I noticed that the tall antenna farm in Dayton, OH is entirely missing in MSFS. It is over 1000' high, and is the single most flight hazard in this area. Anyone else missing towers? 

 

 

 

Oh there are a lot of things missing. Day 10 of release going to take a few more hours to have everything on the earth fixed.  🙂

Zen desk it!

I miss high tension power lines more than antennas as a flight hazard. That's a danger to both helicopters (when we get them) and any VFR pilot crazy enough to "scud run" under a low overcast to make the destination. Been there, done that a few times. Check the accident reports and there are many light GA aircraft hung up in power lines. Not so much the towers themselves, or radio towers.

Of course power lines are only a real hazard in the sim if they have a collision detection box, which may not be practical due to frame rate. They're in XP11 but don't trigger collisions. But at least it's an "Oh ****!) moment if you cross one visually in the sim.

I think after all the noise about tree heights they probably just decided that 30 feet was  a max height for most autogen objects.

I havent seen a water tower yet and some 24 story buildings are 3 stories tall in sim.  The trees in my area are actually slightly too short but Im OK with it.

Edited August 29, 20205 yr by sightseer

 

How can Microsoft neglect to include stuff that is already in the FAA obstacle database? Their precise heights and lighting information are already available for free. That's shocking to me.

 

17 minutes ago, alphasierraq said:

 

How can Microsoft neglect to include stuff that is already in the FAA obstacle database? Their precise heights and lighting information are already available for free. That's shocking to me.

 

They seem to have issues with rendering metal girdered structures without doing it manually so likely for time and manpower reasons it was just left out.  The alternative is the P3D or FSX just sprinkle randomly style...

Edited August 29, 20205 yr by pjs37

I was informed before release that there are no towers in game. There's a thread about it somewhere, but in any case, it's a real shame since that effects your ability to use RW VFR planning techniques.

1 hour ago, pjs37 said:

The alternative is the P3D or FSX just sprinkle randomly style...

Have you flown in FSX or P3D?  I've got several thousand hours flying P3D navigating by real world charts from skyvector.com and radio towers are a major navigation aid for me.  In all that time I can count on one hand the number of towers that are either missing or in the wrong position.

Since I've been flying MSFS I've found enough errors in the charts that I suspect any radio tower problems mentioned above were actually chart errors, not errors in P3D.

Not having towers in MSFS (or anything else in the hazards.bgl file) really surprised me.  I'm just hoping we get them at some point.  You may be right about the graphics, but it's possible they just don't have the right models for radio towers and such.

Hook

49 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Have you flown in FSX or P3D? 

I never flew P3D I just assumed it used the same system as FSX; FSX I remember trying to find the ones I knew about in my area but they were not always there but I was younger and less into VFR flight and I remember generally running with AutoGen off or low just to get it to run so I will admit that I have not thoroughly explored the placement of radio masts in FSX.  I moved on to X-Plane 10 and then 11.  I think the chief problem is still they need to model them all and that takes a lot of time.  People won't be happy with just a 300' generic red and white mast.

56 minutes ago, pjs37 said:

People won't be happy with just a 300' generic red and white mast.

Having a generic mast is the absolutely least of our worries given what the generic airport beacons look like.

In P3D the radio towers looked good but if examined closely were thicker than real life scale.  This was no problem as it made them more visible and would produce less shimmer when seen in the distance.

I don't think people would be too happy with a generic water tower though, given the large number of different types in the real world.  I'd rather have a generic water tower than not have anything at all though.

We're also missing stacks on factories, something that P3D did well.

Hook

23 minutes ago, LHookins said:

Having a generic mast is the absolutely least of our worries given what the generic airport beacons look like.

In P3D the radio towers looked good but if examined closely were thicker than real life scale.  This was no problem as it made them more visible and would produce less shimmer when seen in the distance.

I don't think people would be too happy with a generic water tower though, given the large number of different types in the real world.  I'd rather have a generic water tower than not have anything at all though.

We're also missing stacks on factories, something that P3D did well.

Hook

Water towers are there for Photogrammetry cities at least. We have one painted red and white and it shows up in game

14 minutes ago, joec63 said:

Water towers are there for Photogrammetry cities at least. We have one painted red and white and it shows up in game

Heh!  I'm sure.  I haven't spent much time in photogrammetry cities.

The last time I saw a water tower it was painted on the ground.  I also saw the base and shadows of some microwave towers, which look different from normal radio towers.

Just gimme the 3D towers, would ya Asobo? 😄   It's kinda hard to see the image of the towers on the ground from a distance.

Hook

Anyone know if they will be adding antenna's or radio towers that show on the sectionals? They did have them in FSX in the U.S. or was that ORBX that done that. Can't remember.  But I definitely see them on the sectionals with skyvector showing up in FSX.

 

                                                          Happy Landings,

 

Per the latest developer Q&A they plan to add obstacles, wind turbines are already in the sim in some areas.