Can't wait for November.  After seeing all the videos of MSFS 2024 all over the internet, I'm pretty excited about the possibilities.  However, I have a question.  Has anyone heard anything about the Photogrammetry in 2024?  Do you think they have eliminated all the globs, unknown scenery objects, and unusual, unidentified scenery "unknowns"?  Hopefully the scenery will be represented as realistically as the previews report.  I really dislike turning photogrammetry off so that I have a more realistic, although anemic scenery below me.

Stan

I doubt they've replaced all the photogrammetry in the world.

I don't think they'll be able to eliminate *all* the globs/melted buildings/etc for quite some time. AI is useful, but it's also misnamed (for marketing purposes). It is not intelligent. It just a gussied up version of the algorithms computers have been using for decades.

In other words, it doesn't know what a building should look like, or even what a building is, and no matter how sophisticated "AI" gets, it's never going to know those things. Tweaks can make the results better but you're never going to get it perfect until a true artificial intelligence that can actually understand what it's presented with is developed.

 

Edited October 6, 20241 yr by eslader

2 minutes ago, eslader said:

I don't think they'll be able to eliminate *all* the globs/melted buildings/etc for quite some time. AI is useful, but it's also misnamed (for marketing purposes). It is not intelligent. It just a gussied up version of the algorithms computers have been using for decades.

In other words, it doesn't know what a building should look like, or even what a building is, and no matter how sophisticated "AI" gets, it's never going to know those things. Tweaks can make the results better but you're never going to get it perfect until an actual artificial intelligence that can actually understand what it's presented with is developed.

 

It also depends on the data the AI has to work with. From my understanding, the photogrammetry in MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 is taken from the air, I assume it's at least 1000 feet to 2000 feet above in the air.  But if AI had data to work with from the ground and upwards from the ground, the buildings MSFS could generate would look much more accurate.  Here is a 3D model of ground level of street view that Google was doing research on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cizgVZ8rjKA&t=91s

You can see it actually look decent from the ground in this video demo, and this demo is from 9 years ago.  I wonder if Microsoft is working on how to get street view data to render a city  in 3D more accurately, rather than just relying on photogrammetry data from the air.  I'm sure they are working on it, as are some game companies, and as is Google (well, that demo was from Google from 9 years ago, so who knows what Google can do today).

 

2 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

It also depends on the data the AI has to work with. From my understanding, the photogrammetry in MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 is taken from the air, I assume it's at least 1000 feet to 2000 feet above in the air.  But if AI had data to work with from the ground and upwards from the ground, the buildings MSFS could generate would look much more accurate.  Here is a 3D model of ground level of street view that Google was doing research on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cizgVZ8rjKA&t=91s

You can see it actually look decent from the ground in this video demo, and this demo is from 9 years ago.  I wonder if Microsoft is working on how to get street view data to render a city  in 3D more accurately, rather than just relying on photogrammetry data from the air.  I'm sure they are working on it, as are some game companies, and as is Google (well, that demo was from Google from 9 years ago, so who knows what Google can do today).

 

Very cool video.  Superb!

At least part of the photogrammetry has not been updated. For instance, Tokyo is the same from World Update 1, shot in 2014.

Source: I was there when they shot it and recognized the ads on the walls 😂

The ground-up scenery development mentioned above is something super interesting---I wouldn't be surprised if 10-20 years from now we had digital models of a lot of cities in the world using tech similar to this. 

That said, I agree with others above that the photogrammetry isn't likely to be much (if at all) improved for 2024, at least initially. Like any technology it's going to be incrementally improved over time. The bigger changes to the world are really going to be the non-city stuff like ground textures and the countryside TIN they're just now starting to gather.

14 hours ago, eslader said:

and no matter how sophisticated "AI" gets, it's never going to know those things.

🤣 🤣 🤣

55 minutes ago, Noel said:

🤣 🤣 🤣

Just in case that was derisive, to clarify - what I meant was that the current iteration of large language models and machine learning algorithms that are being... Optimistically marketed as artificial intelligence will never understand what a building, or anything else is, because you might as well ask a lamp to understand the world around it. These systems are very sophisticated data handlers, but they do not have intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

That doesn't mean I don't think eventually an actual intelligence will be built but 1) it's a very long way off and 2) if we build an actual AI and then set it to making flight simulator scenery for us without giving it a choice, that's called slavery because an artificial intelligence that is actually intelligent in the way that humans are intelligent will also most likely be sentient. So we will have created a whole 'nother set of problems for ourselves.

The problem with today's "AIs" is that hucksters run around saying "AI" by which they mean "really sophisticated self-querying database" and by which they know the public will think they mean "Data from Star Trek is real now."

 

3 minutes ago, eslader said:

Just in case that was derisive, to clarify - what I meant was that the current iteration of large language models and machine learning algorithms that are being... Optimistically marketed as artificial intelligence will never understand what a building, or anything else is, because you might as well ask a lamp to understand the world around it. These systems are very sophisticated data handlers, but they do not have intelligence, artificial or otherwise.

 

Here is a message from AI LOL

10 hours ago, eslader said:

Just in case that was derisive

It was of course, and now that you've backpedaled from this..."no matter how sophisticated "AI" gets, it's never going to know those things I take all the derision back 😃

 

 

Google Earth already has Street View which shows everything just as it is.  Microsoft should look into utilizing this.

do we really need street view?

unless someone is coming out with a pedal bike mod?

I find it hard to get worked up about photgrammetry anomalies - sure, it can look terrible at times with bandwidth issues, but having lived through decades of terrible default texture buildings, even average photogrammetry looks amazing from most flight heights/scenarios

just look at xplane to this day.....

9 minutes ago, EGLD said:

do we really need street view?

unless someone is coming out with a pedal bike mod?

I'll keep reacting on this kind of posts: helicopters. 🙂

1 hour ago, bvdboomen said:

I'll keep reacting on this kind of posts: helicopters. 🙂

Excellent reason why street view would be so welcome!