Claviateur

100% agree... Aviation specific things are not like landscape OSM overlays... And I look forward to have in XP12 all missing airfields in XP11 and airports with only runways to have the taxiways too as I saw them available in MS Sim... Oh sorry did I mention I will leave the conversation 🙂

After I read what is written above, since I do not belong to any company or sim, have no agenda or anything to promote or sell, I will leave this conversation because I was here to talk about XP12 autogen and scenery tech... I think I shared my objective views and thanks for the discussion... I will evaluate the autogen and scenery tech in XP12 vs XP11 when I will get the early access version to see what can be done in it more than what we did for XP11... Cheers!

Well, all this again comes to the fact that there is a sort of obsession with the so called Blackshark + AI and the refusal to accept the explanations brought here on how the AI works and how the data is processed later by the prod team... No matter how many people here explain it technically, there is still this obsession with AI failed to magically build an infrastructure XY... For a living, I work in an aircraft manufacture company as a user experience lead for a software using AI for real aviation purposes and although I am not an expert like my engineer colleagues, I know how the AI is being trained for this matter and how x y z is achieved with the training... Yet now that I hear this obsession with the misleading and misinformation about Blackshark AI failure in this thread, I believe that it is useless to explain anything... And then the other obsession is about the photogrammetry city centers (that can be disabled) and that became sadly the other misinformed and wrong definition of MS Sim scenery (in the XP community, from top down)...

Asobo work on a software for MS and the stakeholders are at MS... Asobo make decisions for sure but need to prioritize what MS wish to make priority.. Also I believe other dev groups known in the world of scenery design are helping with many types of asset productions... These platforms are very complex and the backlog list of feature is huge... So is the bug list... And you need a lot of resources to cover all this...

Yes the strength of the default world engine of MS Sim is precisely the massive data worlwide + the smart way of rendering it with adapted and regional 3D extrusions with details and color adapted to the terrain ambiance... And yes photogrammetry can be easily switched off to have 100% data driven procedural world... But for the VFR obstacles, I think it is more straight forward for 3rd party devs to do that (i.e: Simheaven do not need to worry about filtering out data that is critical for this and that) rather than the official companies trying to see what data should be omitted and in what area etc.. I can't wait to see who will come up with the next gen of of world engine where the MS Sim bar is raised again to another level... For VFR

Yes, precisely... If I can do this for XP11, Simheaven did this massively and now 3rd party dev are doing it for MSFS, then LR and MS/Asobo can without any doubt do it... But then it is a matter of what to spend money on first and what feature is more important to release in the next update... And again, how many additional assets need to be produced to render the data that has no assets in both sims default object library... Again, I think I heard MS/Asobo mentioning in one of the Dev Q&A, following a question, that OSM data rendition is on their to do list... But I suppose they would still filter out many of it for xy reasons...

XP11 did not use all OSM data...Simheaven had this done in their packages... As for how the data is rendered, the type of 3D assets + Facades are, yes, limited to the mentioned regions.. So it is a matter of using more data + more asset productions to make for example the middle east house look different from Ger or US... This could be done by dividing the virtual world into more regions or sub regions and then additional 3D + texture assets are produced by many digital artists to make the architecture of each region and sub-region adapted to real life aspect.... Technologically it is very easy, but then it is production time and budget... And the fact they are interested to put $ on this or rather leave it for 3rd party...

I believe you have "We Love VFR" package installed to get the chimneys to show there because the default MS data has 2 cylindrical buildings 🙂 And yes, this area is very bland and the procedural rendition is sketchy... A lot of data is omitted ... While the areas around it or in far away lands and remote areas we have every house in the middle of some prairie, right where it should be...

I went there... Yes, the ortho in this area is not great and it could be for so many things... Including security / gov decisions? And as I guessed, the footprints are generated into these cylindrical buildings as chimneys are thin and tall buildings in other places... It seems also that many of the Bing footprints are ignored, filtered out or simply not rendered... Especially in non civilian or residential areas... It seems as if there is a glitch or bug that prevents some procedural buildings from being extruded but in my opinion it is not a bug at all... It is intentional... Far away islands in the middle of the oceans have all their houses so no reason why the generation would not work here... It is intentional... So MS did not render all OSM data other than civilian infrastructure (as I mentioned above, I heard that they talked about it being on their to do list) and then there is the question: Even if they will render OSM data other than houses, buildings etc would they still filter out the data that could affect security aspects in some countries and they leave these to 3rd party? Just wondering...

