I don't want to be a game breaker but it feels necessary to say that in the videos that they showed us so far there's no non-Western cities at all (probably due to Bings sattelite imagery focus on the Western countries). 

Bad feeling about this. I think till so far we got over 1 hour of Ms 2020 footage since September and of all that time they only showed us 50 seconds+2/3 screenshots of places outside the west. 

 

One of the most important things for me will that even the most remote places on earth will have ok to good sattelite imagery. If America/European major cities have photogrammetry imagery while Africa and Asia look more like default Xplane this game is going to disappoint. Since theyre only showing certain parts of the world all the time im full of doubt. I'd like to see what places like Argentina/Amazones/Lagos/South africa/Russia and South East Asia look like. How is Bing sattelite imagery in those places

Edited November 17, 20196 yr by AyserKalypzo

I fully expect images to be blurry for most parts of Asia. That's just the sad truth at the moment,

4 minutes ago, FlyerNYC said:

I fully expect images to be blurry for most parts of Asia. That's just the sad truth at the moment,

Seoul didn't look that blurry although new Guinea looked very blurry. 

 

How's Bing imagery in Asia compared to Europe/NA? 

I don't think satellite data for Africa or any other "exotic" destination will be any less than Papua New Guinea (they showed us a brief clip of PNG... and it wasn't even Port Moresby). The best way to get an idea is check Bing Maps and check the places of lowest definition. I guess a good bet would be North Korea. Who ever said satellite imagery was the only technique of producing VFR-capable terrain? Azure is capable of reading 2d rooftops and creating 3d buildings.... so why shouldn't it be capable of reading a river, road, etc... and then telling the sim "hey we need a river here and a road there following this path" ... "this field should be placed here with these dimensions". So my guess is for places with very little or poor photographic data it might have some new form of landclass technique (in P3D it was ... city here, sand here, grass there and each landclass had it's textures with all the features on it). In this case it wouldn't be large areas and than have all the features on the texture. It would be all the features dictated by what the AI reads and THEN add the texture and definition to each and every single detail. I'd like to remind that this is all speculation. In the end I am sure that the visual quality as in definition will be the same thought the world. You will still get high resolution pavements, buildings, trees, road textures, etc.... in North Korea. Runway textures and buildings textures and detail will be the same for ZKPY as it's for KSFO. What really falls short is the accuracy. You might get a runway with incorrect number of piano keys or roads with false markings or a house without a pool where there should be one.... or a specific field my have another green tone than what it would be in real life. Or a building may be 30 m taller or whatever.

Just my thoughts

2 minutes ago, OSJJ1985 said:

I don't think satellite data for Africa or any other "exotic" destination will be any less than Papua New Guinea (they showed us a brief clip of PNG... and it wasn't even Port Moresby). The best way to get an idea is check Bing Maps and check the places of lowest definition. I guess a good bet would be North Korea. Who ever said satellite imagery was the only technique of producing VFR-capable terrain? Azure is capable of reading 2d rooftops and creating 3d buildings.... so why shouldn't it be capable of reading a river, road, etc... and then telling the sim "hey we need a river here and a road there following this path" ... "this field should be placed here with these dimensions". So my guess is for places with very little or poor photographic data it might have some new form of landclass technique (in P3D it was ... city here, sand here, grass there and each landclass had it's textures with all the features on it). In this case it wouldn't be large areas and than have all the features on the texture. It would be all the features dictated by what the AI reads and THEN add the texture and definition to each and every single detail. I'd like to remind that this is all speculation. In the end I am sure that the visual quality as in definition will be the same thought the world. You will still get high resolution pavements, buildings, trees, road textures, etc.... in North Korea. Runway textures and buildings textures and detail will be the same for ZKPY as it's for KSFO. What really falls short is the accuracy. You might get a runway with incorrect number of piano keys or roads with false markings or a house without a pool where there should be one.... or a specific field my have another green tone than what it would be in real life. Or a building may be 30 m taller or whatever.

Just my thoughts

Is Azure AI capable to understand how tall a building should be? Canary wharf in London (non photogrammetry) wasn't there. 

Sharp sat imagery and photogrammetry are two different things. 

