I've always wanted to do this hehe.  Went for a flight today and I just enjoyed the view from the passenger seat - took a bunch of photos from the Minneapolis / St Paul MN area.  These aren't straight from the sim because I edited the colors to sort of match my real photos.  Also my mobile phone's white balance was just doing auto mode so half the time the colors aren't correct - but I did set MSFS to match for the most part.  The main takeaway is - yeah with photogrammetry it can be hard to tell which is real.  However I wish they'd get rid of some of the trees.  There's still far too many.

Enjoy!

We've just departed our home base, KSGS in St Paul MN and we've turned downwind from RY 34 to eastbound here in the photo

20220803_094206 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-1 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

We've turned more NE and are passing 21D Lake Elmo.  I just noticed from the pic that they've extended RY 32!  This is great news as the old runways were very short (I think both under 2500 ft).

20220803_095020 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-2 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Beginning our turn to the west (we got clearance into the Bravo) and are passing the Shoreview Antennas.  Highest tower is 2438' msl.  We're at 2500 lol.

20220803_095619 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-3 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Continuing westbound we pass Minneapolis downtown and the home of the MN Vikings Stadium

20220803_095941 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-4 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Approach vectors us down towards the SW and we can see Lake Minnetonka (or Tonka if you live on this lake).  A lot of the homes here are mansions and there are many many boats in the summer.

20220803_100659 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-5 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

After this we head toward my "amla mater" lol - Flying Cloud KFCM - where I used to work ATC.  Also just behind my wing is Valley Fair - amusement park.  We also begin a climb to 4500 to cross over KMSP.

20220803_101235 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-6 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

KMSP - (Appears to be an issue with my sim version - we need Flight Beam!!)

20220803_101941 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-7 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

In the lower midsection of this photo you can see a Delta CRJ-900 on final to MSP - it's Eagan MN

20220803_101959 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-8 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

St. Paul downtown, capital of Minnesota, USA.

20220803_102125 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-9 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

We descend to the east, exit the bravo, terminate flight following and head west (midfield cross over) for the arrival to KSGS on RY 34.

20220803_103108 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

Untitled-10 by Ryan Butterworth, on Flickr

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellent!

Great shots. Boy, Asobo didn't give any love to KMSP. That's the saddest looking rendering of an international airport I've seen in this sim. Flightbeam better hurry up.

This is really cool, I'm glad you got to do this.  Great comparisons!

Oh but am I jealous.  My buddy sold his 310 less than a month after MSFS 2020 was released and I have not been up in a GA since. Happy for you for your opportunity.  Great shots and comparisons!

Awesome comparison! Thanks for sharing.

Asobo, fix those bridges, come on!!!

Stunning comparison! 🙂 

Your right Ryan , hard too tell which is real ; but the haze caused by the humidty is one tell .

Nice shots! As real as it gets.

46 minutes ago, johnbow72 said:

Your right Ryan , hard too tell which is real ; but the haze caused by the humidty is one tell .

Yes indeed.  If only there were a visibility value lol.

Of course outside of photogrammetry areas the realism falls off but it's still pretty good.  I can't imagine doing a comparison to P3D.

Excellent job on lining them up in just the right angle. I'll admit I flipped back and forth more than once because I wasn't sure which shot was real - amazing!

I was a relative later comer to flight simming with my first purchase of a simulator for home use being flight Simulator 98. I remember buying CFS2 perhaps a year later and being stunned by the improvement over FS98. I bought all subsequent versions upon the day of release. That said, I do remember trying out FS1 I believe it was at an IBM personal computer demonstration setup at work some time in the mid 1980s ( I was working with IBM mainframes at the time). 

But at the time of FS98 and CFS2, I remember thinking that perhaps - just perhaps - within my remaining lifetime - flight simulator might look like something resembling old analogue 576i television broadcasts, albeit with much clearer instruments (though I did not even envisage 3D cockpits at the time).

To think, however, that technology and the brilliant brains behind both hardware and software have brought us what we see in this thread....well words really fail me. It really is at a point now where by the time you've seen enough to absorb the differences, you've spent about 300 times as long staring at that precise image as it would probably would have lasted in the real time simulation before the next frame was processed and thrown up on the screen.

I can only think what further iterations of DirectX will bring because quite honestly, it is (to me at least) more the way light is subtly absorbed and bounced off objects and things such as atmospheric haze that are the more fundamental details of differentiation. Bottom line is we now know that rendering pretty much what you see in real life from air is now possible to mostly achieve in a simulation (the extent of detail merely limited by processing power it would seem).

But even my observations surrounding "light detail" are things I see this very day in movies and modern video that is necessarily compressed compared to original raw footage that requires massive storage. To me it always seems to be the subtleties of light that are the first victims but as mentioned, I think this will only improve over time. We've seen it improve tremendously just between Directx9 and Directx12 already!

 

Lovely shots Ryan, and great to see some real life ones of that area. I had quite a few trips there back in the day and I always really liked the place. Good memories, thanks.

Real just looks better..🤗

cheers 😉

15 hours ago, enright said:

Excellent job on lining them up in just the right angle. I'll admit I flipped back and forth more than once because I wasn't sure which shot was real - amazing!

Yeah I did try - the aspect ratio of my camera is 4:3 though I think hehe.  

1 hour ago, JonP01 said:

 

To think, however, that technology and the brilliant brains behind both hardware and software have brought us what we see in this thread....well words really fail me. It really is at a point now where by the time you've seen enough to absorb the differences, you've spent about 300 times as long staring at that precise image as it would probably would have lasted in the real time simulation before the next frame was processed and thrown up on the screen.

Yeah it's pretty nuts what is possible today.

1 hour ago, andy1252 said:

Lovely shots Ryan, and great to see some real life ones of that area. I had quite a few trips there back in the day and I always really liked the place. Good memories, thanks.

Thank you!

7 minutes ago, pmplayer said:

Real just looks better..🤗

 

I can't argue with that lol!