Just now, RustyFlyer said:

Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly and, um, exactly.

Mr. Meyers often states things quickly and off-the-cuff just to get rid of all the negative publicity, you cannot blame him when there are so many whiners in our hobby (hey I'm kind of whining right now, right?)...

I believe he says it because he knows it's too much trouble, and since ortho4xP is already out there, he knows he cannot do much to surpass what people are using for free, so there is literally no reason for Xplane to get involved in the Ortho.

AS far as the project being too big to cover the entire earth, it's not at all. It's just they haven't hired the right expert to process the scenery, they need a programmer that has a specific type of knowledge that is somewhat rare. It's a type of color tone mapping algorithmic knowledge, and the programmers that do that stuff are mostly in HDR right now, but they are out there.

I know two personally that could auto-correct all the imagery, and I myself probably could as well (if someone were paying me to write the algorithm). It is a very tough algorithm, but it can be done.

2 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

I don't care about the masses, as I am only concerned about my own use. Why are you worried about what everyone else does?

Per the Google debate vs. Microsoft, we just have a completely different way of viewing business. I already stated the reasons it's not in the interest of either party, Google does NOT make the flight sim, there isn't revenue for Xplane to pass onto Google for Google to get involved, since Google does NOT make the flight sim. Guess what, Google doesn't make Xplane?

 

Google doesn't make a lot of things they're involved in. They've also done a lot of data deals with smaller companies (and then ended up buying a number of them later). I also care about the masses because the masses play a LARGE part in how I get to experience the world. I hate to break it to you, but that's how the world works. You can make your own soda, but most people are just fine with buying Coke and the options they offer are what most people are happy with. Same in flight sims and farm sims and horror games, etc. And yes, we have a completely different way of viewing business. You can say that again, and again. LR will either compete or wither. THAT is what's going to happen here. Improving the autogen is like improving the fax machine. 

1 minute ago, SceneryFX said:

Mr. Meyers often states things quickly and off-the-cuff just to get rid of all the negative publicity, you cannot blame him when there are so many whiners in our hobby (hey I'm kind of whining right now, right?)...

I believe he says it because he knows it's too much trouble, and since ortho4xP is already out there, he knows he cannot do much to surpass what people are using for free, so there is literally no reason for Xplane to get involved in the Ortho.

AS far as the project being too big to cover the entire earth, it's not at all. It's just they haven't hired the right expert to process the scenery, they need a programmer that has a specific type of knowledge that is somewhat rare. It's a type of color tone mapping algorithmic knowledge, and the programmers that do that stuff are mostly in HDR right now, but they are out there.

I know two personally that could auto-correct all the imagery, and I myself probably could as well (if someone were paying me to write the algorithm). It is a very tough algorithm, but it can be done.

Would you also then expect LR to hire an entire network and server farm team to stream their data, and then staff a data center to keep it running smoothly, or would everyone need to do a 2 PetaByte download on Xplane 12's release?

What Asobo/MS have done is a lot more significant than pumping a couple of orthos...

My bandwidth is at 24 GB since I started, that's nothing... I could fit thousands of people just on one server, data centers require VERY little staff. One of the data centers i have servers in has like 3 people there with 70,000 sq feet of stacked servers. Hosting the Ortho is like the least complicated type of thing to host, you're not hosting any complex databases or huge push/pull redundant systems, it's just a bunch of flat files.

Man there are data centers everywhere and you can easily set this up. One person could setup and run the entire operation worldwide (not saying it would be optimal, but it could be done). I could do it in 30 days and not even need help, I could setup 100+ servers or just run it on AWS and build a giant network (though that would be too expensive).

The claims that this is some fancy Azure only cloud stack thing using AI is a marketing thing, it's really not even a big deal at all.

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by SceneryFX

3 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

Mr. Meyers often states things quickly and off-the-cuff just to get rid of all the negative publicity, you cannot blame him when there are so many whiners in our hobby (hey I'm kind of whining right now, right?)...

I believe he says it because he knows it's too much trouble, and since ortho4xP is already out there, he knows he cannot do much to surpass what people are using for free, so there is literally no reason for Xplane to get involved in the Ortho.

???? He improved the weather when there were already third-party players doing weather products. He improved the graphics when there were already people providing scenery. He improved the G1000 when there were already people selling G1000 products. Ortho4XP is for tech enthusiasts, period. Most people wouldn't have a clue how to use it or benefit from it. If LR added ortho imagery to X-Plane their customers would go crazy in gratitude. How do I know? Go look at the forums on .org. It's one of the most requested features year-in, year-out. Gee, why is that when there's a free way to do it? FSX had Tile Proxy. Why bother with it in this product when you could easily adjust Tile Proxy to work with this? Because, MS gets that the average person a) can't do it and b) has better freaking things to do than to spend days upon days downloading (potentially against the license of the owners) and then processing, installing and managing it all. Most X-Plane owners have never even seen the scenery.ini file let alone edited it. 

