I thought the world updates would be entire regions, and I thought the next world update is suppose to cover Europe but it's only UK only? So does this mean world updates will be for individual countries only and not entire regions, ie Asia, Europe, North America, Central America, Oceania, South America, etc?

I had hoped that they would update the areas that need it the most, Scandinavia really needs an update for example.

It's unlikely any updates would be large regions of the kind you mentioned; that would be a massive undertaking. For example, Asia comprises 48 individual countries, Europe encompasses 44 different nations, Africa has 54 separate countries, so these are huge areas geographically and many of them might not have great terrain data available anyway.

Making sure that much DEM data had no glitches on it, whilst simultaneously tarting-up five or so cities for each country included, along with some custom buildings, would mean they'd be looking at enhancing over 200 cities for each update, and I suspect that'd take a lot longer than the speed Asobo currently appear to be going at by just concentrating on smaller areas. It'd take a massive amount of time just to check the work, let alone actually do it.

Having said that, I could see they might conceivably treat Scandinavia as being one place for the purposes of an update, and let's be honest here, I bet loads of people actually think Scandinavia is a country anyway right? 

After all, it is only six countries in total, and that includes Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which aren't exactly littered with massive cities and airports all over them. Moreover, the forthcoming update is allegedly covering the UK and southern Ireland (albeit mostly around London it would seem). Technically that is four/five countries (although after today at the EU you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise lol), so clearly they are not always limiting updates to just one nation, although don't hold your breath waiting for a ton of detail in the major cities of Scotland and Wales, which is a shame because there are some really cool places to be found there.

Edited January 30, 20215 yr by Chock

I think UK and all of Ireland rather than just the UK part.

 

I assume they are doing countries rather than regions so they can do enough to make a 2 monthly update worthwhile. Even then people complain that not enough was added.

1 hour ago, Chock said:

don't hold your breath waiting for a ton of detail in the major cities of Scotland and Wales, which is a shame because there are some really cool places to be found there.

And in Norn Iron* too. There are some beautiful old buildings in Belfast which survived The Troubles. It's the only NI city I have spent a meaningful amount of time in so I can't speak for the others (Armagh, Lisburn, Derry/Londonderry, Newry being the other 4 with city status through Royal Charter). But they all have historical buildings of note.

(*Northern Ireland to the uninitiated)

As Glenn says above, people will never be happy with what gets added because the MSFS world will never be complete. I already know I won't be satisfied by the UK update as it won't address the areas I want to see given the special treatment, but that doesn't mean I won't appreciate that they've done something to enhance the base product. We can but dream that MSFS was a big enough project to justify having teams of people paid to improve their own dedicated areas of the world, all at the same time. On the other hand, I can imagine how that would break more than it fixed, judging by what the relatively small updates already do!😄

7 hours ago, 109Sqn said:

We can but dream that MSFS was a big enough project to justify having teams of people paid to improve their own dedicated areas of the world, all at the same time. On the other hand, I can imagine how that would break more than it fixed, judging by what the relatively small updates already do!😄

Given another 2-3 years and the right tools I think it's quite possible The People will have brought up most of the world to an incredibly high standard. 

What's needed are terraforming tools that aren't junk, a in SDK building generator/ editor and complete control over foliage and water. If those existed I would've already done my entire area and made sure it was near perfect. 

With what's available now I already know the final result won't be worth bothering with, or won't be possible at all, so there's no point in embarking on it. 

We had some tree surgery performed on our tree in the back garden a few months ago, and if this geographic change is not reflected in the UK update, I will be demanding a refund. 🤣

1 hour ago, Chock said:

We had some tree surgery performed

We (unfortunately) had several trees cut down, the latest involving our back garden being churned up so badly I'll need to plant a new lawn in the spring. if that's not faithfully recreated, with the grass growing over time...🤬

I would suspect that MS might base its world updates on the demographics of its user base.  It maybe that perhaps the next update might be, say the Belolux countries or the Iberian peninsular or something like that. I think Canada could well be on the list too.

One meaningful stat is the amount of mods on various sites per country, and there are a massively outsize amount for Scandinavia.

Obviously that's cos it's awful but there must be plenty of users there to make and want them. It's weird they haven't done anything to address how bad that is yet. It's hardly even been mentioned. 

The March world update is going to touch 4 countries: France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.

mind you 3 of those countries are small (relatively speaking, don’t hurt me)

Edited January 30, 20215 yr by Tuskin38

33 minutes ago, cianpars said:

It maybe that perhaps the next update might be, say the Belolux countries

It is, plus France. They revealed this in Wednesday’s Q&A

9 hours ago, 109Sqn said:

I already know I won't be satisfied by the UK update as it won't address the areas I want to see given the special treatment,

In this update yes, but they’ve said that the World Updates will not be one and done, there will be a US Update 2, a UK+Ireland Update 2 etc. in the future. When that will be, who knows, I’d imagine a few years down the line once more the world has been touched.

Edited January 30, 20215 yr by Tuskin38

59 minutes ago, 109Sqn said:

if that's not faithfully recreated, with the grass growing over time...🤬

At least your house is represented.  Mine was built in 2014 and does not exist in the sim, some of my neighbors are, mine is just an empty lot in the middle.  So I sadly park my plane there wondering the day it will be represented.  I write about it in my journal every night the sadness I feel.  The empty lot represents the empty place in my heart that one day may be filled by updated data.

Seriously though, over 6 years of outdated data is pretty bad in my opinion.

Edited January 30, 20215 yr by Brandon01110

To be honest for countries with dense population and crazy number of cities such as China or India, I don't even think they could cover the whole country in one go. It could well be certain region(s) of that country each time or they will wait till 2029 when they have enough data and boom, a 50GB update that may break everything.