First a CAVEAT. I would advise those who get annoyed by a discussion about the quality of what we see in the leaked material, to skip my post. It will be about Pyongyang again. Yes, Pyongyang. Aaargh ! Have a good Sunday, guys, I wouldn't want to spoil it !

No to the matter at hand. I am surprised by the low quality of the PY imagery. Contrary to a simplistic belief the DPRK has quite a satisying satellite imagery. There are  many reasons for that. This country is a threat and closely looked at. Is it that Bing failing us ? 

My point of reference will be the huge square and the avenue along it where they hold their nightmarish parades, the Kim Il Sung square.

- I went to Google Earth. The color is quite good and the image is sharp, we see clearly the smaller squares which organise the space and the roof of the <cough, cough> "Grand People's Study House".  The shot was taken last June and licensed by GE from Maxar.

- In Bing Maps, the color is good too but the shot was taken on a hazier day so the details are less sharp even if we see also the smaller squares and the roofs. But there is a large artifact (green triangle) north of the square. No date given. The image is overall of a lesser quality but still palatable. It was licensed from Maxar. Did I say Maxar ? Yes, GE and Bing have the same provider for PY.

- Now the leaked video (which by the way is still up at facebook.com...). The image is degraded in sharpness  and KIS square and avenue all green. A cloud over the GPSH has messed up the AI roof reconstruction job.The source is not the Bing image above or so it seems. 

Conclusion : Do we see  here the degraded coarser imagery used in the offline mode ?

Edited July 26, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

Good research. It's possible the video was made while MFSF was not streaming. And even when it was streaming, it was mentioned that it depends on your internet connection how much detail you get ... we don't know how much detail was added here, if any at all. But all this does not explain the green color.

The handcrafted building was added, that much is certain, but maybe that's part of the readily available data on HD.

One more month ... then we know ...

Maybe this is the visually optimal scenario:

• Start in MSFS to have half an hour of knob tweaking to get the plane ready from cold and dark, then talk to the robot voice in the tower and take off.
• Once airborne, switch to Google Earth in flight sim mode for a wonderful low altitude scenic flight over 3D cities.
• Change back to MSFS to have a cockpit, tinker with all the right knobs and perform a landing with wonderful clouds in an orange sunset sky.

(Just kidding of course ... or ... )

 

56 minutes ago, RudyB24 said:

Good research. It's possible the video was made while MFSF was not streaming. And even when it was streaming, it was mentioned that it depends on your internet connection how much detail you get ... we don't know how much detail was added here, if any at all. But all this does not explain the green color.

The handcrafted building was added, that much is certain, but maybe that's part of the readily available data on HD.

One more month ... then we know ...

 

 

😀

Some of the buildings like the 1st-of-May Stadium on the river seem handcrafted, some  like the highrises 800 m North of the square are typical of an AI reconstruction with a dark textures because you can get good sat image for the DPRK but no aerial ones.

I find PY fascinating because we have not had the chance to have exotic places like that in the existing sims.  Thanks Asobo for that  but why don't they go all the way ?Again, the Bing image is better than the FS20 ground.  Lionel, I think, spoke early on of having the world in ZL19. Not here, at least not in this vid. Do they reduce the quality  of the imagery in areas they thing are of little interest for their basic customers to lighten up the downloads  ? I hope not.

PY is an example.  Can't wait to see Duchanbe, Kabul or Ashgabat  😄.  I do understand that sounds weird for those whose usual sim routes are Manchester-Heathrow, Newark-Chicago or Paris-Dusseldorf. But some of us like to spice their flights  !

In truth for me, I don't plan on flying anywhere I wouldn't plan on visiting in person. Ergo, there will be a few countries I will not even bother exploring. 😉

Having said that, I do recognize the clear point you're making Dom. I have been extremely curious as to the quality of imagery within MFS offline mode and how that compares to default/payware scenery in P3D for example. 

I guess I'm going to find out pretty darn soon.