If your city is not modeled in photogrammetry

[LosGenero 12]

I´m not and I don´t care if my city isn´t modelled in photogrammetry. The thing that i do care are Big Cities, Paris. London, New York, Moscow, Berlin, Singpore, Tokyo etc. and of course famous landmarks. When I fly over San Francisco I want to see Golden Gate, in Egypt I want to see the Pyramids in Agra India i want to see the Taj Mahal, and so on. Let´s chill, enjoy the summer and wait and see what the final product is like.

[pmb 5,137]

21 minutes ago, LosGenero said:

I´m not and I don´t care if my city isn´t modelled in photogrammetry. The thing that i do care are Big Cities, Paris. London, New York, Moscow, Berlin, Singpore, Tokyo etc. and of course famous landmarks. When I fly over San Francisco I want to see Golden Gate, in Egypt I want to see the Pyramids in Agra India i want to see the Taj Mahal, and so on. Let´s chill, enjoy the summer and wait and see what the final product is like.

I think that's a very important point. There are some well-known and iconic places - including the ones you name - which MUST look good. That's the places most users will begin with and MS will get bad press with any ugly images of those towns/areas surfacing. Alpha doesn't count but they are well advised to make a list and check one by one before entering beta.

Kind regards, Michael

[OHN767 82]

Isnt Bing maps more or less dead, i dont know anyone who uses it, Google maps is the much better.

[eelis 42]

I don't want to comment how popular Bing is, but the reason is obvious, Bing is owned by Microsoft, so not a very big surprise.

-eelis-

Edited June 10, 2020 by eelis

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

6 hours ago, OHN767 said:

Isnt Bing maps more or less dead, i dont know anyone who uses it, Google maps is the much better.

Bing Maps' coverage of bird's eye (3D) and street views is very spotty when compared to Google Maps.

[snglecoil 1,828]

I’ve noticed that, while certainly much, much less extensive than Google, Bing’s photogrammetry seems to be better in quality in the areas that I have compared, especially dealing with odd shapes like trees. They don’t come close to Google’s coverage by a long shot, though.

[pmb 5,137]

I think this discussion will lead nowhere. We will get MSFS based on Bing for obvious reasons. We can buy it or not, but we won't change that decision. I will buy it, btw.

Of course we could kindly ask LM or LR (or perhaps IPACS, or the former people from Next Gen Flightsim) if they will provide us a Google-based Flight Simulator. Good luck with that.

Kind regards, Michael

[nickhod 425]

12 minutes ago, pmb said:

Of course we could kindly ask LM or LR (or perhaps IPACS, or the former people from Next Gen Flightsim) if they will provide us a Google-based Flight Simulator. Good luck with that.

I would love for LR or IPACS to support generic ortho and photogrammetry streaming. Not tied to any provider, just a documented way that those can be streamed to the sim.
They could do a USGS based example implementation of a streaming ortho server.

The community will then do their magic and create all types of proxies and on-the-fly translators to get Google or Bing assets into those sims.

Realistically MS / Bing has a long, long way to go to match Google's photogrammetry coverage.

[pmb 5,137]

6 minutes ago, nickhod said:

I would love for LR or IPACS to support generic ortho and photogrammetry streaming.

That's not the question, I would love it, too. However, given their speed of even minor improvements and their resources I don't have any hope to see it implemented in the foreseeable future.

A capable competitor w.r.t. resources would obviously be Google themselves, but they would certainly already have done it long ago if they would have found it (i) to fit into their portfolio (ii) to be profitable.

Kind regards, Michael

[HiFlyer 9,358]

46 minutes ago, pmb said:

That's not the question, I would love it, too. However, given their speed of even minor improvements and their resources I don't have any hope to see it implemented in the foreseeable future.

A capable competitor w.r.t. resources would obviously be Google themselves, but they would certainly already have done it long ago if they would have found it (i) to fit into their portfolio (ii) to be profitable.

Kind regards, Michael

Don't forget however, that a similarly small company does have streaming orthos implemented...... from Google no less. And that would be flyinside.

[JonP01 104]

On 6/7/2020 at 5:23 AM, Deleted said:

I think MS will cover more and more here in the next few years. Dubai will come. I will not pay extra money for that.

Well since people are under no obligation to work for free, hopefully there will be a modest fee for official Microsoft city upgrades or third party upgrades. And as always, you are welcome not to pay but to go without as well.

[Deleted 250]

39 minutes ago, JonP01 said:

Well since people are under no obligation to work for free, hopefully there will be a modest fee for official Microsoft city upgrades or third party upgrades. And as always, you are welcome not to pay but to go without as well.

what the hell is that a statement? How MS financed that is not up to you to decide

[tweekz 2,165]

This question probably fits in here.

I don't use a lot of Orbx sceneries, I just have that one canadian bush strip.

So I wonder: How detailed are the cities of Orbx compared to photogrammetry / footprint extrusion?

I am certain that distinctive buldings are modeled, but what about the rest? Does it use autogen? Are buildings placed and shaped realistically? How will it compare to MSFS default scenery in that regard?

Edited June 14, 2020 by tweekz

[nickhod 425]

14 hours ago, tweekz said:

So I wonder: How detailed are the cities of Orbx compared to photogrammetry / footprint extrusion?

Orbx TrueEarth cities blend accurate models of POIs / iconic buildings with autogen. The bigger and more famous the city, the more hand modelled buildings you'll see.

All buildings are shaped realistically on X-Plane, but only from vector data sources, I don't think they're doing machine learning to get building footprints like Asobo.

Based on public MSFS clips (to not break NDA), MSFS autogen is better. It's has realistic footprints for every building, and matches the roof colour. The autogen models themselves are also more detailed.

[pmb 5,137]

7 minutes ago, nickhod said:

Based on public MSFS clips (to not break NDA), MSFS autogen is better. It's has realistic footprints for every building, and matches the roof colour. The autogen models themselves are also more detailed.

Exactly. In X-Plane as well as AeroflyFS2 photo sceneries (and to a lesser extent also some Prepar3d sceneries) I am always reminded that ground imagery and buildings are from different data sources, even if the footprints are matched correctly. I am not exactly sure what is causing this, but probably the different coloration/lighting is an important factor. This is very noticeable for the mostly "white" AeroflyFS2 buildings sticking out from the usually dark ground, but also for the other sims. On the other hand, in MSFS buildings and ground provide a much more coherent unified image, not only in the photogrammy areas but generally.

Kind regards, Michael