31 minutes ago, MarcG said:

If it's in the EULA it's the sort of thing MS will ask to be pulled from flightsim.to before "legal action is taken"

Is it? I’m sure there are people going through it now with a fine tooth comb.

It’s only of academic interest to me as I have no plans in the near future to buy it. But with Google maps being injected it would be much more attractive.

33 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Then, as far the product itself is concerned, they have shown a great reluctance to open the weather and flight simulation cores to external developers. 

So if Hi-Fi hack the code and come up with a product would they face possible legal action too? 😉

6 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

 

So if Hi-Fi hack the code and come up with a product would they face possible legal action too? 😉

I am not a lawyer in software copyright infringement !

From an user blunt perpective, I want them to perfect their innovative weather engine rather than spending time working on API for 3rd parties. Again the end game is not to have another better Prepar3d but another sim. The day you will try MSFS you’ll understand better what I mean 😇 (just teasing you).
 

2 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

From an user blunt perpective, I want them to perfect their innovative weather engine rather than spending time working on API for 3rd parties.... The day you will try MSFS you’ll understand better what I mean 😇 (just teasing you).

Providing it has a historical weather option I have no problem with that. Without that it’s far less attractive to me.

Just now, Ray Proudfoot said:

Providing it has a historical weather option I have no problem with that. Without that it’s far less attractive to me.

Historical weather is indeed an important missing feature as a detailed interface to know the weather is.  MSFS is not perfect far from it but the in-game rendition is rather better from everything I have had before.

1 hour ago, apollon01 said:

Google maps look better in pleces but definitely on a large scale they've got issues (e.g. inconsistency in colour balance - a show stopper actually)

That was my experience. Resolution in many places is better with Google but the inconsistent and frankly odd colouration of some tiles, and the autogen not matching the textures in many places meant I binned this pretty quickly. IMHO the treated Bing textures suit the sim better.

Edited November 14, 20214 yr by scotchegg

 

58 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Historical weather is indeed an important missing feature as a detailed interface to know the weather is.  MSFS is not perfect far from it but the in-game rendition is rather better from everything I have had before.

Agreed.  What I have seen in MSFS even without historical weather is unlike anything I've ever seen in a sim...  Fronts a hundred miles away that you gradually approach, cloud layering, low level surface fog rolling off the Ocean, no more "grids" of clouds loading, hands down the best weather depiction I have seen to date even without historical weather is MSFS...

Did a flight one morning and our house is next to the river so a lot of times we have localized heavy fog.  Took off, got over our house and sure enough there was a local thick fog layer preventing me from even seeing our neighborhood.  Travelled a few miles and it was gone, circled back to see it sitting over our neighborhood.  I honestly couldn't believe it.  

So while it may not be perfect the weather depiction in MSFS even without 3rd party weather add-ons absolutely blows away anything I've seen to date.  

My house is under that fog layer...

Localized limited visibility over the Ocean in the am...  I mean spot on...

Approaching a front...

Finally, look how the entire sky is populated with weather and a front forming in the distance to my right...

This is bone stock default LOL

Edited November 14, 20214 yr by psolk

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

But with Google maps being injected it would be much more attractive.

I thought so too when it was in development. But it is really not that relevant in the sim itself. People often think of it as being some sort of ortho like in XP. But it is much more than that.

With ortho you have pretty poor quality at low altitudes - especially close to ground. MSFS solves this with contextual texture-layers and object placement (grass) according to the imagery. It all looks pretty crisp down to ground level.

Therefore the slightly worse quality of Bing is not really noticeable (at higher altitude, everything looks quite good).

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Is it? I’m sure there are people going through it now with a fine tooth comb.

Emphasis on the "if" in my post, I'm not gonna go looking just suggesting it *might* be in there.

22 minutes ago, tweekz said:

I thought so too when it was in development. But it is really not that relevant in the sim itself. People often think of it as being some sort of ortho like in XP. But it is much more than that.

With ortho you have pretty poor quality at low altitudes - especially close to ground. MSFS solves this with contextual texture-layers and object placement (grass) according to the imagery. It all looks pretty crisp down to ground level.

Therefore the slightly worse quality of Bing is not really noticeable (at higher altitude, everything looks quite good).

I simply based my opinion on what I saw in the comparison video. I agree at high altitudes the differences may not be as noticeable.

19 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Emphasis on the "if" in my post, I'm not gonna go looking just suggesting it *might* be in there.

It was a rhetorical comment. I wasn't expecting you to trawl through the EULA.

MS has nothing to worry about I think. People are going to play around with the Google maps mod for a while and have some fun with it but will eventually revert to stock sim Bing maps simply because Google will have baked in clouds and watermarks and mismatched colours while Bing in the sim is all cleaned up and colour corrected. 

Have to admit that the roads looks amazing with the Google mod though! 

6 hours ago, RobF2 said:

Quite surprised its Google that hasn't put a stop to this - especially after the polite but very firm rebuff Christian from Tileproxy received some years ago.

Quite likely that one at Google, or at least no one that cares, has noticed yet. If this is violating Google's terms of use for their mapping APIs (and it probably is), they will likely put an end to it.

On 11/7/2021 at 4:53 AM, Dominique_K said:

Well, I suppose if the MSFS team had chosen Google Earth imagery, the same crowd asking for it now, would cry for having Bing imagery instead.😇

no, i doubt it.  just would have been surprising based on ms relationship to bing. 

38 minutes ago, goates said:

Quite likely that one at Google, or at least no one that cares, has noticed yet. If this is violating Google's terms of use for their mapping APIs (and it probably is), they will likely put an end to it.

...and everybody keeping these threads open and being updated in the forums surely will....self-prophesy happening for sure....

If threads like these were left to die...and fall off the forums...so would perhaps Google's attention to them and it.   I just don't understand that anybody that is using this perk, will keep bringing it up on the forums and not let mention of it disappear.  Use, it and like the saying goes; Loose Lips SINK SHIPS, keep feeding threads like these with constant comments, and the ship will indeed be scuttled by 'G'.   It's like those that aren't using it...and enjoying its perks,  WANT 'G' to drop the hammer. That is all I can deduce from this...  If you were and are using this....why would you keep flapping a red flag in front of the 'bulls' face?!??!?

Totally weird forum behavior in this regard.

signed;

A user...

Surprised how concerned people are with arguing the license legality and how much companies care, instead of just enjoying the software while we have it. Let the billion dollar companies work it out for themselves, if they have a problem with it.

6 hours ago, scotchegg said:

That was my experience. Resolution in many places is better with Google but the inconsistent and frankly odd colouration of some tiles, and the autogen not matching the textures in many places meant I binned this pretty quickly. IMHO the treated Bing textures suit the sim better.

The problem with Bing textures is that if Bing lacks the tiles for any area or is infested with clouds, you face one single treatment, that is good old weird FSX textures being surfaced to cover the area and they all look lame.