I could not believe when I first did a sightseeing flight over at Bora Bora. Just to remind you how it was shown in the advertising "Oceania" trailer by MS/Asobo:

And that is how it really looks in the sim with everything on "ultra", streamed:

Or everything on "ultra" with manually downloaded the island and surroundings using the highest possible quality:

That is ridiculous and I put a HUGE questionmark on any preview video now. Seems that they improve the scenery drastically for their previews and we get a lower quality in the sim... really disappointed.

The water masking/blends with the photoscenery is really disappointing given what was previously shown.

Asobo should have flagged this prior to release, as a lot of tropical simmers are now feeling let down.

I’ve been really impressed by MSFS, but I agree 100% that the watermasking apparently not making it into the release makes that preview video really shady. I hope the feature somehow got cut at the last minute and this was just a disconnect between the engineers and marketing. Still, not a good look.

Here’s hoping they get it (back) in the sim ASAP.

James 

That's called photoshop. Works great for promotions.

I'm pretty certain they said in the Q&A that they were still working on finalizing the watermasking. They may have been working fine in the Bora Bora area but not everywhere.

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by Turpentine
typo

Some places already have the watermasking as shown in the trailers (see thread below), others don‘t. They have stated that it‘s a WIP. They have to add them manually which is why it takes some time. I agree it‘s a bit odd that they publish a trailer on day one of the release that shows places that don‘t look the same in the sim. It could have been a misunderstanding between the marketing and the devs as was speculated above, or they know that the watermasks will be there very soon, who knows. Whatever the reason, the places from the Oceania trailer will surely be updated at some point.

Here‘s some of the places from the trailers that already have watermasks:

Here‘s what the devs said (starting at 28:44):

 

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by Shack95

Realistic tides. That would be something. The wish list is endless. Hopefully the work on the water makes progress.

This has nothing do with settings or photoshop, or them "faking" preview vidoes. That's ridiculous to claim and you should really substantiate those kinds of claims with proper evidence.

There's also difference between the look of water along coastlines depending on when the imagery was taken. Imagery taken during low-tide will have more azure blue colours. When imagery is updated and happens to go from low-tide to high -tid you also lose some of the azure blue colour.

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by walloppy

2 minutes ago, walloppy said:

The new imagery was taken at high-tide instead of low-tide

Nope. If you've ever been to the Caribbean, tides barely affect the turquoise waters there. They presently don't have the water masking in place, so this is why we get the results shown above.

Welcome to the marketing world of Microsoft.

Cheers, Ed

The youtube screenshot actually looks pretty bad to be honest. 

Definitely one of the more disappointing points of the release.

Watermarking is a pain in the word not appropriate... given the amount of coverage that has to be somewhat hand tuned. Personally, I don't mind too much. I am more disappointed by having difficulties to make the water waves look like in the launch trailer. Windy waves... at least from the presets, you can only get them when using the "Stormy" preset, but in the trailer, the weather in just fine, and yet there are real waves. Maybe it's a matter to find a windy yet sunny location in real weather. I think it's clear we need better presets, like "Windy Day", and that cloud coverage isn't globally static but instead patchy, just like the real weather. I often switch to presets because they're just beautiful, while real weather looks boring / flat. That's not to say it ain't realistic. But I think we'd have more fun with more elaborate and varying weather "themes".  

31 minutes ago, walloppy said:

and you should really substantiate those kinds of claims with proper evidence

I know the theory that a) the tested and release version is not the current one in the hands of the developers (beaten to death in the alpha forums) and b) that features were deliberately taken in and out over the past few months. I don't buy this story and the state of the release version is evidence that it was and is not ready, thus making the preview trailers and pictures at least misleading. In a few months from now, if the development commitment is genuine, the sim should look as advertised. We will see.

2 hours ago, hjsmuc said:

That's called photoshop. Works great for promotions.

Well technically it's called After Effects and Photoshop, but still part of Adobe's Creative Suite. 🤣

Edited August 23, 20205 yr by Chock