20 minutes ago, pgde said:

I just did the same thing and will see if my post can be deleted.

Post has been hidden. 👍

This is something new, I haven't heard that. I wish I could watch the presentation, I am highly curious. Anyone have a link to anything? 

13 hours ago, RXP said:

They do for sure, and if not they can do.

However the main problem they are having if I understood other parts of the presentation, is that the same data being used internally for stuff which is under tight "secret" level wraps, prevents them to releasing the same data (and even maybe an curated version of it) to the public use, because otherwise their is always the possibility that sensitive data slips through. They explained this for one aircraft for which they have all the accurate data but the one in the simulator is from a 3rd party, doing the LM aircraft... !

 

Lockheed Martin has their own satellites in space, therefore their own satellite data, however that is secret / military stuff.

That is probably what they are talking about, they can't use that for general public.. So they need a different source that can be used for public domain.

S.

14 hours ago, Highmike said:

When ever I think about the future of P3D I fancy the thought that if LM ever attempted to compete with MSFS  then they probably wouldn't need either Bing or Google. I fancy that LM may already have close ties with NASA who would have their own resource of terrain maps.

 

15 hours ago, Rogen said:

One can only hope...

Nothing like a little competition to kickstart managment into gear.

Cheers

LM are not worried about MS2020.  

here we go again.

https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2021-01-26-Lockheed-Martin-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2020-Results

these figures are in BILLIONS. not millions.

 

 

18 hours ago, pgde said:

Will be interesting to see if the USAF wants to be locked into an online solution.

I doubt it would be online only.

5 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

 

LM are not worried about MS2020.  

here we go again.

https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2021-01-26-Lockheed-Martin-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2020-Results

these figures are in BILLIONS. not millions.

 

 

That's a very strange argument. First of all, those are the numbers for LM as a company, not for Prepar3d. The sim probably generates litteraly nothing for them money wise. As you probably know, a profitable company that wants to continue being profitable are always looking to cut costs and get rid of products and services that are not contributing to the company's success.

However, the reason for LM to provide Prepar3d to the public for a small fee does of course not have anything to do with bringin in more money to the company. You have to rember what the core business of LM is. They certainly aren't spending time and effort developing Prepar3d as a charity, or to get famous for a sim with the best FPS and the most realistic sky textures and the best 737 flight dynamics. They are of course doing all this for their own purposes. By providing Prepar3d as a recreational flight sim to the public, they get a community that helps with testing and development.

So the community, not the cash, is their payment and driving force. Only when you realize this, you can start talking in tems of what LM are "worried" about. Anything that will affect their community will certainly worry them. If the community gets smaller and contributes less, the cost and resources required to provide it to the public will no longer be worth it. Whether MSFS is worrying them in this sence, well, I guess everyone has their own opinion about that so I'll not try to speculate.

On 9/29/2021 at 3:53 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

Microsoft's servers will be costing them and who knows how long they'll remain free. Maybe a subscription model might come in which would definitely make some think about staying with them.

Do you need subscription to visit https://www.bing.com/maps ? No

We already have access to satellite data for FREE, from both google and bing maps. Millions if not billions are using it daily for different purposes (GPS for example).

So why would you think that MSFS users, who probably represent less than 0.00001% userbase of bing maps would cost Microsoft so much money that they would have to do a subscription model ? doesn't make sense to me.

22 hours ago, RXP said:

Definitely excited by these news, and the XP12 news!*

-
*before someone feels this is an outrageous comment in the P3D forum, please don't start a war here, diversity is good for our hobby and for your favorite 3rd party vendors, even if you don't use all of them.

Couldn't agree more.

I love MSFS, XPlane 11 and P3d because I love flight simulation.  XP12 news is exciting as is P3D news!

And yet, I doubt LM would want to shoulder the cost of providing numerous dedicated servers around the world to reduce delivery lag as MS do. Even if they farmed this work out to third parties I expect it would still be expensive.

I doubt LM want to get into the cloud server business.

2 hours ago, cepact said:

So why would you think that MSFS users, who probably represent less than 0.00001% userbase of bing maps would cost Microsoft so much money that they would have to do a subscription model ? doesn't make sense to me.

