1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

Well hopefully we won't need such a big Custom Scenery folder because the scenery will already be included in the sim as default.

Erm... Well we'll see. *cough*

18 minutes ago, peroni said:

For example as of today a snowy runway and environment in default XP 11.53 looks like this.

This really speaks for itself.

50 minutes ago, mSparks said:

This video gets deleted on the org (pretty much disinformation central these days), but pretty much answers any question you might have

~40 mins for hiring artists from eastern europe

Just after that for "make plans for what to do after 11.5X"

Oh yeah, that one. That's where he says "satellite scenery sounds good in theory, but in practice it just doesnt work out well" - when people were using ortho with great results in his own sim for years. Oooof.

12 minutes ago, rka said:

when people were using ortho with great results in his own sim for years. Oooof.

Because: it was designed to.

He's right tho, the is no way you can AI stuff like this

out of satellite imagery.

Just now, mSparks said:

Because: it was designed to.

He's right tho, the is no way you can AI stuff like this

out of satellite imagery.

He's not saying that you can't AI flying planes on ortho pics. He's saying what I quoted in my comment.

And I'm saying the graphics in peronis screenshot do not "work out better" than the graphics in your screenshot.

4 minutes ago, rka said:

peronis screenshot do not "work out better" than the graphics in your screenshot.

Oh, they do - now:

In fact they have - for a while:

 

Edited June 29, 20214 yr by mSparks

1 hour ago, rka said:

And I'm saying the graphics in peronis screenshot do not "work out better" than the graphics in your screenshot.

If we are talking about what an "engine is capable for" then Xplane, in it's current state out of the box is underwhelming. 

Byt the system can go to a resolution of people walking on curbs, regional scenery is easily controllable by simple library text files. Really what it mostly lack is an art team and I'm eager to see the Eastern European guys work.

What Xplane is really missing in the rendering pipe-line are tessellation, seasons and displacements shaders, IMO. With some fancy art work it's a jaw dropper, @mSparks video speaks for what can be achieved by procedural scenery, all scalable on the fly that will render at 60fps even with an RTX2000 series.

As for scenery accuracy the data they use is still real, however, and where the data fails, the most interesting thing that recently happened is WED2.4 with the ability to fully edit autogen, roads, bridges and everything scenery related excluding mesh. I suspect this speaks for the future, as they also did mention new art assets for autogen in the future and the new WED abilities will make into the gateway once Xplane is ready for that.

And that's the point, flight simulation still isn't there yet in terms of terrain rendering, MSFS is a big jump forward but for terrain rendering, at least IMO, there are better ways than using decals on a mushy satellite imagery. 

 

Edited June 29, 20214 yr by akita

Autogen and procedural gen is nice when you're doing fantasy scenarios. In simulation, a rendition that takes reality into account as far as possible would clearly be preferable IMO.

The amount of optical realism which the competing product offers will be very hard to even match by improved autogen, and clearly not surpassed. 

I really wouldn't put such high hopes into the effect which a few new houses and trees would have in the overall impression of the product, I suspect you're in for a disappointment.

 

48 minutes ago, rka said:

Autogen and procedural gen is nice when you're doing fantasy scenarios.

Clearly not surpassed.

Do you even know what "procedural" means? it's a general texture technique. It has nothing to do with accuracy, it's goal is to create and blend high resolution PBR materials (what photo-realism ACTUALLY means in rendering).

People who conflict both have little idea, and they are merely quoting something they read somewhere else .

MSFS is procedural, i.e. aims to mask low quality bing photos, is it not accurate?

What makes for accuracy is the available data, and if a gateway system for autogen can be done just like airports, in the long term it may beat any available data source, even bing.

Edited June 30, 20214 yr by akita

25 minutes ago, akita said:

Do you even know what "procedural" means? it's a general texture technique. It has nothing to do with accuracy, it's goal is to create and blend high resolution PBR materials (what photo-realism ACTUALLY means in rendering).

People who conflict both have little idea, and they are merely quoting something they read somewhere else .

MSFS is procedural, i.e. aims to mask low quality bing photos, is it not accurate?

What makes for accuracy is the available data, and if a gateway system for autogen can be done just like airports, in the long term it may beat any available data source, even bing.

Two paragraphs of insults, nice.

Do you really believe MSFS considers it's autogen the selling point? Or might that be the photogrammetry? Which XP will not even attempt to achieve?

Good luck for your waiting, just gotta hang in there long term. Stay strong!

57 minutes ago, rka said:

Two paragraphs of insults, nice.

You have to be kidding me right now...WOW, just..WOW. 2021 ladies and gentlemen, where people want to see what they want to see. You are insulted, sorry, but your choice, my comment had nothing insulting in it. deal with it alone.

I think at this point it's rather obvious you are not even fully reading the comments as suggested with a ridiculous accusation but also the rest of the comment NOT even remotely close to what I claimed. But do tell me, where did I: "believe MSFS considers it's autogen the selling point?"

SIGH

 

Edited June 30, 20214 yr by akita

1 hour ago, akita said:

MSFS is procedural, i.e. aims to mask low quality bing photos, is it not accurate?

MSFS uses the bing maps as the source, where procedural objects have to be placed. Aerial imagery as a data source is far superior over any other datasource. Without the imagery as baseline, you ever only get "how it could look like". But never how it really looks like. There simply exists no other global database as complete and detail rich as aerial images.

