How to quickly import Google photogrammetry

[psolk 3,057]

On 10/7/2020 at 10:25 AM, Keto Ketchup said:

My problem is that Google photogrammetry isn't processed, so you also import baked-in shadows and cars.

hehe, Google has my real race car and truck in the driveway in front of the house in their imagery so that's a bonus for me LOL...     

[UAL4life 240]

On 10/7/2020 at 8:25 AM, Keto Ketchup said:

My problem is that Google photogrammetry isn't processed, so you also import baked-in shadows and cars.

I’ve seen baked in shadows on Vanilla’s too!

[Keto Ketchup 240]

21 minutes ago, UAL4life said:

I’ve seen baked in shadows on Vanilla’s too!

One of my problems with photogrammetry in general is that tall, packed-in buildings (skyscrapers in a city) are way too dark compared to IRL. I suspect this is because the photogrammetry was taken when those buildings were in shadow, and when the sun swings around in MFS, everything looks too dark and "wrong". You also get baked-in reflections in glass buildings, etc. This is why hand-crafted cities are still my preference (at least hand-crafted skyscrapers mixed in with photogrammetry houses, roads, shopping plazas, etc).

[Shack95 2,665]

3 hours ago, Keto Ketchup said:

I wonder what would be cheaper, for Microsoft to update Bing Maps with new aerial photography and photogrammetry, or to lease the data from either Google or Apple and either sunset Bing Maps entirely or just make BM a "reskin" of GM / AM (kinda like DuckDuckGo is for search).

As far as I understood it Google and Apple don‘t own the aerial imagery but buy it from third parties, same as Bing. Apparently they bought better imagery for many places. Theoretically Bing Maps could have the same quality.

3 hours ago, Keto Ketchup said:

My fear is that Microsoft won't do anything, and the current quilt of mismatched quality that is today's Bing Maps will remain that way forever, meaning my home state will always be subpar in MFS.

I used to share your fear, but since the Japan update and the devs’ clarifications concerning world updates I‘m much more optimistic. They already acquired better mesh, imagery and photogrammetry for Japan and more updates are planned. 

Edited October 11, 2020 by Shack95

[omarsmak30 4,068]

I am starting to not like the idea of importing full photogrammetry cities from Google Maps without any optimizations, due to potential performance issues and the heavy use on the RAM and VRAM. Sure, I did actually imported few landmarks for my Dusseldorf scenery which the whole thing was like between 150mb and 200mb and I have been reluctant on adding more landmarks due to potential performance issues that I don't want to cause.

I was really surprised seeing now in flightsim.to full photogrammetry cities with gigabytes of size without any LOD optimizations, especially with such a tool that makes the whole thing super easy to import, this is going to be annoying with users will complain about the performance and wonder why the sim CTDs when the RAM is almost exploding. 

This is just my opinion on this.