Hey guys!

Do you remember those glorious seas shown on the trailers? You could see the coral reefs, you could see some underwater features! I was looking forward to that since i live in the caribbean and we have a lot of beautiful beaches... But no, they are nowhere to be found. The water details only extend for a few meters and then only boring water.

How is it possible? It was given a lot of prominence on the trailers!! I even remember that some of the earlier screenshots we had where showing those details.

Bing has all those details, but its missing on the release. What a disappointment 😨😨

Look at this beach (Bahia de las Aguilas, Dominican Republic).. Dull and lifeless

The same beach on Bing

There are not many in the release version.  They are having to do these by hand so the expectation is that they will be added in the world updates but probably not all at once.

54 minutes ago, xender said:

Look at this beach (Bahia de las Aguilas, Dominican Republic).. Dull and lifeless

The same beach on Bing

I've done a lot of watermasking, as the poster above me mentioned, to get great results you need a fair bit of human input (I suspect - I don't know exactly what Azure AI can do!)

As your Bing image shows, photoscenery quality is often poor over the water near the coast, and then only extends out for a limited distance. If I'm after good results, I correct the water in the ortho bmp by hand and then manually water mask (that second bit is much easier to automate).

Not sure what Asobo's approach is, but I agree that the coastal water could be improved - I also remember those tropical shots from way back in the first promo. 

1 minute ago, OzWhitey said:

I've done a lot of watermasking, as the poster above me mentioned, to get great results you need a fair bit of human input (I suspect - I don't know exactly what Azure AI can do!)

As your Bing image shows, photoscenery quality is often poor over the water near the coast, and then only extends out for a limited distance. If I'm after good results, I correct the water in the ortho bmp by hand and then manually water mask (that second bit is much easier to automate).

Not sure what Asobo's approach is, but I agree that the coastal water could be improved - I also remember those tropical shots from way back in the first promo. 

Yes, they even removed those. If you go to the same locations it doesn't look like that on the release version 😪

3 minutes ago, xender said:

Yes, they even removed those. If you go to the same locations it doesn't look like that on the release version 😪

The Bing image updated

Watermasking was there in the earlier Alphas, then it was removed from the Beta for unknown reason. The question was asked innumerable times, but the devs never actually communicated with the testers. There was a single Q&A where they said that they did not understand what everyone was talking about and that the watermasking was there as before. Then they were bombarded with questions again and replied they were looking into it. That's it. I am personally very disappointed with almost everything. Not a single bug report, not a single suggestion, not a single feedback message from the hundreds I had personally submitted was addressed.

I think they did address this in their twitch call a week or so ago. They updated their satellite pics and those were taken at high tide so it hid some of those features. They seemed to imply they will need to add them back manually so it will be bit by bit.

2 minutes ago, sanh said:

I think they did address this in their twitch call a week or so ago. They updated their satellite pics and those were taken at high tide so it hid some of those features. They seemed to imply they will need to add them back manually so it will be bit by bit.

I missed that twitch and have only read a summary. Good if it is so. But it is not the only thing that is quite disappointing. The whole release is not very far away from the latest beta.

Yes ASOBO did say in the Q&A that the watermasking was in there however then they said that it's not just a simple mask but that they also include the depth of the water and make adjustments to that by hand in the areas that should show shallow reefs.  Everyone needs to have some patience.  I believe these things will improve over time.  I personally don't think when ASOBO said this would be a 10 year or more commitment that they meant on Day 1 everything will be perfect and then we will just add features for 10 years.  I think they meant that it will take 10 years to improve this thing to be the ultimate sim ever made.  I have somewhat a level of disappointment myself.  I do think this is an "early access" release and should probably have been fleshed out some more but I am not a high level decision maker at Microsoft.  I hope that we will look back in about a year and this sim will be at the point where we can just be excited about what develops in the next several years beyond.  For now I believe we just have to be patient.  If they don't fix alot of these things in the upcoming updates then we can break out the pitchforks...

2 minutes ago, thetford569 said:

it will take 10 years to improve this thing to be the ultimate sim ever made

I understand that, but I'm not sure I'll be even alive in 10 years so I would like to fly a good flight sim somewhat earlier than that. I didn't expect an ultimate sim ever made, but I hoped for some basic things at least...

21 minutes ago, xender said:

Yes, they even removed those. If you go to the same locations it doesn't look like that on the release version 😪

Hmm isn’t Ubisoft a French company? 😛 I’m starting to see a pattern...

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by UAL4life

Just now, ilya1502 said:

I understand that, but I'm not sure I'll be even alive in 10 years so I would like to fly a good flight sim somewhat earlier than that. I didn't expect an ultimate sim ever made, but I hoped for some basic things at least...

I thought we where still under NDA something changed?

9 minutes ago, awf said:

I thought we where still under NDA something changed?

And what is it I disclosed that nobody else knew?

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by ilya1502

10 minutes ago, ilya1502 said:

 The whole release is not very far away from the latest beta.

You would expect the release to be worlds different than the latest beta?