Some things have quietly improved since launch

[Bosco19 198]

Since it is "required" to fly over your own house after installing a new sim, I attempted to do just that after 2020's launch. I started from an airport 40 minutes away by car, out of which I flew for 10 years. The terrain and the airport were strikingly realistic, and I was able to follow familiar roads and highways. This helped assure that I would be flying to exactly the right location where my house was supposed to be. Bummer! When I arrived, not only was my house not there - the entire area, roads and buildings, were autogened, and looked nothing like the real area (which is well-populated, but rural). This evening I decided to try the same thing again and see if anything had changed. Sure enough, my house was there, along with all the correct roads, including the minor ones that wend around my small subdivision. Of course, my house didn't LOOK like my house. It seems that the sim cannot yet recognize stucco buildings with flat roofs! But to my surprise, my studio, which is a building separate from the house was there! At some time since launch, this entire area had been more correctly filled in. I flew over the nearest large town a few days back (Santa Fe, NM), and was stunned at the detail that had been added to the entire area. Seems I am the lucky recipient of a major visual upgrade! So, we are making progress, even if improvements to more out-of-the-way areas like mine are not noted in the updates. Good job Asobo!

[Janov 2,383]

Yep, that was a real ninja update - quiet and under the radar...😁

https://fselite.net/news/microsoft-flight-simulator-world-update-ii-usa-now-available/

 

[Fielder 3,635]

"Dworshak Dam".... ooh ooh

[Bosco19 198]

Yeah, I wondered if this had been part of the USA update. I’ve been away for awhile, and when I have flown, it was not in my local area, so any significant changes would not have been noticed. 

[Janov 2,383]

I think it would be likely that this was caused by the update. Yet it can´t be ruled out that Asobo does indeed also silently update parts of its scenery data as new Bing data becomes available.

Cheers, Jan

 

[JJ_ 40]

I noticed the same with the Dallas, TX area. After the initial release, this area looked bad. After the US update, the roads no longer looked green, but much of the area still had poor satellite imagery which is hard to understand since Bing has excellent satellite imagery of the area. I typically do a quick flight at sun-down and noticed a significant improvement this past weekend, so my best guess is that the Bing data we are using has been improved in this area. The downtown buildings and other landmarks still look like generic buildings, but it is being improved.

Note: KDFW detailed scenery update had a really bad FPS impact (ie. worse than New York City). I'll have to try it again in case they improved that too. It might just be wishful thinking though.

[andyjohnston.net 617]

My house has been there since launch.  But there was a terrain issue which made it so I could not see my brother's place.  After the USA update (I'm in Canada, so it wasn't stopped by the borders) I'm able to go there and it's exactly right.

[Bosco19 198]

My roads are still green and have the traffic running off-center

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

On 1/16/2021 at 8:07 AM, Janov said:

I think it would be likely that this was caused by the update. Yet it can´t be ruled out that Asobo does indeed also silently update parts of its scenery data as new Bing data becomes available.

Cheers, Jan

 

Since their data is streamed, there's no reason that world content updates need to be part of any client update.  These could easily have been improved on the fly. 

This would be an advantage of the streaming model over individually maintained gigabytes of data.