Nope, it is not at all, and this is what makes the difference between older gen platforms and newer ones... More and more, tech will allow world engines to feature out of the box all the things that we used to spends tons of hours to learn how to create and create ourselves for small areas, before we could even start using them... Obviously, this is not what a user should be doing normally but with the limitation of tech we had no choice obviously if we want the platform to be used for VFR

I will look for this location, but it could be that the this infrastructure is either not rendered or replaced with a procedural cylindrical infrastructure as it is the case with fuel tanks etc. Now one thing is to know about how the machine learning scanning works/worked... And any procedural data driven generation using the data. The AI is obviously trained to detect infrastructure in the Bing imagery (footprint, type and other attributes) ... It is not a wild free for all magical detection and it is not about every human made infrastructure that the AI was trained to ID, for multiple reasons including the fact that the OSM has installation like these in the DB (However, MS Sim did not include them by default, but heard it is on their to do), or maybe, in some cases, security reasons (Not to render in default MSFS installations that are not purely civilian or that could make some Governments object) etc etc. We know for examples that military airports in MS Sim are blurred or not rendered... Or replaced with generic textures... The AI was clearly trained to scan and detect data and metadata for the houses, buildings, malls etc. So there is no magic... AI is trained or not trained... Then The data is filtered through algorithms... Not so different from what we can do with the Worl2XP scripts and that I enjoyed doing for a whole year... We can filter out all what we do not want to render... Or... We can render it is a very generic aspect (i.e: many Chimney's are rendered by default as thin and tall buildings). This is no more the AI decision, it is the production team to see what they want in their default infrastructure and what they do not want... Based on so many decisions... Hence the fetched database could or could not have these installation footprints and tags but then what the prod team would decide to do with these is a different story... For MS Sim, there are a few packages for VFR that add all the things that the default scenery did not render in their real life aspect for xy reason... But none of the reasons has anything to do with what the AI at Blackshark or any other company that does the same thing, is capable of fetching or not...

I agree... I think I missed GE for virtual flying and I was paying money on flight sims 😕 Thanks for the heads up

I need to try again Simheaven packages with my new PC

I do not have XP11 Simheaven installed anymore to chcek this area but I decided to explore the area in MS Sim... I got the following... All default except the Chimneys + Fancier powerline from a 3rd party package (We Love VFR)... EDIT: You can certainly achieve the following result in XP11 (for a limited area) using the steps I described above...

As I mentioned previously, Simheaven packages for XP11 add great details, they did a great amount of freeware work for the community but the packages can seriously hit performance with the OSM data generated as facades... the library objects, not so much... Now if Orbx happen to have created VFR regions for your area of interest and you want to invest in it, then you are all set... Otherwise you can turn XP11 (and I am sure 12 as well) into a great VFR sim for your own needs and specific limited area of interest: Learn Ortho4XP Then generate the tiles for your area and that requires disk space You need to know how to choose resolution vs quality and then apply decals to create a crisp effect when low Learn Worl2XP scripting and how to filter process OSM data Download the OSM data for your area Then filter the data generate overlay objects for your ortho Avoid Facades as much as possible as it is can affect performance a lot (however this is how you get OSM footprints to become 3D) Use generic objects from default or 3rd party libraries The generic objects will not fit on the exact footprint shape or size on the ortho Generate other objects in your area (chimneys, antennas etc) using default or 3rd part library If you need custom 3D landmarks Learn 3D programs (Sketchup or Blender) Create 3D architecture Learn graphic tools (Photoshop or Gimp) Learn how to create and map texture Learn how to use World Editor (WED) / Great tool indeed Add exclusions Place your custom objects... Place any library object to override W2XP procedural ones.. If you need to mod the terrain in your area you need to use the Terrain extraction feature in Ortho4XP to extract the terrain portion from the tile and export 3D mesh Edit extracted terrain mesh / 3D in 3D program (considering you know how to use it) Re-plug the edited mesh in the terrain tile Be careful not to break the edges of the edited 3D mesh otherwise all your edit will need to be done again Etc. Etc. Certainly the time you need to learn and produce all the above requires a lot of hours spent on this... And your VFR area is limited and this is relative to your disk(s) space... And all the above is for your own need and use... You can't distribute a VFR scenery as per the above because the Ortho or Modded XP Terrain Tile (a mix of copyright + huge files etc) Edit: I forgot to mention that, after doing all this, you can do some test flights to fix and adjust... And then you can fly over your VFR scenery... And then it's time to create another VFR area because you become addicted to a level of life like immersion that is not present outside the created area...