April 9th, 2020 - Development Update

[Farlis 2,287]

7 hours ago, rob169 said:

The weather in these screenshots/gifs looks awesome! Maybe it's just me, but it does seem a bit unrealistic with all those clouds moving up so rapidly and also the heavy rain visualisation effect from the clouds, don't you think?

It's called time-lapse...

[GlideBy 324]

7 hours ago, rob169 said:

The weather in these screenshots/gifs looks awesome! Maybe it's just me, but it does seem a bit unrealistic with all those clouds moving up so rapidly and also the heavy rain visualisation effect from the clouds, don't you think?

I know it is a timelapse.  But with those clouds, and the wind movement, I feel like the plane should shake around more.  But maybe the time lapse is smoothing it out.

[ca_metal 2,024]

35 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

I know it is a timelapse.  But with those clouds, and the wind movement, I feel like the plane should shake around more.  But maybe the time lapse is smoothing it out.

It's a timelapse capture saved as a GIF. It loses a lot of quality, It's just like a slideshow. Hard to judge from it.

[rick celik 1,243]

9 hours ago, ual763 said:

I just noticed that the water in the following shot does not match up with the water in the satellite image.  So, I think this means that their water sources come from another source rather than Azure reading the underlying the satellite image. This should be fine for lakes, oceans, etc., but may be problematic with rivers that flood often as the below pic:

These may be the rare instances where manual intervention is required by ASOBO.

Please someone correct me if i'm wrong, but i think Azure is trained to replace certain RGB values with black which is of course the transparent color in an alpha channel, i think Azure just missed some patches in that shot, because they are very green and might have removed most grass fields around the world if that RGB value was in its brain as an alpha channel. Like you said, human intervention is required in some places for sure!

[Scottoest 1,561]

5 hours ago, bonchie said:

The way they are doing this public alpha points toward a public beta release IMO. That's kind of the norm these days anyway for PC games. There's noway they are gonna build all this hype and then wait for a full release a year from now. They will release something I think.

Don't be surprised if a beta is delayed for MSFS, due to the additional stress being put on the Azure infrastructure right now because of the pandemic.  Microsoft are going to prioritize service quality for their enterprise clients using video conferencing and stuff, over just about anything else.

From what I've been reading, Azure is starting to experience some capacity issues in parts of the world depending on what hardware you're looking for.

[GlideBy 324]

3 hours ago, Ridvan Celik said:

Please someone correct me if i'm wrong, but i think Azure is trained to replace certain RGB values with black which is of course the transparent color in an alpha channel, i think Azure just missed some patches in that shot, because they are very green and might have removed most grass fields around the world if that RGB value was in its brain as an alpha channel. Like you said, human intervention is required in some places for sure!

It can't be just the RGB/color value, as water can be green, yellow, blue, even red.

 

So it would make sense to correlate that with a database of water locations.  Which most maps have, even Bing street maps.  Not to mention they don't want to manually edit everyplace.

[rick celik 1,243]

59 minutes ago, GlideBy said:

It can't be just the RGB/color value, as water can be green, yellow, blue, even red

 

So it would make sense to correlate that with a database of water locations.  Which most maps have, even Bing street maps.  Not to mention they don't want to manually edit everyplace.

Hmm, i honestly do not know, but i do think RGB values work in tandem with other values. 

[Noooch 1,084]

The water colors in general need some work to trully fit in the landscape.

In the last multiplayer episode we see an island in the carribean. I know it is in the carribean because it has been identified but we don't have the feeling we are in the tropics at all if we look at it.

It would be a shame for MSFS not to improve this aspect of the sim after all they did until now.

I know this is all WIP but I am very surprised they didn't address this issue earlier and I don't see any plan to improve it in the near future in their Feedback Snapshot. 😞

[Tuskin38 6,501]

The River just seems to be misplaced, the shape/flow matches the satellite image, it just isn't lined up.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Tuskin38

[sightseer 895]

They're obviously not "done" with the water and its a ten year project so at this point it doesnt bother me.  They've shown lots of places where things don't match the satellite pics that are available as far as we know.  Azure uses pattern recognition and other available data to build things.  The Microsoft website talks about the pattern recognition.

I dont know where they get their water data from but in the cases of rivers that are constantly shifting and flooding (like is the case with many rivers), how exactly do you  build a landscape that portrays those changes realistically?  or does it simply never change (which would be unrealistic and also rule out flooding with heavy rains).

I don't know how they will solve the issues but I bet they will...eventually.  For now , I dont think its an issue.

and satellite images should not really be much more than a refernce.  If something doesnt look like the satellite photo...who cares?  so long as it looks "right".

[Dominique_K 10,149]

The color of waters  is an issue that I raised it in October when I saw, in EP 1, the French river Garonne blue when it is famously silted in the real world.  We have not seen much improvement. In a recent screenshot, a Caribbean island had a deep blue water around it. Totally un-Caribbean 😏.  I never saw the Platte in Lexington (anybody from te Great State of Nebraska around here ?) but I doubt it is blue. Not good.  Now, I am relatively confident that the issue is on Asobo's roadmap and the water color will be corrected before release. After  the sat maps that they use  already carry the right colors. 

Hoping that alpha testers move their behind (French expression😉) on this issue

PS I do speak of colors : bed shifting is another matter that IMO cannot be addressed easily 

 

 

 

 

[Hyperfocal 186]

1 hour ago, domkle said:

I never saw the Platte in Lexington (anybody from te Great State of Nebraska around here ?) but I doubt it is blue.

I live in Nebraska. Your suspicion of the river color from the screenshot is well founded. You could not pay me to swim in the Platte River. 😉

[monica6211 178]

It amazes me how critical so many people are with things like this at this early stage of product development. There is a LOT of WORLD to cover to make sure everything is right. And it takes a lot of time to cover all of this. Just because someone mentions it as feedback to the developers doesn't mean they are going to make it a top priority, but I'm sure they have noted it to make sure it gets fixed when the time is right.

[Casualcas 830]

Especially when it can only be as good as the data being used. AND ... Unlikely Asobo will verify every mile of every river. Thats where we come in. 

"The worl ez beeg,  the worl ez really beeg"

Edited April 11, 2020 by Casualcas

[GlideBy 324]

19 minutes ago, monica6211 said:

It amazes me how critical so many people are with things like this at this early stage of product development. There is a LOT of WORLD to cover to make sure everything is right. And it takes a lot of time to cover all of this. Just because someone mentions it as feedback to the developers doesn't mean they are going to make it a top priority, but I'm sure they have noted it to make sure it gets fixed when the time is right.

I am glad people are mentioning things.  It is Alpha and they have asked for feedback.  And I think most people are reasonable and know it can take time to fix.  People seem reasonable in this thread at least.