16 minutes ago, domkle said:

Might be that Google has deeper pockets than John V, who knows 😏 ?

I don't know how this would factor in to a full flight sim, but to get "global, high resolution (sub-meter) Microsoft Bing imagery" for Google flight sim costs just €9.99 per year: https://www.geo-fs.com/pages/hd.php. I think the key word here is "Microsoft".

Microsoft and Google each own proprietary imagery data for much of the world.. neither allows other commercial users to use this data "for free", like many governments do.. as best I know.

2 hours ago, Bert Pieke said:

Microsoft and Google each own proprietary imagery data for much of the world. 

Not sure of that for MS. I am under the impression that they gave up collecting data imagery some time back and now licence them from external providers. 

On 6/28/2019 at 10:48 PM, yanfeng12342000 said:

Those are some of my thoughts of something big. I tweeted about the new MSFS trailer in Weibo (Chinese twitter). It got 780000 readings and 360 retweets: I saw overwhelming enthusiasm from the general public, who are mostly non-simmers. It dawned on me those are the ones that MS is targeting, but it does not mean we simmers will be left behind.

In other words, are you saying that it's possible that Microsoft are going to make this flight simulator, BUT then a spin-off of the sim will be some sort of "virtual tourist" type of service?    

On 7/2/2019 at 6:52 AM, Mace said:

In other words, are you saying that it's possible that Microsoft are going to make this flight simulator, BUT then a spin-off of the sim will be some sort of "virtual tourist" type of service?    

I don't think MS has such specific plan of "virtual tourism", but they might make use of this concept to attract more people to jump into the new MSFS, just as some developers of stragety games would promote their games as "stimulating people's interest in history" and "educational".

Not very much related to MSFS, MS does have an excellent "virtual tourism" application entitled "Holo Tour". It's for Windows mixed realIty headsets and it's free. I strongly recommend it if you have a Windows MR headset. 

I am also thinking about the MS "Home" series in the 1990's. What great series! It covers such broad areas of human life. I had the impression that MS flight simulator was among the series, but I might be wrong. Aneyway it fits into the "Home" series perfectly.

10 hours ago, yanfeng12342000 said:

I am also thinking about the MS "Home" series in the 1990's. What great series! It covers such broad areas of human life. I had the impression that MS flight simulator was among the series, but I might be wrong. Aneyway it fits into the "Home" series perfectly.

I think it was, because my FS 5.1 book by Nick Dargahi has the "Microsoft Home" logo on the front cover.

8 hours ago, Mace said:

I think it was, because my FS 5.1 book by Nick Dargahi has the "Microsoft Home" logo on the front cover.

Thank you for refreshing the memory. I still remember the excitement when I played FS5.1, no less than the eagerness for MSFS 2020 today. It even had satellite scenery for New York and major landmarks. Truely ground breaking! The waiting for each installation of MSFS had given me so much hope in the old days, until...Ok let's forget the traumer, and hope for the revive of old dream.

On 6/30/2019 at 3:45 PM, Bert Pieke said:

Microsoft and Google each own proprietary imagery data for much of the world.. neither allows other commercial users to use this data "for free", like many governments do.. as best I know.

Does that explain why London is not covered by Bing Earth Viewer but it is in Google Earth, it would really suck not having London as a highly detailed city area in FS 2020.

17 minutes ago, dtrjones said:

Does that explain why London is not covered by Bing Earth Viewer but it is in Google Earth, it would really suck not having London as a highly detailed city area in FS 2020.

Microsoft has not said anything on what is or is not covered, so it seems premature to me to start worrying about the coverage..

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

Microsoft has not said anything on what is or is not covered, so it seems premature to me to start worrying about the coverage..

It's fun to imagine the first 5 or 10 minutes of anyone here getting their hands on a beta for MFS, or the final product if they don't release a beta. Picture all those simulated aircraft, zooming out around the planet to see the nearest big city to where they live, and then their hometown. 😄

That's been an acid test for consumer flight sim scenery for as long as there has been any "scenery" other than a polygon grid on the ground in the early days.

I'm fortunate in that the nearest big city to where I live is Seattle. MS would be craaaazy not to model downtown Seattle nicely, since that area is home base. I'll bet Redmond looks nice too. Bordeaux, France where ASOBO Studio is located probably looks great, as well as Paris. We'll have to see for the rest.

8 hours ago, dtrjones said:

Does that explain why London is not covered by Bing Earth Viewer but it is in Google Earth, it would really suck not having London as a highly detailed city area in FS 2020.

What on earth is FS 2020?

I know that Microsoft will be releasing Microsoft Flight Simulator within the next 18 months, & this is known as MFS!

Why do people insist on incorrectly naming things?

59 minutes ago, Wobbie said:

What on earth is FS 2020?

I know that Microsoft will be releasing Microsoft Flight Simulator within the next 18 months, & this is known as MFS!

Why do people insist on incorrectly naming things?

To my knowlege it is MS-DOS, MS Windows, MS Word, MS Excell etc, not  M Windows, M Word...

So it should be MS Flight Simulator, or MSFS.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Microsoft_Flight_Simulator

'FS' is not totally wrong either, we all use 'FSX' for Flight Simulator X.

FS2020 seems not to be official designation, but I understand the intent.

 

Edited July 11, 20196 yr by dilore

4 hours ago, Wobbie said:

What on earth is FS 2020?b I know that Microsoft will be releasing Microsoft Flight Simulator within the next 18 months, & this is known as MFS! Why do people insist on incorrectly naming things?

Because you keep posting that same message everywhere and it's fun to wind you up 🤣

In all seriousness MSFS/MFS could refer to any version, FS2020 or FS11 is less ambiguous and fits with the established naming conventions. It's like when EA decided the version following SimCity4 would simply be called SimCity forcing everyone to come up with a variety of shorthands to make it clear what they were talking about the 2013 release, blame the publishers for that mess, not the users.

Edited July 11, 20196 yr by ckyliu

2 hours ago, Flamingpie said:

Microsoft isn't called MicroSoft but Microsoft so that S if of no importance. Whomever decided to keep on using MS (because of MS-DOS) in front of Microsoft's products was wrong. The fact that MS is used by a lot of people doesn't change this fact. 😉 They are all wrong, haha!

So the people at Microsoft who abbreviated their products MSNBC, MSN, MSDN, MSCA, MSA, MSRC etc were all wrong and you are correct, they should use a single 'M'.

I see 🙂

 

In my insider link it`s called Microsoft Flight Simulator, so others may have a different link!!!!!.