38 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I have no idea why you quoted my post here. I can do all of the things that you mention above in P3D with TrueEarth GB South installed, but I have never claimed that the new Microsoft Flight Simulator looks like FSX. I am not trying to start any arguments here. That is not my style. All I am saying is that I have a very realistic rendition of the UK in P3D (though by no means perfect), so I do not need to replace it with another one at this moment in time.

but thats only the uk, if you are content with only flying there, no need to change indeed.

but i like to fly the whole world in high resolution.

1 hour ago, lambourne said:

 

FSX and P3D after that is like flying over themed bedroom wallpaper.

One could say the same about flying through a 2d monitor in 2020 overall after flying in VR, so what's the point?🙃

Different strokes for different folks...why not respect everyone's method of simming.

Edited November 26, 20205 yr by blueshark747

Sort of looking forward to this. Some of the UK scenery is actually pretty much okay, though I couldn't help but notice flying up the NE coast of Scotland from Inverness to Wick, where there should be cliffs, the field pattern texture was simply spilling over the edge down to the sea level.

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

@Chock, I don’t have MSFS but was watching a YT video yesterday and the author was landing on 23R in an A320neo. What we’re all those office blocks where Heald Green is? I hardly recognised it.

As I understand it, what the software is doing, is photogrammetry but with considerably less data than Google has for it's Google Earth application, so with limited geographical data and probably no drive-by views of the place such as Google have done with their 'street view' cars, the program is no doubt reading Heald Green as an urban area with industrial buildings, near an airport, and so coming up with the equation that the industrial buildings it can see on aerial views from Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 imagery must be of a certain height when in fact they are probably low-rise industrial steel frame sheds.

It is probably something MS will invest in to allow it to get better, but as is always the case with the UK as far as many people from abroad are concerned, once you get twenty miles north of London, you might as well put up a sign saying 'here be dragons', because that is many people from other nations' perception of the UK if it isn't London.

I do know that you can gauge the height of things with other means, for example analysing the length of shadows from buildings or using slant-view data from satellite images to make a pretty good guess about the height of objects. An interesting application of that technique if you have really good resolution satellite resources, was when the US intelligence services were analysing the compound where they suspected Osama Bin Laden was hiding - one of the reasons they were fairly certain he was there, was from analysing the top-down satellite image view of a man who was obviously someone important in the place from how others reacted to him, who regularly exercised alone in the yard of the compound, and who was somewhat taller than the average person in that region, which is a description that fitted Bin Laden.

From that, combined with other intelligence gathering, the CIA reckoned with about 60 percent certainty that he was in that compound, which was enough to greenlight the CIA operation Neptune Spear effort to assassinate Bin Laden, which as we know was successful apart from the mishap with a stealthed version of the UH-60 Blackhawk colliding with the compound wall then crashing into the compound from getting into a VRS descent fortunately with no casualties among those on board, but subsequently having to be destroyed with demolition charges, but with the tailboom and fancy tail-rotor failing to burn completely, revealing its hitherto unknown stealthy secrets somewhat.

 

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by Chock

13 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

I have no idea why you quoted my post here. I can do all of the things that you mention above in P3D with TrueEarth GB South installed, but I have never claimed that the new Microsoft Flight Simulator looks like FSX. I am not trying to start any arguments here. That is not my style. All I am saying is that I have a very realistic rendition of the UK in P3D (though by no means perfect), so I do not need to replace it with another one at this moment in time.

I saw your wish list on Ireland etc and worked out it would cost way more than MSFS. Ireland is wonderful and the UK is wonderful, but you get the rest of the world thrown in, the weather in MSFS is stunning. I just smile and think of what your missing and it also would run better than what you use on your PC. Your loss. Like I say for far less than you wish list of just Ireland.

When I do one of my now countless GA VFR any where I wish, I do offend think of you above most would love this sim so much. But it seems you cannot see the woods for the trees. Keep telling yourself what you have is best and I will keep that smile on my face every time I do a UK/Ireland flight and think, yes your right! this sim is I real step down 😉. Enjoy what you have because you have no idea what your missing. Sadly.

I also by now know all of the above was a waste of breath. But as long as your enjoying what you have, that's all that matters.

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by Nyxx

@Chock, thanks for that extensive reply. I imagine the photogrammetry will be improved over time but it was disappointing to see it rendered so far from my expectations. The other point I meant to mention was 23R appeared to be as flat as a pancake. You know as well as me that it has a hump in the first third before falling away with the SW end of 23R being 37ft lower than the NE end. Why is that not modelled? Another fix required?

Zero Dark Thirty is one of my favourite films. It covered the details you meantioned about gauging the height of an individual from their shadow. Time for another watch I think. 👍

15 hours ago, martinr8 said:

I would be more than happy if the worked on the flight models, performance issues and other bugs first before taking care of one world update after the other. Otherwise this may end up as a screenshot simulator, but that might be the plan anyway.

I really don't understand this way of thinking that seems so common among forum complaints. Yes, there are bugs to fix, and we all want them to focus on that. But the world updates are something that is mostly handled by external companies / teams. The pictures used to create photogrammetry are taken by small enterprises focussed on aerial photography, they have to fly when the weather is good. Jörg Neumann said they were very active at this in the summer on the northern hemisphere, so you realise this has to be scheduled a looong time in advance. Then it takes a while before the data is processed into the photogrammetric datasets. Then airports are created by 3rd party developers that have been around in FSX already or even earlier. 

What would you have them do? Tell them: Sorry, this year you don't get to take aerial photos for us, because we have bugs to fix? Sorry bing, stop improving your maps, because our autopilot is still messed up? Sorry Gaya, we promised you'd create some airports for us, we'll pay you next year? 

This doesn't give them one single free developer for fixing more bugs - you have to be experienced with the codebase to do so, it wouldn't even help to hire more developers as they need some time to get up to speed with an existing project. The only thing this would achieve is delaying world updates, and disgruntle your business partners because they can't rely on your planning.

I'm excited to hear Blackshark is working on implementing procedural churches! That's something I miss when flying VFR. I hope it won't just be exclusive for the UK.

I'm thinking about getting the London Landmarks. Is it a good idea now that an update is coming?

Just now, DJJose said:

I'm thinking about getting the London Landmarks. Is it a good idea now that an update is coming?

Nobody knows for sure, ask again in January 😉 I'd probably wait for the world update and then decide whether or not it's good enough for my needs. But I don't fly much in the UK anyway - this might change though when/if they release photogrammetric data for London. On the other hand, it's just EUR 5,99. It may well be worth it for the 2 months until the world update arrives.

 

28 minutes ago, pstrub said:

Nobody knows for sure, ask again in January 😉 I'd probably wait for the world update and then decide whether or not it's good enough for my needs. But I don't fly much in the UK anyway - this might change though when/if they release photogrammetric data for London. On the other hand, it's just EUR 5,99. It may well be worth it for the 2 months until the world update arrives.

 

It's 30% off right now. About $6 US.

6 hours ago, Nyxx said:

I saw your wish list on Ireland etc and worked out it would cost way more than MSFS. Ireland is wonderful and the UK is wonderful, but you get the rest of the world thrown in, the weather in MSFS is stunning. I just smile and think of what your missing and it also would run better than what you use on your PC. Your loss. Like I say for far less than you wish list of just Ireland.

When I do one of my now countless GA VFR any where I wish, I do offend think of you above most would love this sim so much. But it seems you cannot see the woods for the trees. Keep telling yourself what you have is best and I will keep that smile on my face every time I do a UK/Ireland flight and think, yes your right! this sim is I real step down 😉. Enjoy what you have because you have no idea what your missing. Sadly.

I also by now know all of the above was a waste of breath. But as long as your enjoying what you have, that's all that matters.

 

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by IanHarrison
Would not be appreciated

1 hour ago, DJJose said:

It's 30% off right now. About $6 US.

There EGLC and London land marks make a great pair. Stunning.

@Nyxx I was running Horizon VFR Gen X England and Wales (which includes 5m mesh) plus Treescapes in P3Dv4 so I can understand @Christopher Low's point; TrueEarth is similar to what I had but you get 3D buildings too. It really does look quite nice and arguably more accurate than MFS in its current state, with a lot more VRP and POIs.

MFS imagery is a much better resolution and far more up to date than the ancient Gen X I was running (TE fixes that though), but the big gain is MFS runs a lot smoother and the lighting and clouds are streets ahead. Oh and as it's streamed from the cloud you don't need bags of hard drive space (TE GB is 94 GB).

MFS UK scenery is far from perfect though, the mesh at present is rather lacklusture (certainly around the Peak District hills I know). But the worst issue is iour national parks are full of 6 storey blocks of flats, almost every farm is rendered as apartment block complex so I am hoping they will fix this as it really detracts from the rural flying experience. I know they are adding churches which is important as every village and town has one, but transmission masts (or just obstructions in general) would be very useful as a navigation aid. TE GB already includes VRPs and we really need those for VFR navigation. Power lines would be nice too, the FSX PowerProject managed to do that for free many years ago so the data definitely exists.

Edited November 27, 20205 yr by ckyliu

13 hours ago, Chock said:

As I understand it, what the software is doing, is photogrammetry but with considerably less data than Google has for it's Google Earth application, so with limited geographical data and probably no drive-by views of the place such as Google have done with their 'street view' cars, the program is no doubt reading Heald Green as an urban area with industrial buildings, near an airport, and so coming up with the equation that the industrial buildings it can see on aerial views from Landsat 7 and Landsat 8 imagery must be of a certain height when in fact they are probably low-rise industrial steel frame sheds.

@Ray Proudfoot There is no photogrammetry data for Bing or MFS in the UK aside from Portsmouth/Southampton. MFS uses Blackshark AI to look at the aerial imagery and generate outlines of buildings and roof types, height data relies on mapping such as OpenStreet Maps. Building type I believe is a mixture of what Blackshark rekons and what mapping data they have available, and obviously hasn't worked well as every farm I fly over is a 6 storey block of flats. This explains why Australia famously had a very tall building in the middle of nowhere, there was a typo in the mapping data!