Seems to that interfacing FSX with GoogleMap would cause the sim to run slower.

I agree that is what FSX should have been. But hopefully the next release will take advantage of what Microsoft has to offer.

Very very cool!One thing I have read is that the MSN service has very liberal licensing for commercial developers, as in free (who knows...maybe a lesson learned for FS :) ). Now I can't say if what you're doing is actually permitted under the developer

Very impressive. Nice Work!Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

I shall give you one more screen shot of the latest experiment with 1024x1024 pixel tiles at roughly 1m/pixel resolution. The loading performance is abysmal, the simulator can't keep up with the demand for loading ground texture in realtime . I've definitely hit some hard limits there. Again this image is at a quarter of the original resolution, I play at 1920x1200 and the ground scenery appears very crisp.In this shot you see that the built in FSX ground objects are actually detrimental to the realism - notice how the stadium spoils everything. Very cool is that you can even discern individual cars at that resolution. The photorealism is quite stunning. Some ground detail got lost just by downscaling the image for this forum. ;-)Airport ground texture appears as extremely ugly because it just hides the photo scenery and appears in a monotonous color. Is there a way to globally disable all default (non photo terrain) airport ground textures, except for runways?Christianhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/162288.jpg

Wow .. those shots look much better than I had expected when i first read the thread title. That's interesting stuff ... I am sure Google would be interested in talking about some sort of commercial add-on for FS that uses their map data. There's probably alot of extensibility in a product like that so, no doubt, lots of sales to be made to repeat customers.Cool stuff and great job.Triangle

Looks neat, but I suppose flying at night is a no-go as is flying in any season other than summer.This is the future though. I like it :-)Bryan

This is a hoax isn't it? Looks like an aircraft pasted overtop of a GE screen capture. Noel

I'll eat my hat when GE looks that good.

That looks very impressive! Great work!Might this be the wave of the future?

(Google Earth)Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

I found this while looking for something else:http://fsearth.fsutil.com/Seems like someone is doing something similar, but maby they have a valid license or something. Could be worth investigating how they got that (if they have one) if you want to go ahead and make a competing product.

The difference is that they use the official Google Earth client application and interface with it through published APIs, while my program takes a back door to Google's data and directly imports texture (no elevation data or 3D buildings though) into FSX.

Interesting use of Samba. The developer of Samba, Andrew Tridgewell, was best man at my son's weddding last Saturday. I must let him know that someone has found a use for his creation in flight simulation.Bruceb

I would like to see a cockpit view....Herrie