Aerial images allow to extract buildings, building heigth and shape, building type, roof color and orientation, stonewalls, trees, hedges, alleys, parks, vegetation, vegetation type, meadows vs crop, cultivated vs. uncultivated land, type of cultivations, roads, trains, telephone lines, powerlines, type of shorelines, water, rocky vs grassy, type of rocky, deer trails, dryland vs marsh, type of marsh, type of dryland and so on.

Good luck with getting these things right without aerial images as baseline. It is impossible. Case closed.

29 minutes ago, akita said:

You have to be kidding me right now...WOW, just..WOW. 2021 ladies and gentlemen, where people want to see what they want to see. You are insulted, sorry, but your choice, my comment had nothing insulting in it. deal with it alone.

I think at this point it's rather obvious you are not even fully reading the comments as suggested with a ridiculous accusation but also the rest of the comment NOT even remotely close to what I claimed. But do tell me, where did I: "believe MSFS considers it's autogen the selling point?"

SIGH

 

What's your issue, pal? You claimed

Quote

in the long term it may beat any available data source, even bing.

and you're being told no, it won't. I suggest you deal with it alone 😉

19 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

MSFS uses the bing maps as the source, where procedural objects have to be placed. Aerial imagery as a data source is far superior over any other datasource. Without the imagery as baseline, you ever only get "how it could look like". But never how it really looks like. There simply exists no other global database as complete and detail rich as aerial images.

Aerial images allow to extract buildings, building heigth and shape, building type, roof color and orientation, stonewalls, trees, hedges, alleys, parks, vegetation, vegetation type, meadows vs crop, cultivated vs. uncultivated land, type of cultivations, roads, trains, telephone lines, powerlines, type of shorelines, water, rocky vs grassy, type of rocky, deer trails, dryland vs marsh, type of marsh, type of dryland and so on.

Good luck with getting these things right without aerial images as baseline. It is impossible. Case closed.

  So... QED. Just what I said: Accurate scenery and procedural scenery, are NOT contradicting terms.

But also, how a *2d* aerial imagery, can have data about building heights or anything *3d*... you NEED other 3d sources, like mesh, like photogrammetry or building heights.

And literally all the different data categories you mentioned are available, even for free, for many locations.

16 minutes ago, rka said:

What's your issue, pal? You claimed

and you're being told no, it won't. I suggest you deal with it alone 😉

First I'm happy to see that this "I'm insulted" phase of yours is over, but still not even remotely close to my comment:

1) My claim was: community gateway engagement can beat bing data.

2) And then you came with: "Do you really believe MSFS considers it's autogen the selling point". aimed to debunk mine.

Please do explain the relationship between #1 and #2.

Edited June 30, 20214 yr by akita

3 minutes ago, akita said:

  So... QED. Just what I said: Accurate scenery and procedural scenery, are NOT contradicting terms.

But also, how a *2d* aerial imagery, can have data about building heights or anything *3d*...

And literally all the different data categories you mentioned are available, even for free, for many locations.

First I'm happy to see that this "I'm insulted" phase of yours is over, but still not even remotely close to my comment:

1) My claim was: community gateway engagement can beat bing data.

2) And then you came with: "Do you really believe MSFS considers it's autogen the selling point". aimed to debunk mine.

Please do explain the relationship between #1 and #2.

If you think letting the users do all the work (lol) in a gateway leads to XPs autogen improving so much that it beats MSFS in visual realism, I'm asking (rhetorically) if you think people are more amazed when they see a autogen city or when they see a photogrammetry city in MSFS. 

In other words: The goal of msfs is not autogen, it's photogrammetry.

Hence good luck waiting for a hypothetically improved XP autogen to catch up.

But of course everyone has to set goals for himself. Austin obviously decided that he is not even going to try to compete and that's okay. You may of course claim otherwise and grow a beard waiting.

38 minutes ago, rka said:

If you think letting the users do all the work (lol) in a gateway leads to XPs autogen improving..

Not auto-gen, scenery accuracy, just like they did with airports. Again, completely different topics.

Quote

In other words: The goal of msfs is not autogen, it's photogrammetry.

Yet most of the MSFS world is autogen as photogrammetry is still far from a global solution.

Quote

 I'm asking (rhetorically) if you think people are more amazed when they see a autogen city or when they see a photogrammetry city in MSFS. 

Personally, photogrammetry has no PBR materials, mesh bugs, very low resolution textures and inefficient performance wise. Turned it off  in MSFS day 1. blackshark's art assets look much nicer and better to my eyes, but still not as good as what can be achieved if built to work with a tessellation and displacements pipeline. So for example I would love to see some actual curved roof tiles using displacements on the fly and not just a flat texture of red squares.

And lastly, facades in Xplane are very similar to photogrammetry, can take the 3d shape of a building but does not include any artifacts and can be PBR. It even can be "procedural", can have other HD objects and clutter attached to it. As I said, the system is capable for more than it delivers out of the box, not even close.

 

Edited June 30, 20214 yr by akita

You know you can just turn all the data options off in MSFS? Looks almost as good as XP then.

I don't know how you would switch to the better weather, clouds and lighting that XP has though, I'm afraid you will have to use the subpar lighting, weather and clouds that MSFS brings out of the box. Maybe there are mods to make it look more like XP in that aspect.