Stuttgart Airport is Missing ??

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

14 hours ago, pilotodes said:

Funny that satelite imagery with Google Maps works without any issues. In fact, while planning my flights I use Google Maps to look at the airfield and the surroundings. SkyDemon (if you know it) even has Google Maps coordinates integrated and it works like a charm. Are Bing Maps differently regulated? Always thought the two are largely the same, where Bing was always the crappier version of Google Maps.

Yes Bing was never as good, With Germany the satellite imagery is good on Google Maps but it is the low flying aerial imagery and google car data that lacks considerably. 

Reality is Google Maps and Bing Maps etc is a form of public photography or surveillance, Germany has the toughest stance against these practices due to its history, the former East Germany had many bad surveillance practices back in the 1970s also the events of WW2, therefore a modern Germany doesn't take things like mapping people, or peoples houses or streets and neighbourhoods too lightly, which I can completely understand these concerns all things considered. The younger generation are more open to it but the older generation not so much

Edited August 20, 2020 by Matthew Kane

[siggy 154]

In the "Feature Discovery Series - Episode 6" they showed how they derived the data for runways and taxiways, aprons etc. using Bing imagery and their tool to trace the various polygons. And somewhere else it was mentioned recently that a lot of that work was outsourced to two companies, one of them being ORBX, the other was not named. This other company probably simply had to skip what was blurred out in Bing maps.

It is strange that the airport is blurred out as the airport company even publishes nice aerial photography of the airport, but who knows, there might be a secret dog shed behind one of the hangars that cannot be seen on these aerial photos, but Bing maps would reveal it :-). Here is a link to one such photo that they publish.

I simply hope that this area is not permanently disabled for any scenery that could be built on it. The default buildings are probably unsatisfactory anyway and we need a 3rd party product.

I haven't bought a license for the sim yet but because my former home airport is not there at all I am in no rush now.

Cheers
Siggy

[pstrub 998]

On 8/19/2020 at 1:48 AM, Matthew Kane said:

Germany has some of the strictest government regulations around Mapping software and services, therefore operations like BING will lack coverage of Germany. This is the downside to those rules and MS isn't to blame for that, Germans wanted privacy and this is a result of that.

While this is certainly true, there is a big difference when it comes to photogrammetry coverage in google maps: Google has it for many >~100k population cities (such as touristic Heidelberg, Göttingen, Hannover - ok, this one's larger), whereas the Bing dataset doesn't even have photogrammetry for London, the appearance of the British capital therefore is in a comparatively sorry state - apart from a handful of landmarks.

I'm still very impressed with the overall appearance of MSFS, and the general feel of a region it conveys, but I hope Flight Simulator is enough of a motivation for MS to catch up in this department. I'd love to see more photogrammetric coverage for cities in MSFS that have been around as good 3d models in google maps for years. 

My conclusion is to avoid city sight seeing outside the photogrammetry coverage. But this was known before I took off on my first flight with it, and while I hope for the coverage to improve, I'm mostly ok with it. 

Edited August 20, 2020 by pstrub

[pstrub 998]

On 8/18/2020 at 1:05 PM, Der Zeitgeist said:

Just out of interest, what did you find lacking?

To me what's lacking is the photogrammetry coverage compared to Google Maps. Heidelberg castle looks quite weird in MSFS while Google Maps has a good 3d model there, but ok, still a lot better than default FSX. Same goes for many other medium sized cities, albeit not as iconic as Heidelberg. 

I still hope it's due to the rushed release, and that MS is trying to acquire more photogrammetry data rights soon for Bing Maps / MSFS.

[ckyliu 1,749]

9 hours ago, Colonel X said:

I think it's a misconception that "the airport is not there because it's not in Bing maps" - the airport database was brought over from FSX, and the airport assets, runways, buildings ect. don't come from Bing either.

No it wasn't bought over from FSX, why are you making things up? The airports are built from Bing satellite imagery, Asobo even showed us how they did it with their tools and talked about how many people they had working on it to trace out features for the game to render. This is also why the taxiway are misnamed, they were automatically named after being traced from photos instead of using AIP data (thus being the only area I can think of where the sim has regressed).

Edited August 20, 2020 by ckyliu

[Colonel X 1,430]

Just now, ckyliu said:

No it wasn't bought over from FSX, why are you making things up? The airports are built from Bing satellite imagery. They even showed us how they did it and talked about how many people they had worked on it to trace out features for the game to render.

That might be true in terms of "buildings are generated based on satellite imagery". But there's more to an airport than graphical assets. Of course there is a database, including, for example the ATC frequencies, which obviously cannot be read from Bing. The notion that an airport is (completely) missing because it's not in Bing is just silly.