There are a lot of places in the world with excellent imagery, outside of the big 3 you mentionned.And some not so good in Europe ! Take your time tand have a look ! Bing maps are free to consult on the web.  I was impressed to see so clearly oases in the desert of North China or villages in Sulawesi for instance !

Photogrammetry is another question.  MS focuses its efforts where there are markets. The primary use of it, is not flight simulation !

They simply showed what was the most wanted by the majority of simmers and at the same time the most polished, which is understandable.

For the non-western cities, the same autogen "augmented Bing" technique will be applied, don't worry 🙂

I mean by that you will have the right roof color, building shape, and even maybe an architecture filter based on regions applied.

The building elevation data "may" not be that precise and the hand-made monuments will certainly be modelled later, that's probably what they are polishing right now and I am sure we will have more images about those cities in the future.

45 minutes ago, AyserKalypzo said:

Is Azure AI capable to understand how tall a building should be? Canary wharf in London (non photogrammetry) wasn't there. 

Honestly?? I couldn't care less if Azure can't 100% recreate the correct dimensions of several buildings. I thought the main concern was that Azure would transfer satellite imagery one-to-one from Bing, which will clearly NOT be the case. Otherwise you're going to have clouds on the ground in Dallas, TX and being a major US city that'd be a HUGE no-go. And if they are able to straight out Azure right to give a visually appealing representation of Dallas (this is just speculation of course) then why shouldn't the very same technique be able to get an equally visual appealing representation of Pyongyang?? If you're really that nuts about a 10-story building being represented as a 5-story building then you very well may be disappointed. I don't really give a ..... as long as it doesn't produce skyscrapers in suburbs or mansions within the CBD.

Azure doesn't know the difference between North Korea or the US. a hay-field in the US will be the same as a hay-field in Mozambique. So it will obviously create the same detail for both of them.

Edited November 17, 20196 yr by OSJJ1985

1 hour ago, domkle said:

Sharp sat imagery and photogrammetry are two different things. 

There are a lot of places in the world with excellent imagery, outside of the big 3 you mentionned.And some not so good in Europe ! Take your time tand have a look ! Bing maps are free to consult on the web.  I was impressed to see so clearly oases in the desert of North China or villages in Sulawesi for instance !

Photogrammetry is another question.  MS focuses its efforts where there are markets. The primary use of it, is not flight simulation !

Unfortunately I don't have a pc with windows on it. So we can expect sharp sattelite imagery in China? Are those places as sharp as Europe's /US sattelite imagery?

 

From what I can see on Google Earth (which I know isn't gonna be used)  most of the sattelite imagery in South America/Africa and Asia on there are not as sharp as in the Western countries. 

Edited November 17, 20196 yr by AyserKalypzo

Because those areas aren't as popular.

The wow factor is the photogrammetry right now for them. It's all about marketing.

Edited November 17, 20196 yr by bonchie

In this vid, this guy tried MSFS, he was able to fly over Mascate, Oman and said the visuals are just perfect.

 

I wonder how Auzre will handle areas with very irregular or pixelated satellite imagery, e.g.:

 

5 minutes ago, Noooch said:

In this vid, this guy tried MSFS, he was able to fly over Mascate, Oman and said the visuals are just perfect.

 

Nice find. This is a lot more then only the speculation.  Good to hear that it looks good. 

 

Does he just say that it looks good or does the Sim also represent the place accurate? I don't think a French guy can tell. At least it's good to hear that its not worse then the west ito graphics. 

 

I though that this week in London people were only able to fly Renton, Naples and Courchevelle? 

 

3 minutes ago, AyserKalypzo said:

Does he just say that it looks good or does the Sim also represent the place accurate? I don't think a French guy can tell. 

Seriously?

6 minutes ago, FDEdev said:

Seriously?

There's a difference between a good-looking representation and an accurate representation.  Sao Paulo also looked good in the short amount of time we could see it but according to the Brazalian guy that flew over the place himself said that It wasn't an accurate representation of the city, just as there were people saying that London didn't feel like London, yet. 

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm very excited about the photogrammetry and the Azure AI combined with sharp sattelite imagery. 

 

 we don't know how sharp that sattelite imagery will be and what it will look like in the Sim outside of the West

Edited November 17, 20196 yr by AyserKalypzo