I do not understand the details of how Microsoft/Asobo create their photogrammetric urban areas. I assume they take Bing data extracted for the urban area and use this real life data to create software representations of buildings and other physical structures in the area. This being the case, shouldn't that mean that any default airports in this urban area would be included in this representation? That is, actual buildings, towers and other physical structures as well as the runways, taxiways etc at the airport would be photogrammetric. To try to get a better feeling for this I selected Fort Myers Fla, a photogrammetric city, and KFMY which is very close to the city itself, so I would assume that the photogrammetric area would comprised this close-in airport. I flew into KRMY from a nearby airport, and when I was near KMRY, circled at low altitude so that I could get a good view of this default airport: control tower and lots of buildings that one would expect at a small regional airport.  I landed and looked at some of the structures up close. Then I went to google maps/earth and looked at the actual airport. To my eyes it looked very similar to the one in MSFS2020, Can someone, who really knows how the photogrammetric cities are created, confirm if this is what actually happens? If so then it seems we would have scores of default airports that are accurate representations just because they are in a photogrammetric city area.

They cut out the photgrammetric airports because there's a limitation on how the photogrammetry looks from a close perspective. For the not customized airports, they use their default assets. A lot of people complain about the PG cities when they are flying low, now imagine how many people would complain about PG airports, where aircrafts would be some meters away from the buildings. 

The highly detailed airports are made by hand, I'm not sure about KRMY. The PG isn't used at all for the airports. 

Edited November 8, 20214 yr by ca_metal

This is how photogrammetry is done, if you are curious:

Google Earth’s Incredible 3D Imagery, Explained - YouTube

For today's standards, the airports buildings would look like low resolution textures and the shapes would have a lot of anomalies.

Edited November 8, 20214 yr by ca_metal

Wow, I found the youtube video very interesting.  Thanks for including this information in your post. I hope others take the time to watch this.

Jim

Fascinating watch , TY .

Here's an example of why PG airports are a bad idea. This one is PHNL Honolulu International Airport, using Google imagery as someone uploaded to Flightsim.to.

Looks not too bad from the sky:

 

But just look at it from closer up:

And here's a close up crop:

😩

And, of course, jetways aren't animated as they are still images.

Edited November 8, 20214 yr by 109Sqn

6 hours ago, ca_metal said:

This is how photogrammetry is done, if you are curious:

Thanks for informing me. I think I understand now.