Let's see where we're at in five years.... I'm comfortable in my view.

7 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

Google doesn't make a lot of things they're involved in. 

A lot of those companies they dealt with or buy are in a specific field they are interested in or they see a huge growth potential. I don't see that Google will ever have any interest in this, Google does not make a lot of games and really hasn't had that much involvement in the gaming industry, whereas Microsoft has.

6 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

The claims that this is some fancy Azure only cloud stack thing using AI is a marketing thing, it's really not even a big deal at all.

Must be why every game uses streaming data. Oh wait, this is the first one.

Just now, SceneryFX said:

A lot of those companies they dealt with or buy are in a specific field they are interested in or they see a huge growth potential. I don't see that Google will ever have any interest in this, Google does not make a lot of games and really hasn't had that much involvement in the gaming industry, whereas Microsoft has.

Yeah, Stadia was just something they threw a few bucks at for the hell of it. You also have seen Android right? The "PLAY" store? You think they call it the Play store because they .... like playgrounds? 

3 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

Let's see where we're at in five years.... I'm comfortable in my view.

The 1.2m NAIP is already available from that one guy for the entire US, and so is much of the rest of the world. You don't need to use Ortho4XP. What I was saying is that to do better than the FREE unlicensed stuff, he would either have to heavily process all the NAIP, or get a license to distribute it.

Neither of which he wants to do. I didn't say it was the correct decision not to be involved in it, I said that is why he is making the decision.

3 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

Yeah, Stadia was just something they threw a few bucks at for the hell of it. You also have seen Android right? The "PLAY" store? You think they call it the Play store because they .... like playgrounds? 

That's a new thing they are doing and it is atypical of their past, only because Google has their hands in too many pockets right now. That is also something they have some control over, they aren't going to get involved with Xplane which they would have no control over. There is a 1% chance, and a 99% chance they don't. I'll give you that there is a 1% chance, even though it might be closer to a 0% chance.

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by SceneryFX

5 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

Neither of which he wants to do. I didn't say it was the correct decision not to be involved in it, I said that is why he is making the decision.

He's made a lot of incorrect choices. This will be no different. Do you know why X-Plane is so much bigger today than in 2010? Because Microsoft moved out. Well, the gorilla is back. LR didn't get to this place because they made the better product. The better product left.

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by Agrajag

4 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

That's a new thing they are doing and it is atypical of their past, only because Google has their hands in too many pockets right now. That is also something they have some control over, they aren't going to get involved with Xplane which they would have no control over. There is a 1% chance, and a 99% chance they don't. I'll give you that there is a 1% chance, even though it might be closer to a 0% chance.

Google didn't own Garmin. They didn't own Tom-Tom. They didn't own Rand McNally. They didn't own Cobra. They didn't own countless other small companies that all licensed maps data from them. That's how licensing generally works. It LR doesn't want to try to compete, that's fine. I'm absolutely sure we'll be hearing about how they had to downsize over the coming years if they think the future is better autogen.

2 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

future is better autogen.

Is there any indication they have hired machine learning experts and data scientists to make this a reality?

7 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

Google didn't own Garmin. They didn't own Tom-Tom. They didn't own Rand McNally. They didn't own Cobra. They didn't own countless other small companies that all licensed maps data from them. That's how licensing generally works. It LR doesn't want to try to compete, that's fine. I'm absolutely sure we'll be hearing about how they had to downsize over the coming years if they think the future is better autogen.

Garmin is a Nasdaq company and had over 3 billion in sales, they are hardly a small company on the order of Xplane which has sales in the low millions. I doubt Xplane could pay Google enough to license the imagery.

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by SceneryFX

10 minutes ago, Slides said:

Is there any indication they have hired machine learning experts and data scientists to make this a reality?

Hahahahah. Look, I get it. If you're a jeweler you're going to be extremely sensitive to the grade of diamonds and quality of the gold people show up wearing, and yet they're wearing it and generally happy about it. An ortho snob (not in the bad sense, but meaning someone who's really into it) is going to see things in this sim that 99% of the rest of the world will never see. I mean, seriously... look at all the posts of people saying, "Have you seen how crappy the new FS looks?" Oh, wait, that's pretty much entirely backwards from what we're seeing. So either everyone else is wrong or..... 

I've been arguing the "complexities" of consumerism since the 80s. Some people just never get it. 

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by Agrajag