2 hours ago, tweekz said:

While there are distinctive churches, in most cases it would be close enough. I think it looks even worse to have a residential building or industrial building where a church should be. Those are important landmarks for VFR. Better to have something that resembles a clocktower than nothing.

The problem I see is not so much style but the way I think the autogen is generated. One of the great things in MSFS is that the autogen buildings match their footprints (at least in most of the cases). The way I understand it is that the AI „builds“ these houses based on the data extracted from the imagery (and maybe OSM). They‘d have to do the same with churches and that is probably a bit more complex. Of course they could as well just handcraft some generic churches and let the algorithms place them according to the available data à la simHaven, but then they wouldn‘t be accurate in terms of footprint and volume, which might look odd. But that‘s just guessing. I often fly in Europe so I‘d love to see such buildings too.

Edit: On second thought a simHaven solution might not be too bad an interim solution.

Edited August 31, 20205 yr by Shack95

On 8/25/2020 at 12:24 PM, roi1862 said:

It will be really helpful if someone creates us an easy as possible manual from A to Z on how to take a 3D object from Google and put it in the exact place in MSFS. Maybe also how to remove the AI model as well.

I tried following the 3 YouTube videos from the first page, but i guess i am too old to grasp it... 😞  

This will be the bringing of true-to-life simulator when each creates the landmarks from his place. Cant wait for it.

It has nothing to do with your age, and stop reinforcing stereotypes, please.

24 minutes ago, horrido said:

It has nothing to do with your age, and stop reinforcing stereotypes, please.

Indeed. The building process is extremely rigid in its conventions. One mistake can break everything. For example I still haven't figured out how to add more custom models to a project that has already been saved and built. Which is why I had start from scratch and redo the entire project again after deciding that I wanted to add more buildings. The actual process of placing them and building exclude polygons to surpress autogen is the easy part. Getting all the models to show up in the list of selectable objects, THAT is the hard part.

 

But once it works it is extremely rewarding. I also started to assemble models to amp up Siena, Italy, because the narrow streets totally confuse the ai. And I already finished the town of San Gimiglano, which people who played Assasin's Creed 2 might remember. A very fast and dirty project with little finesse in touching up the model, but totally effective in giving the small town its characteristic appearance.

I thought of doing further places in Tuscany, but most towns I looked at do not have any distinct features. Pisa for example has the Duomo with it's leaning tower, and that is it. No other buildings catch the eye from the air.

 

With all these projects I only found a little snag that I don't know how to work around: The photogrammetric buildings reflect the light much stronger than the standard autogen.

On the side were the light does not hit the structure this is no problem, and you will not be able to tell the buildings apart from the rest. But in full sunlight they stand out.

I noticed that on my first test run. I was approaching my city from the east with the sun in the west. On the approach my added models totally looked like an organic part of the scenery, but as soon as I saw their western faces the problem became visible.

I can live with this for now, because the most important part for me is having distinct and correct shapes in a cityscape. But it's not ideal.

Edited August 31, 20205 yr by Farlis

19 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

The problem I see is not so much style but they way I think the autogen is generated. One of the great things in MSFS is that the autogen buildings match their footprints (at least in most of the cases). The way I understand it is that the AI „builds“ these houses based on the data extracted from the imagery (and maybe OSM). They‘d have to do the same with churches and that is probably a bit more complex. Of course they could as well just handcraft some generic churches and let the algorithms place them according to the available data à la simHaven, but then they wouldn‘t be accurate in terms of footprint and volume, which might look odd. But that‘s just guessing. I often fly in Europe so I‘d love to see such buildings too.

Edit: On second thought a simHaven solution might not be too bad an interim solution.

 

I agree.

I think such special buildings are very important in terms of orientation. I watched out for the city centre of my hometown and was looking for the church therefore. 🙂 It does not have to match exactly the RL pendant for that matter. Such buildings are quite distinctive even if they don't match their real life pendant in detail.

I also don't fully understand how the algorithm works. I've seen buildings implemented which are not present in BING satellite imagery but are there on maps (and in reality). For my taste the roof color and type fails a little too often as well (does it account for color at all?). It works fine for residential or metropolitan areas, but odten fails with apartment blocks and industrial buildings.

If they would take more generic building types due to difficulties with detecting church layouts, that would be fine to me, as for me it's more about the general presence of that building type rather than actual resemblence. Of course there will be bad examples with iconic POIs, but I think that's worth the higher accuracy overall.

I'm not complaining to complain. I've always been positive about this sim. So I see this as constructive criticism and have also pointed out potential solutions. I hope ASOBO / blackshark are still working on improving such things.

4 hours ago, ThrottleUp said:

This is amazing. I find Googles imagery to be much better than Bings

You're talking about the 3D buildings, right? AFAIK there is no way to replace Bing's (lackluster) aerial photography with Google's. If there is, let me know!

36 minutes ago, horrido said:

It has nothing to do with your age, and stop reinforcing stereotypes, please.

Haaa ? 😕

Just tried Edinburgh V2 landmarks and Glasgow City. Wow....really impressive! And these are early days and a first try in many cases! This could be the start of something really amazing. 

Edited August 31, 20205 yr by steve310002

9 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

Just tried Edinburgh V2 landmarks and Glasgow City. Wow....really impressive! And these are early days and a first try in many cases! This could be the start of something really amazing. 

Where did you get those? 

This is a good place to look - seems most of the new stuff is posted about here first:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FS2020Creation/

A hub here

https://flightsim.to/

I'm still exercising a bit of caution with all of this. Just look at one single object that is available to download, Sydney Harbour Bridge. It's got a 90mb texture, yes 90mb. I can see this getting out of control for some very quickly both in terms of hard drive space and also with performance.

I hope some place comes out where all this stuff will be organized, it's impossible to follow all that reddit stuff. 

Just now, EmaRacing said:

I hope some place comes out where all this stuff will be organized, it's impossible to follow all that reddit stuff. 

The post right above mine has a good summary.

Absolutely amazing how quickly these community addons are coming out. A big thank you to all the contributors! 

Is there anybody working on Manchester? Such an iconic city that literally has zero custom buildings. I’ve seen that someone has done Old Trafford but it would be great to get the Manchester skyline represented accurately.