Strange attention to detail where it doesn’t matter

[Virtual-Chris 682]

After landing I was cruising around a nearby town with the drone camera. I was shocked to see that some store fronts actually had window displays with mannequins and this seasons latest fashions (well the last part might be a stretch). But window displays at street level?!

This is maybe just a cheap texture to apply, but it seems odd in light of the fact that many elements as actually viewed from the air are missing, flat or even screwed up (FUBAR). We have buildings that are completely missing (just an image of their impression is on the ground), coastal objects are under water, many beaches are covered in a flat green shrub texture, some waterways are anti-gravity wormholes, streets are just a Gaussian blur of the terrain, roads and highways are just slapped sideways on the side of mountains (rather than cut into the hill as in real life), and on and on. 

But at least Tim’s Tailor shop has the latest fashions on display. 

Even after a week the gloss is wearing off. It’s hard NOT to see the deficiencies. I think MS set expectations too high with their marketing material. 

[Azapata87 173]

Everyone’s entitled to an opinion but even with those deficiencies. The scenery is still hundreds of miles better than the base P3D and FSX. I’d say it’s even still better than a beautified P3D with hundreds of dollars in addons. 
 

There are some annoying bugs with aircraft and flight dynamics that I do think need to for sure be addressed.

[YVRLHRDXB 321]

3 minutes ago, Azapata87 said:

Everyone’s entitled to an opinion but even with those deficiencies. The scenery is still hundreds of miles better than the base P3D and FSX. I’d say it’s even still better than a beautified P3D with hundreds of dollars in addons. 
 

There are some annoying bugs with aircraft and flight dynamics that I do think need to for sure be addressed.

Yup, I have no idea what P3D version people are playing when they're comparing P3D scenery and textures to FS2020. Must be the version that comes out in 2090.

[Isaiah53six 134]

10 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

After landing I was cruising around a nearby town with the drone camera. I was shocked to see that some store fronts actually had window displays with mannequins and this seasons latest fashions (well the last part might be a stretch). But window displays at street level?!

This is maybe just a cheap texture to apply, but it seems odd in light of the fact that many elements as actually viewed from the air are missing, flat or even screwed up (FUBAR). We have buildings that are completely missing (just an image of their impression is on the ground), coastal objects are under water, many beaches are covered in a flat green shrub texture, some waterways are anti-gravity wormholes, streets are just a Gaussian blur of the terrain, roads and highways are just slapped sideways on the side of mountains (rather than cut into the hill as in real life), and on and on. 

But at least Tim’s Tailor shop has the latest fashions on display. 

Even after a week the gloss is wearing off. It’s hard NOT to see the deficiencies. I think MS set expectations too high with their marketing material. 

agreed.  The golden gate bridge is one example where they appeared to have removed some underlying satellite textures in their promotional video at the start of the game but in the actual game the bridge shows the bad textures no matter what settings the game is on.  (first image is mine....2nd is official Microsoft)

[Virtual-Chris 682]

23 minutes ago, Azapata87 said:

Everyone’s entitled to an opinion but even with those deficiencies. The scenery is still hundreds of miles better than the base P3D and FSX. I’d say it’s even still better than a beautified P3D with hundreds of dollars in addons. 
 

There are some annoying bugs with aircraft and flight dynamics that I do think need to for sure be addressed.

That wasn't my point.  It may compare well to other sims.  That's all good.

Where it falls short, it that it does NOT accurately reflect what was marketed in MANY key areas, and then you find stuff where some effort was invested where it doesn't matter.  It's frustrating and disappointing.

[FlyIce 354]

Was OP talking about a town with photogrammetry? If so those fashion displays etc are in real life photos and didn't cost developers any extra efforts.

[Virtual-Chris 682]

Just now, FlyIce said:

Was OP talking about a town with photogrammetry? If so those fashion displays etc are in real life photos and didn't cost developers any extra efforts.

I don't know what towns have photogrammetry or not (how can you tell?), but all the shops had the same window display, and it looked hand crafted. It seems like a texture that was developed for potential shops. It even appears on some buildings which I know are not shops (residential). So it's just one of the many textures that can be applied to the side of a building I guess.  I should have grabbed a photo. I'll see if I can grab one tomorrow.

[overt 55]

It's a big team working on the project, maybe the guy or gal creating textures for shops has nothing to do with the other parts of the sim, and this really was the best use of their time.

[Slides 1,552]

1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Even after a week the gloss is wearing off. It’s hard NOT to see the deficiencies. I think MS set expectations too high with their marketing material. 

I respectfully disagree. Visually, it's overall better for me in actual motion on my monitor than in any marketing material I have seen. For example, in screenshots, the clouds can look somewhat like paintings or as some people complained, like volcanic ash. But when you see them moving fluidly in the sim with the light reflecting and self shadows and all that, you forget that they are not as high resolution up close as in real life (hardware limitations I'm sure). It's more breathtaking in front of me than it ever was in any video or screenshot. 

