it makes completely obvious that no mesh/landclass/texture combination will ever be able to compete with that...

I wish you the best of luck and hope that they throw you a couple of millions and that this will be in the next FSX patch :)Just hope that the satelite pictures of Sweden in MS/Google satelite maps are as sharp as the onces used in online phone/adress search directorys (1 M/pixel resolution).

Wow, just wow. Excellent work!

JustFreakingIncredible'Course, it incites the little envious beast inside me, but meh, watcha gonna do :)

I spent the first 16 years of my life in San Diego and did cfi training out there-you are making me drool. I can't wait for this-thank you for looking into it!edit-I have all kinds of similar shots from my cfi training of the various sights you are showing-if you want some to do some compares I can send you them...http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Why are realistic comments deemed negative? I'm glad the work is being done but because I point out the obvious issues such as:1. Steaming is very bad idea with current bandwidth/back bone (in the US at least) -- ok for a few people, but start adding 1000's or 100,000's and the back bone will come to a halt at any moderately nice texture resolutions. I mean our current local hard drives can't even keep up with what FSX provides and those run at 200MB/sec -- a 1-6Mbps bandwidth broadband/DSL connection doesn't stand a chance -- not to mention the "cluster" servers that would be need to house this.2. What are you gonna do when your internet connection goes down?3. Notice use of low speed aircraft/helicopters.4. Satelite source images can be as far as 5-10 years out of date in many regions.5. To crisp in terms of terrain in the far distance (it looks cartoony with no blending) -- terrain that far away just isn't that crisp regardless of the weather or location.This is great for technology demo and who knows it might actually provide some innovation to the Aces Dev team (which they desparately need). But for real application in a real world this is nothing more than "that's cool".Rob.

Christian, I gotta tell you, my weekend has been almost completely consumed by getting my own version of this to work.I was going to finish up TrackerX and do another tutorial, and instead I'm poking code that I know is this close to working.

See my other post.We just don't have (at least in the US) the network infrastructure to support this, we would need a major breakthru in broadband/DSL/Satellite technology for this to be a reality.I know the images from my area (SF/Bay Area) are 6 years out of date. Since all images must be taken from a "clear" day, you can see the challenge of putting together this image -- it has been done, but required images spanning several different years.The color correction should not be a problem, tools exist today that can correct -- just have to crunch all the images.But shadows will be hard to overcome, you could be flying along with a North sun and an East shadow -- not terribly realistic.Where I think this technology might go is a combination of accurate distance data (terrain mesh that includes buildings, trees, etc.) combine with image data then processed by a application (as yet to be coded) that can take the shadows, the mesh data, and the images to extrapolate true 3D objects. Once you've got your 3D objects then it is easy to blend, shadow, and manage number of objects to produce a much more conviencing world to fly in. I think this is ultimately where this technology demo will end up.Streaming even more data over an already maxed out Internet is just a bad idea -- add on top of that the debate over "Free Internet" and bandwidth restrictions based on how much money you can afford to buy...I can't see a infrastructure to support the streaming approach.Rob.

>Why are realistic comments deemed negative? I'm glad the>work is being done but because I point out the obvious issues>such as:>>1. Steaming is very bad idea with current bandwidth/back bone>(in the US at least) -- ok for a few people, but start adding>1000's or 100,000's and the back bone will come to a halt at>any moderately nice texture resolutions. I mean our current>local hard drives can't even keep up with what FSX provides>and those run at 200MB/sec -- a 1-6Mbps bandwidth>broadband/DSL connection doesn't stand a chance -- not to>mention the "cluster" servers that would be need to house>this.>>2. What are you gonna do when your internet connection goes>down?>>3. Notice use of low speed aircraft/helicopters.>>4. Satelite source images can be as far as 5-10 years out of>date in many regions.>>5. To crisp in terms of terrain in the far distance (it looks>cartoony with no blending) -- terrain that far away just isn't>that crisp regardless of the weather or location.>>This is great for technology demo and who knows it might>actually provide some innovation to the Aces Dev team (which>they desparately need). But for real application in a real>world this is nothing more than "that's cool".>So what....As with flight simming in general, it's all a compromise!We don't really fly at our desktops, we have a pause button, and real life topography & land-class data-bases very greatly across the world, even if not using satellite imagery!Why keep painting a completely negative picture of the situation, when the ideas presented in this thread were never intended for complete global simulation, anyway!Besides, I can see numerous applications where this can be very beneficial for real applications in a real world!Oh, I forgot, you're just anti FSX to start with... :-roll L.Adamson

Actually, I know that a number of gaming and technology companies are looking into streaming data as a solution for rapidly growing games.

You know what's REALLY bringing the Internet down?1) BitTorrent2) SPAM3) YoutubeA few thousand flightsimmers will hardly make a dent. If something clogs the tubes, it will be definitely not us.

I have posted on this before...but never here...reviewing all the posts...I really beleive the future is here....all the negativity about the auto gen...ect...well thats just silly...You do what we do in FSX...you have the auto gen,, weather, special effects, and what ever else to dummy down the scenery.... on the game...disk...and use it to cover that which isnt covered in the origianl scenery...Look at Atlanta in Virtual Earth...you can see the Jackson sculpture in rock mountain..(Im not sure of the name)...Its amazing...I spent a day last week SLEWING over Europe Yosemity, and India with my 360 controller and the mountain ranges are miles ahead of what we have in FSX,,,,and the frame rates ...well enouph saidIf you dont like stock auto gen...well turn the slider left...If you want haze..move the hsze slider right .....(these specific sliders can be developed to acheive the realism of the hard core flyers....Have the settings and effects on the origianl disk..then let the 3rd party developers go muts like they do on Google earth....If you want a less specific distance line ...move the "Horizon line fuzzyness" slider to the left...I (like most newbies) want eye candy....right now I have a pentium 4 3.3G and Im at 5 FPS in Seattle. AFTER TWEEKING and Milwaukee (my home) wasnt even a half hearted attempt at getting it close.Like I said in my other post...... SEEMS SO OBVIOUSJareth

>Why are realistic comments deemed negative? I'm glad the>work is being done but because I point out the obvious issues>such as:Most of your comments are not realistic. They are just negative.>1. Steaming is very bad idea with current bandwidth/back bone>(in the US at least) -- ok for a few people, but start adding>1000's or 100,000's and the back bone will come to a halt at>any moderately nice texture resolutions. Please.....Do you really thing this technology would bring the internet in the US to a halt? That's hilarious.The only valid technical hurdle worth mentioning is the limited download speeds at the end user. But Google Earth is able to stream high resolution imagery plenty fast enough for a flight simulator environment, so maybe bandwidth is not even an issue.The whole point is that this is an innovative technology and I'd bet money that we'll see it implemented (either directly by MS or by a 3rd party) within the next 5-6 years, if not much much sooner. Matt

>>You know what's REALLY bringing the Internet down?>>1) BitTorrent>2) SPAM>3) Youtube>>A few thousand flightsimmers will hardly make a dent. If>something clogs the tubes, it will be definitely not us.>1 and 2 (along with other P2P services) probably account for 60-75% of all internet traffic. And probably less then 1% of all internet users are responsible for 75% of the traffic. So ya, I hardly think us flightsimmers dowloading a gig or two of scenery every now and then are going to break the internet.Matt

Hi there!I find this is trully amazing technology and hope it takes off.If download "on the run" is a problem, why would it not be possible to link the download with a flightplan and download only a "corridor" of data...that surely can be pre cached and reduces the amount of data that needs to be accessed, wouldn't it?Great work!Keep it up and God blessAlfred!