It’s just my opinion.

19 hours ago, simbol said:

Lockheed Martin has their own satellites in space, therefore their own satellite data, however that is secret / military stuff.

That is probably what they are talking about, they can't use that for general public.. So they need a different source that can be used for public domain.

S.

LM builds sat for its customers which are not only in the military but doesn’t own or operate ones if I am not mistaken.  Except maybe for small experiments.

Their targeting software for instance, GATR, is developed with Maxar images.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.04836.pdf

Note also the use of AWS, just sayin’.

BTW, apply this technology to flight simulation and you may have one heck of an autogen 😁.

On the general issue raised by @RXP

(Thanks Jean Luc, everybody missed the info), I use only and like MSFS but would welcome very much that a new P3D raises the heat below MS behind 😁, they really need it and I certainly would look into a LM product using the type of scenery that Asobo has brought to our world. I find interesting that they « need to address » this issue.

Edited October 3, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

Note also the use of AWS, just sayin’.

"The satellite imagery is provided by Maxar Technologies’ GBDX platform.  WorldView-3 [8] is a high-resolution multispectral imaging satellite"

I was more struck by the availability of 30cm resolution full earth imagery from a commercial satellite....

However, "WorldView-3 provides commercially available panchromatic imagery of 0.31 m (12 in) resolution, eight-band multispectral imagery with 1.24 m (4 ft 1 in) resolution, shortwave infrared imagery at 3.7 m (12 ft 2 in) resolution, and CAVIS (Clouds, Aerosols, Vapors, Ice, and Snow) data at 30 m (98 ft) resolution.", So it seems Worldview 3 provides non commercially available data to LM, meaning there may be restrictions placed on the use of that data for non military applications.

I think that this satellite imagery discussion seriously misses the point. What Asobo did was not just to add satellite imagery as textures to the sim. We've had that for at least 15 years in various forms, e.g. with the "flight simulator" within Google Earth, or addons like Tile proxy or Ortho4XP.

No, what they did was to take this data as input and used some serious cloud computing power to fill out the blanks and transform the 2d images into data that can be streamed on the fly to recreate a high resolution 3d world while still not requiring a super computer or 10Gbit line on the user's side. That's the achievement, not the satellite imagery data. Any company with enough money can get access to the same satellite imagery data. This does not mean that the data can be automatically used in a sim to create a 3d world. To do this, you need extreme computing power and extreme programming skills.

 

15 minutes ago, Multisim said:

I think that this satellite imagery discussion seriously misses the point. What Asobo did was not just to add satellite imagery as textures to the sim. We've had that for at least 15 years in various forms, e.g. with the "flight simulator" within Google Earth, or addons like Tile proxy or Ortho4XP.

No, what they did was to take this data as input and used some serious cloud computing power to fill out the blanks and transform the 2d images into data that can be streamed on the fly to recreate a high resolution 3d world while still not requiring a super computer or 10Gbit line on the user's side. That's the achievement, not the satellite imagery data. Any company with enough money can get access to the same satellite imagery data. This does not mean that the data can be automatically used in a sim to create a 3d world. To do this, you need extreme computing power and extreme programming skills.

 

Very true. Asobo's tour de force is the integration of data (imagery, weather, reconstruction of buildings etc.) and mass streaming not the mere lovely imagery .

When LM says it "needs to address the issue" as reported, I expect they mean that. The scientific article I quoted is interesting because it shows that LM works with Maxar, one of the largest suppliers of imagery  and with  AWS, the largest cloud company in the world and has developed object recognition from sat imagery with the help of deep learning (cf Blackshark.ai). 

Would its big institutional customers interested in a scenery-enhanced type of simulation. You bet they would and my guess is that LM/P3D knows that MS will be soon enough treading on their toes on their military/pro market with MSFS.

15 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Couldn't agree more.

I love MSFS, XPlane 11 and P3d because I love flight simulation.  XP12 news is exciting as is P3D news!

I agree 100%. While I've been exclusively been flying with MSFS, I own P3D v5 and Xplane 11, they're still installed on my system and when I do a complete format of my PC for Windows 11, they'll be reinstalled as well as MSFS, as I'll be using them in the future no doubt.