[Ricardo41 5,959]

1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Even after a week the gloss is wearing off. It’s hard NOT to see the deficiencies. I think MS set expectations too high with their marketing material. 

Nope, not at all. I thought that MSFS 2020 would be a stuttering buggy mess, but I find it runs much better, even on crappy hardware, than I expected.

The thing has huge potential. It's out a week. Do you expect a 1-week old baby to have won the nobel prize already?

[ludekbrno 302]

1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

After landing I was cruising around a nearby town with the drone camera. I was shocked to see that some store fronts actually had window displays with mannequins and this seasons latest fashions (well the last part might be a stretch). But window displays at street level?!

This is maybe just a cheap texture to apply, but it seems odd in light of the fact that many elements as actually viewed from the air are missing, flat or even screwed up (FUBAR). We have buildings that are completely missing (just an image of their impression is on the ground), coastal objects are under water, many beaches are covered in a flat green shrub texture, some waterways are anti-gravity wormholes, streets are just a Gaussian blur of the terrain, roads and highways are just slapped sideways on the side of mountains (rather than cut into the hill as in real life), and on and on. 

But at least Tim’s Tailor shop has the latest fashions on display. 

Even after a week the gloss is wearing off. It’s hard NOT to see the deficiencies. I think MS set expectations too high with their marketing material. 

You have to understand, that MSFS isn't a city street simulator. Still it's only a flight simulator! So you shouldn't excpect a real buildings with real textures over whole Earth. It's impossible with existing technologies. But still it's a much more far in real world representation, than we could see at any time before from the sky.

[Virtual-Chris 682]

23 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

Nope, not at all. I thought that MSFS 2020 would be a stuttering buggy mess, but I find it runs much better, even on crappy hardware, than I expected.

The thing has huge potential. It's out a week. Do you expect a 1-week old baby to have won the nobel prize already?

I don’t disagree that it has huge potential, but it was marketed as having achieved much of that potential for launch.  How long will it take for it to reach the level of polish shown in marketing material? A year, 5 years? Is that acceptable? It has a LONG ways to go to even get to that level From what I’ve seen. The marketing was very misleading in my opinion and the SIM is coming up short in many key visual aspects. 

[LHookins 3,113]

1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

After landing I was cruising around a nearby town with the drone camera. I was shocked to see that some store fronts actually had window displays with mannequins and this seasons latest fashions (well the last part might be a stretch). But window displays at street level?!

You could probably see the same thing in FSX and P3D.  The difference here is that the building is an actual shop in that town rather than a building in a generic landclass tile.

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the highest definition cities had street level detail down to sale signs in shop windows.  We are to the point of complaining that the sale signs are not up to date. 🙂 

No matter what we thought the hype implied, you're never going to see that level of detail throughout the entire world.  I think most people understood that from the very beginning.

Hook

[tonywob 4,770]

Two other nice details I noticed: The houses at night have flickering TV screens and the lights in the rooms change throughout the night. 

[mazex 419]

53 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I don’t disagree that it has huge potential, but it was marketed as having achieved much of that potential for launch.  How long will it take for it to reach the level of polish shown in marketing material? A year, 5 years? Is that acceptable? It has a LONG ways to go to even get to that level From what I’ve seen. The marketing was very misleading in my opinion and the SIM is coming up short in many key visual aspects. 

Well - it seems like all the professional reviewers and most of the people here find it extremely visually pleasing. When flying over my small home town in Sweden at 2500 feet it darn well looks exactly as it does IRL from that altitude. The look and colors of the forests (extremely important for the overall "aerial picture"), the lakes, all the streets and buildings are where they should be. You can see the ocean at the horizon just as you should IRL from that altitude and it looks just right. But yes - when I go down to the house where I grew up it naturally is the wrong building type, and on the next street where my best friend lived the house is a two floor building instead of a one floor house. Does that take away from the fact that from an airplane perspective it looks almost prefect? I have spent hundreds of hours in the air above and around that town and looking quick you might think that it is an actual aerial photograph of the town. Yes - the football field next to my old school has a strange shade and a pier is submerged - but it is there! I have naturally flown over the town in all sims to date where it is possible. Not in one of them does it even look like it is Sweden you are flying over.

So as you are so disappointed in this failed product you should maybe go play XP11 where you can download the prefect ortho for your town of interest if you have the disk space. And you can get a better mesh as well. But the overall feeling of actually beeing in an aircraft over that town will never even be close to MSFS with all the other factors like lighting, shading, forests etc in my opinion. But there we don't agree as you think it will take them 5 years to do what the marketing has shown. I have not seen one screenshot from the marketing that is not what I see on my rather old computer.

See you in five years 😉

 

Edited August 26, 2020 by mazex