[ckyliu 1,749]

Can you hear that? It's the sound of back-pedalling 🙄, "Expert" back pedalling no less!

Edited August 20, 2020 by ckyliu

[Dominique_K 10,149]

11 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Yes Bing was never as good, With Germany the satellite imagery is good on Google Maps but it is the low flying aerial imagery and google car data that lacks considerably. 

Reality is Google Maps and Bing Maps etc is a form of public photography or surveillance, Germany has the toughest stance against these practices due to its history, the former East Germany had many bad surveillance practices back in the 1970s also the events of WW2, therefore a modern Germany doesn't take things like mapping people, or peoples houses or streets and neighbourhoods too lightly, which I can completely understand these concerns all things considered. The younger generation are more open to it but the older generation not so much

Bing and Goggle buy their sat imagery from the same suppliers. Then Bing decides to blur some places that Google leaves intact. I do not think that Google has any intent to violate Germany laws more than Microsoft.

Bing blurring policy is also baffling not to say whimsical. I didn’t check all military facilities in GE but when Stuttgart (or Eindhoven in NL) are blurred,  Ramstein  which shelters major American and Allied HQ  is crystal clear as are Spangdahlen or Geilenkirchen AFB or  the Federal ministry of Defense compounds in Berlin and Bonn. I also checked Büchel which is blurred but for excellent reasons (nukes).

My explanations is a poor management of the imagery rather the German government. The day the shot was taken, Stuttgart maybe saw a  sensitive transport and the shot had to be blurred and Bing forgot... 

Edited August 20, 2020 by Dominique_K

[n4gix 4,947]

On 8/18/2020 at 6:26 PM, Slides said:

@thirdlife Translation?

Click on the "English" button!

 

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

7 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Bing and Goggle buy their sat imagery from the same suppliers. Then Bing decides to blur some places that Google leaves intact. I do not think that Google has any intent to violate Germany laws more than Microsoft.

Bing blurring policy is also baffling not to say whimsical. I didn’t check all military facilities in GE but when Stuttgart (or Eindhoven in NL) are blurred,  Ramstein  which shelters major American and Allied HQ  is crystal clear as are Spangdahlen or Geilenkirchen AFB or  the Federal ministry of Defense compounds in Berlin and Bonn. I also checked Büchel which is blurred but for excellent reasons (nukes).

My explanations is a poor management of the imagery rather the German government. The day the shot was taken, Stuttgart maybe saw a  sensitive transport and the shot had to be blurred and Bing forgot... 

Gives it some perspective how far behind Germany is from the rest of Europe with surface photography

[pstrub 998]

11 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Gives it some perspective how far behind Germany is from the rest of Europe with surface photography

That's interesting to see, for sure, and sad to see for me as a German, but it's irrelevant in the context of MSFS for 2 reasons: it shows Google Maps data (whereas MSFS uses Bing), and secondly, it shows the Streetview data, not the places with 3d buildings available (which are a LOT less than the ones with Streetview). 

Apparently Southampton is the only 3d-modelled city in the UK on Bing maps / MSFS ( see this thread: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/580949-blackpool/?do=findComment&comment=4308955 ), even the capital is missing. When you fly over London, it looks pretty boring compared to 3d cities such as NYC or Berlin. 

 

Edited August 21, 2020 by pstrub

[Dominique_K 10,149]

11 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Gives it some perspective how far behind Germany is from the rest of Europe with surface photography

 

Thanks, Matthew. I was specifically addressing the topic issue about the missing Stuttgart airport and trying to demonstrate that Bing whimsical imagery policy is responsible for it, not Angela M. This is a sat not an aerial or street level imagery issue.

Edited August 21, 2020 by Dominique_K

[mil-airfields 2]

11 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Gives it some perspective how far behind Germany is from the rest of Europe with surface photography

Very good example for our German Angst 😀

[Farlis 2,287]

12 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Gives it some perspective how far behind Germany is from the rest of Europe with surface photography

 

Google claimed that only a minority of the population was having their houses blurred. But in the end it were obviously enough for Google to give up sending their cars around to expand streetview.

They thought it was not worth the hassle obviously. And that is why the coverage has basically stayed the same since Streetview was first introduced in Germany.

Which is kind of ludicrous considering that Photogrammetry is also showing parts of your property that Streetview doesn't. 😉

[Farlis 2,287]

52 minutes ago, pstrub said:

it shows the Streetview data, not the places with 3d buildings available (which are a LOT less than the ones with Streetview). 

That is actually not correct. The coverage of Photogrammetry in Germany on Google is at least the same than the Photogrammetry coverage.

You can check the coverage by activating the 3D coverage layer in Google Earth's Voyager.