Better scenery for MSFS

[TASCHMANN 200]

I'm sure I must be missing something.  For a solid year we have  had weekly "updates" touting, above all, the quality of the scenery that was coming our way.

Then one of the first add-ons that is announced is Orbx's replacement scenery.

[yidahoo 365]

Interesting that one of the upgrades is London Landmarks. Would suggest that cities without photogammetry will look very generic 

[jlund 380]

It's airports and missing landmarks, ORBX is making, and that's no surprise. Even though default airports are okay'ish, there's always room for improvement.

[yidahoo 365]

There's a lot of room for improvement in the default airports. And regardless of which package you buy, there are a lot of default airports.

 

[kiki 89]

The world in sim has always been too clean and untouched to look real. Everything is clean, new and just perfect.

In reality world should look more like:

This  or  this and of course like this and or course like this!  

That would make airports look like real ones!

[bonchie 2,305]

4 hours ago, yidahoo said:

Interesting that one of the upgrades is London Landmarks. Would suggest that cities without photogammetry will look very generic 

Generic as in not hand-placed? Yes. Generic in the sense of past sims where it's just a bunch of random stuff vomited out on a texture? No. The AI puts buildings where they are supposed to be, the right color they are supposed to be, the right shape they are supposed to be, and generally the right height they are supposed to be. It's a very eye pleasing experience in most cases that pretty well matches reality.

But if you know an area intimately and want to see some unique landmark, it either has to be hand placed by Asobo (some have) or by a 3rd party. There are quite literally millions of major landmarks over the entire world.

Edited August 10, 2020 by bonchie

[tweekz 2,165]

4 hours ago, yidahoo said:

Interesting that one of the upgrades is London Landmarks. Would suggest that cities without photogammetry will look very generic 

The AI can't rebuild landmarks obviously. They've crafted a few landmarks by hand. but of course there's a lot of room for 3PDs.

[Der Zeitgeist 1,575]

12 minutes ago, bonchie said:

But if you know an area intimately and want to see some unique landmark, it either has to be hand placed by Asobo (some have) or by a 3rd party. There are quite literally millions of major landmarks over the entire world.

From my experience with MSFS, you really need to know a certain place to even notice landmarks are missing. When you fly over an autogen city, the overall effect is highly convincing.

[bonchie 2,305]

13 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

From my experience with MSFS, you really need to know a certain place to even notice landmarks are missing. When you fly over an autogen city, the overall effect is highly convincing.

Very true. When I flew over Athens, it almost didn't dawn on me that it's not photogrammetry at first. Whatever the downsides regarding specific land marks, the overall presentation of MSFS is so advanced that I wouldn't have thought it possible before the announcement last year.

And MSFS doesn't lack landmarks like XP11 lacks landmarks. That building will still be there where it is supposed to be, it will just be an AI built model that tries to build something from a 2D, top down view. As you get more unique in the architecture of a building, the AI becomes less capable of getting it right. Cathedrals, stadiums, monuments, etc. have to be hand-placed to be right.

One thing I saw yesterday made me really appreciate what they are doing. It was near KIAD and the AI had placed a toll booth across the road where there is one in real life. In the sim, it's a long rectangular building across the road with black cut outs. The AI only saw the roof and drew the shape right but obviously couldn't know it's open air underneath.

But even then, it drew a freaking toll booth on a random road and it actually looks like one from altitude. It's nuts to me.

Edited August 10, 2020 by bonchie

[Der Zeitgeist 1,575]

6 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Very true. When I flew over Athens, it almost didn't dawn on me that it's not photogrammetry at first. Whatever the downsides, the overall presentation of MSFS is so advanced that I wouldn't have thought it possible before the announcement last year.

And it's not just large, first-world cities. That's the thing people need to realize here, that is the real game-changer. You can simply open Bing Maps, pick some arbitrary village in Sub-Saharan-Africa or wherever, and zoom in. If the quality of the Bing imagery is good and the resolution is OK (most of the times, it will be), it's gonna be there in the sim, with every building in its place and within its real footprint and with matching roof-color. Period.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Der Zeitgeist

[bonchie 2,305]

4 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

And it's not just large, first-world cities. That's the thing people need to realize here, that is the real game-changer. You can simply open Bing Maps, pick some arbitrary village in Sub-Saharan-Africa or wherever, and zoom in. If the quality of the Bing imagery is good and the resolution is OK (most of the times, it will be), it's gonna be there in the sim, with every building in its place and within its real footprint. Period.

Yep. I flew into Niamy, Niger (I've flown a 182 in that area before in real life for some work stuff) and it actually looks like Niamey, which has to be one of the hardest places for any sim to get right because 1) it's Africa and no one hand touches Africa 2) the buildings are incredibly numerous because it's mostly hundreds of thousands of small, mud built houses and 3) because the quality of the orhos aren't great.

Yet, it's there as it should be, including the parliament building. In FSX, it was this comically wrong landclass with a bunch of random 3-5 story buildings with glowing blue windows. It wasn't that it wasn't close. It was that it wasn't even in the same universe. There was no point even attempting to go there.

That's what makes MSFS so exciting. I'm gladly trading some missing landmarks in some of the major cities for the ability to explore thousands of places I'd never otherwise go. It's gonna make airline ops much more fun as well because there will be a reason to fly into regional and smaller international airports. The cities will actually be there.

Edited August 10, 2020 by bonchie

[Nedo68 533]

4 hours ago, TASCHMANN said:

I'm sure I must be missing something.  For a solid year we have  had weekly "updates" touting, above all, the quality of the scenery that was coming our way.

Then one of the first add-ons that is announced is Orbx's replacement scenery.

you are not forced to invest more money after buying MSFS, it still looks far more better then what we have right now.

New Airplanes is a different question 😁

 

[Shack95 2,658]

I couldn‘t agree more with what bonchie and the time ghost have written. That, together with the incredible lighting system and the weather makes this sim an unmatched experience in my view. Even though there are flaws and inaccuracies here and there, It just feels like a real world. 

[Dominique_K 10,133]

4 hours ago, TASCHMANN said:

I'm sure I must be missing something.  For a solid year we have  had weekly "updates" touting, above all, the quality of the scenery that was coming our way.

Then one of the first add-ons that is announced is Orbx's replacement scenery.

Not replacement as an Orbx TE or OpenLC scenery, but complement.

FS20 default scenery could be way better than its predecessors, it cannot be perfect in all the details : landmarks, airports and so on .

To their credit, Asobo and Microsoft have regularly said all along that their environment would need third party addons. Not their fault if some deluded simmers wouldn't be believe them with in a weird hatred of anything TPD.

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

I'm starting to change my thinking. If we can take the fact that MS are viewing Azure AI as a (very) long term business project then any platform utilising it (in our case MSFS) is just going to get better and better in to the future. 

That makes MSFS a looong project that will see incremental upgrades and updates stretching a very fair way in to the future - probably longer than I've got here so a few quid here and a few quid there for an airport, London how it SHOULD look, some scenery that I know real world and needs improvement - is money well spent. Yeah, sure - I'd prefer not to have to spend it but I'm prepared to.

I worked out earlier my total addon Aircraft/ Scenery/ Modules spend for FSX and P3D was approx £750.00 (My - How it mounts up!) But I've had well over 15 years of fun for that.

If I end spending that on MSFS bits and pieces I reckon I'm good for another 10-15 years.

And if somebody in the mean time comes up with something better than MSFS then hey, it's my investment that suffers. You win, you lose.

Edited August 10, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese