The real problem is the cost of getting new aerial imagery, and I'm not really expecting them to update their aerial imagery any time soon, but hopefully I'm wrong.

 

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Alpine Scenery

23 hours ago, W2DR said:

But for many of us who have several hundred hours in the real thing all this "immersion" stuff is a bit over done.

I’d disagree. I have thousands of hours and used to practice for my real world flights I hadn’t taken before with FS2002, FS9, and FSX. I couldn’t log my time, but with photoscenery, elevation mesh, custom airports, and better weather engines, I could get a pretty good representation of the flight, and be able to plan. Often that familiarity was key on the real flight.

MSFS2020 is an even better representation of the real world. With TrackIR and a large 4K screen, it’s pretty immersive.

Can’t wait to try out VR. 

2 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

The real problem is the cost of getting new aerial imagery, and I'm not really expecting them to update their aerial imagery any time soon, but hopefully I'm wrong.

 

They already did. Japan and USA updates got new imagery and elevation data.

23 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

They already did. Japan and USA updates got new imagery and elevation data.

The elevation data is worse than before, as I have several active and ongoing projects trying to correct it in the US. I am not aware of any new aerial imagery in any places I have flied, but I have not compared every corner of the US (only about 3/4th). They may have updated it in some places, not sure, but haven't seen much.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Alpine Scenery

14 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

The elevation data is worse than before, I know because I have several open projects correcting it. I am not aware of any new aerial imagery in any places I have flied, but I have not compared every corner of the US (only about 3/4th). They may have updated it in some places, not sure, but haven't seen much.

I noticed improved elevation on Japan and the USA. 
 

They have posted two pictures with the places they have updated the satellite imagery and the elevation data, for the USA update. Of course not the whole country has detailed elevation. Probably not available.

You can see it here:

https://www.flightsimulator.com/release-notes-1-11-5-0/
 

The most part of the west coast got new imagery, for example.

 

5 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

I noticed improved elevation on Japan and the USA. 
They have posted two pictures with the places they have updated the satellite imagery and the elevation data, for the USA update. Of course not the whole country has detailed elevation. Probably not available.

The most part of the west coast got new imagery, for example.

 

I have seen it, my ongoing project is correcting the Eastern US.

You can see at the link below, look at the # of elevation errors, there are about 9,000 in the Eastern US (yes - 9,000, I have them in my dev project).
I have corrected 6500 now, 2500 to go. Only 2 so far are uncorrectable.

https://flightsim.to/file/4402/elevation-fixes-eastern-us

I am well aware of the claims vs. the reality. As far as the actual increased DEM resolution, yes there is in some places, but in most cases it made it worse because they traded resolution for more errors.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Alpine Scenery

4 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

I have seen it, I had to correct the entire Eastern US.

You can see here, look at the # of elevation errors, there are 9,000 in the Eastern US (yes - 9,000, I have them in my dev project).

https://flightsim.to/file/4402/elevation-fixes-eastern-us

I am well aware of the claims vs. the reality.

Oh, you mean those holes, spikes, odd rivers. Yeah, I hope they find a way to fix or at least improve things. I was talking about a macro view of the elevation data.

By the way, congratulations on your work there.

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by ca_metal

Just now, ca_metal said:

Oh, you mean those holes, spikes, odd rivers. Yeah, I hope they find a way to fix or at least improve things. I was talking about on a more general matter, on a macro view of the elevation data.

By the way, congratulations on your work there.

Many places they claimed to have increased the resolution did not actually get increased, is what I am saying. The DEM is not being applied correctly, it's not just the new water errors, it's the entire way the mesh is used unfortunately. Also, the math isn't correct in the mountains, even if they really did apply the higher elevation data, it's not using it correctly in the steeper mountain areas. I don't want to sound negative, so I won't go into all of it. 

16 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

They have posted two pictures with the places they have updated the satellite imagery and the elevation data, for the USA update. Of course not the whole country has detailed elevation. Probably not available.

The entire US in higher DEM is available and has been for years, they didn't do it because of the amount of data is my guess, but it's actually a mystery as to why they even mixed different DEM resolutions in the same areas, to save bandwidth --- but it doesn't really make sense the way they did it. My guess is they started to do the entire US and realized their process was bugged, so they stopped it and are trying to fix it. There is even an auto-correction algorithm running in the background (and it's a bit problematic to say the least).

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by Alpine Scenery

2 hours ago, Alpine Scenery said:

The entire US in higher DEM is available and has been for years, they didn't do it because of the amount of data is my guess, but it's actually a mystery as to why they even mixed different DEM resolutions in the same areas, to save bandwidth --- but it doesn't really make sense the way they did it. My guess is they started to do the entire US and realized their process was bugged, so they stopped it and are trying to fix it. There is even an auto-correction algorithm running in the background (and it's a bit problematic to say the least).

Very interesting. And thanks for fixing all of those anomalies in SW Virginia.