Photogrammetry

[wiggum 9]

photogrammetry looks either great (i can exactly make out the house of my Girlfriend from like 3500 feet and every street corner around it looks like in real life.

 

Or..it looks like western cities had adopted the stile of the ancient Pyramides long ago and then some nuclear war happened and now we have nuclear melted Pyramides all over the place.

So either it looks great or worse then FS 2002

[wyman_hd 232]

I've also had issues with consistently with not only quality, but also the data itself seems to be quite old. In San Jose, various shopping centers and train stations aren't even in the simulator, and i even found the old Walmart in Milpitas that had been completely renovated in 2014. My guess is that for my city in particular, the data is around 8 ~ 9 years out of date. That and the SalesForce tower in SFO is also not in MSFS, though there is a mod for that.

So personally, even if the quality of PG is acceptable, it doesn't really do me any good if the data is nearly 10 years out of date.

Edited May 25, 2022 by arwasairl

[andy1252 3,983]

24 minutes ago, arwasairl said:

if the data is nearly 10 years out of date.

Ah yes, but Candlestick Park is (was) still there in PG in the sim. Means I can land there and do my JPG&R impersonations, or at least get the run-down vibe of the place. I think it was demolished around 2006?

[wyman_hd 232]

6 hours ago, andy1252 said:

I think it was demolished around 2006?

It was demolished around late 2014 ~ early 2015. So it's not surprising that the PG data still had it considering that I'm thinking the data itself is from 2013. 

I'd also mention that the eastern foothills (Alum Rock and other districts) is all autogen even with PG enabled. I would have expected that PG cover the entire Bay Area, but it looks like some areas don't even have PG at all.

But I just hope that they decide to use up-to-date data (even anything from 2019 is fine) as well as work on the performance. 

Edited May 25, 2022 by arwasairl

[SKEWR 364]

Flying around NYC, I'm disappointed with PG. The imaging system thinks that the bridges in the area are over water buildings. You will crash if you fly under them and it looks pretty awful. The buildings in Manhattan have that post apocalyptic melted look as well.

[John Fields 280]

Hi,

After thinking about it a lot and remembering the type of flights I usually do (medium or small regional airports and strip airfields in which I don't see many cities), I have decided to disable the photogrammetry option, for now.

I have more frames and the ambient light seems to have changed for the better.

Greetings

 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Well, I didn't think MSFS would look 'good' with Photogrammetry off, but is sure does...and in fact, the color (using Goog....) is better on terrain all round.  The A.I. looks great and way better than anything Orbx has put out, to date for regions, etc.  So happy there...looks great...AND...I picked up 3 FPS without touching anything other than turning P G off in the Data Options.   So...I think I can 'live' without PG on...and be a very happy MSFS camper....   Glad this thread came up...or it would probably have always stayed on...as I had never disabled it before, thinking....er...why would I?   Glad I now did..., I'm in the User Camp with it set to off....

[cobalt 801]

1 hour ago, Sesquashtoo said:

Well, I didn't think MSFS would look 'good' with Photogrammetry off, but is sure does...and in fact, the color (using Goog....) is better on terrain all round.  The A.I. looks great and way better than anything Orbx has put out, to date for regions, etc.  So happy there...looks great...AND...I picked up 3 FPS without touching anything other than turning P G off in the Data Options.   So...I think I can 'live' without PG on...and be a very happy MSFS camper....   Glad this thread came up...or it would probably have always stayed on...as I had never disabled it before, thinking....er...why would I?   Glad I now did..., I'm in the User Camp with it set to off....

And in addition to MSFS looking great and improving performance when PG is off, the autogen buildings that replace photogrammetry when it is turned off, are in their real-world locations and with RW footprints (as I commented in an earlier post). So turning off PG is not as much of a sacrifice as one might think.

Edited May 26, 2022 by cobalt

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

46 minutes ago, cobalt said:

And in addition to MSFS looking great and improving performance when PG is off, the autogen buildings that replace photogrammetry when it is turned off, are in their real-world locations and with RW footprints (as I commented in an earlier post). So turning off PG is not as much of a sacrifice as one might think.

Yeah, it doesn't appear so!  I in fact quite like it as turned off... 🙂

[Farlis 2,319]

In the generic cities of the U.S. it might make litte difference whether PG is on or off. I have flown over a few of these and was amazed how many places in the U.S. are represented that way that I have never even heard of before, while not even the most famous European Cities did not receive such a treatment.

But that was not the point I was trying to make

American cities often look the same. Checkerboard layout, residential areas with just one or 2 storie buildings at max, repeated hundreds of times. City halls mostly have that neo-classicist style, churches are small and not not very noticeable from the air, down town areas have skyscrapers. Rinse and repeat. This is why the autogen is very good at approximating them.

But European cities, if they haven't been bombed to oblivion in WW2, look unique. They have their unique historical buildings many of the bigger ones have at least one if not more very recognizable cathedrals and churches, a castle, palaces, architectural styles of many centuries, etc.

All this variation is much harder to depict with autogen. And I'd rather have huge swath's of land covered with PG, even if it is outdated 9 years, and it doesn't reflect the newest shopping mall, than having auto gen that doesn't show me the distinct silhoute of for example Lübeck or Firenze. Take Siena in the new World Update. They custom build the Duomo, but the rest is autogen. You miss all the other unique features of the city, like for example the spire of the town hall. The shadow of it is clearly visible on the ground, but it is not represented.

But PG of it IS available. On Google... 😉

Even mountains look like the real thing in PG. 

If given the choice I take PG over Autogen everytime.

 

Edited May 26, 2022 by Farlis

[cobalt 801]

Points well taken. But one other thing (also commented on earlier) is that photogrammetry sceneries, for a number of cities in the U.S. and other countries, are now available, many of them as freeware. These are loaded into Community, there is no need to have PG streaming turned on, and you can have your cake and eat it too!

[Farlis 2,319]

1 minute ago, cobalt said:

, there is no need to have PG streaming turned on

I disagree. A small PG city takes up about 2GB of space. That adds up quickly. I would even rather see ASOBO integrate the added World Update PG coverage to the base streamed data instead of wasting our precious diskpace by having to install it unto our disks.

[cobalt 801]

5 minutes ago, Farlis said:

I disagree. A small PG city takes up about 2GB of space. That adds up quickly. I would even rather see ASOBO integrate the added World Update PG coverage to the base streamed data instead of wasting our precious diskpace by having to install it unto our disks.

I was not suggesting that all these PG cities be loaded into Community; rather, just one or two of interest an be loaded for a particular flying session. By using Addon linker, these can easily be selected as needed, and then deselected. I neglected to mention earlier that there are also hand-crafted non-PG cities that look great. All this is really just a workaround for folks like me who cannot use streamed PG because of the ground-level performance issue; when PG is working as it should, then I would certainly go with it.