is it going to affect me being offline.

Will I need to be online to select different kind of weather scenarios, or even past weather scenarios.

If  someone can please take time to explain in dummy language how this all work, it will be much appreciated

 I am not even knowing if you will understand what what I am actually asking, but its a beginning

I had to ask this silly things to try and understand, otherwise I will be in the dark forever.

 

[Lorby_SI 2,036]

Mind you, I can also only describe what I think is most likely.

22 minutes ago, ILSFREAK said:

If most of the processes are done in the cloud, like rendering etc. how is it going to affect me being offline.

I am convinced that rendering is not done in the cloud, it happens on your PC. The simulator runs on your PC just like it used to. Only the scenery data (and other live things like weather and traffic) is pulled from an online source.

In offline mode, I thought that you get a different type of scenery? No satellite images, no photogrammetry? Probably looks much like what we know?

22 minutes ago, ILSFREAK said:

Will I need to be online to select different kind of weather scenarios, or even past weather scenarios.

Nobody knows. But I suspect that "offline" means "offline". Not sure if you will have access to live weather natively. We will have to wait and see.

22 minutes ago, ILSFREAK said:

If  someone can please take time to explain in dummy language how this all work, it will be much appreciated

Since nobody really knows the specifics, we only have theories between two extremes: there are those who say that a lot of processing is done in the cloud, and then there is me saying that this doesn't make sense since there is only one scenery and that is the same for all users. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

My personal take on this is that in full online mode the scenery data is in the cloud and not on your local PC. The platform takes care that those parts that you need for your flight are constantly streamed to you. Think of it like a very big and fast external harddrive that holds scenery data for all the world - and a clever librarian managing it so your computer doesn't explode.

Best regards

 

Edited February 16, 2020 by Lorby_SI