I wont quote that comparison of the two sims, but one of those is ####### woeful. Sorry, but that's embarrassing. Whats with the yellow tinge? My FSX looks much better then that. 

Anyway, even if the buildings aren't perfectly matched to the location (for now, and would be great if ever it could be implemented), I know which sim I'll be flying looking at that above. 

26 minutes ago, Gulfstream said:

Microsoft says they are sharing their building footprint data with OpenStreetmap.

Has there been any confirmation that user-submitted buildings on OSM may be used in the simulator?  This would allow for proper building heights where the algorithm otherwise wouldn't be able to tell from a top-down view.

I'm thinking of areas that do not have aerial 3D photography, it's hard to know the heights of buildings gathered from an algorithm that only sees rooftops.

Yes MS will or it did already share the footprint data it fetched with OSM. 

I will be very surprised if the OSM data for the manually traced and tagged footprints won't be supported if we get the tools to produce global procedural scenery.

I believe data with .osm or .osm.pbf will be supported again if the procedural tools are made available in the SDK.

But then I hope the other forms of OSM data are supported (roads, railways etc) for global scenery generation, unless the default database of MSFS is better in this aspect.

Building height estimation could use shadows but this is another layer of complexity considering the resolution of the imagery, adjacent buildings or vegetation etc.

But then there are classic data that could be used like Land Classification / Land Use Data or Census data if acquired...

Another idea would be to paste "facades" for a particular region. For example, all communist buildings in East Europe look the same, I mean literally exactly the same.

If you just paste some real east East European building facade on every building of this part of the world, even without photogrammetry, the result would be extremely convincing.

51 minutes ago, Noooch said:

Another idea would be to paste "facades" for a particular region. For example, all communist buildings in East Europe look the same, I mean literally exactly the same.

If you just paste some real east East European building facade on every building of this part of the world, even without photogrammetry, the result would be extremely convincing.

implementing assets (2D textures for facades or 3D ready made objects) per region is straight forward if the assets are produced... Same as the tree types. Let's see how many regional assets / divisions the beta will have.

 

5 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

I don't disagree but we see the limits of the AI for the first time. It obviously needs to be "educated" . Get the temple out and you have city which could be in Eastern Europe. No good. 

Some months ago, the team said they had recruited a Ph. D. in roof reconstruction, I don't know whether that was  a joke or not, mais they definitely need to get a  specialist of Asia to train the AI, maybe an architect in Bangkok, Taibei or Singapour .

 

 

Yeah, I figured that in the beginning there would be a lot of incorrect building and vegetation assignments.

Being that the engine is AI, shouldn't it be able to learn, or as you say be trained?  I would think so.

So, if you correct an object assignment, the AI engine should remember that and get better and better at applying the right objects over time.

Dave

The AI is the azure AI which is all server side.

14 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

The AI is the azure AI which is all server side.

True, the poor AI is working in the MS Azure servers in the US so it never went to Bordeaux and never was responsible for creating any of the 2D or 3D visuals or scenery of MSFS 🙂

13 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

See my comment in Shack's thread. If I am not mistaken, the scenery is seriously wrong

Here's Prepar3D v5...

Not sure how you can be disappointed by the MSFS version over everything else that's available.  Honestly.

7 hours ago, WarpD said:

Here's Prepar3D v5...

Ouch...

8 hours ago, WarpD said:

Here's Prepar3D v5...

Not sure how you can be disappointed by the MSFS version over everything else that's available.  Honestly.

ESP should have retired a long time ago... But when a company is clever enough to put more layers of makeup over it year after year and still make money with it in 2020 (almost 21), it's impressive for sure...

As long as users (customers) convince themselves that these layers of makeup is the equivalent of the technology of modern World Engines, then why not... 🙂

 

1 minute ago, Claviateur said:

ESP should have retired a long time ago... But when a company is clever enough to put more layers of makeup over it year after year and still make money with it in 2020 (almost 21), it's impressive for sure...

As long as users (customers) convince themselves that these layers of makeup is the equivalent of the technology of modern World Engines, then why not... 🙂

 

ESP doesn't exist any longer.  Hasn't for years. Not sure why you feel the need to claim otherwise. Prepar3D has had a ton of the original internal coding that was part of the ESP product replaced.  Even MSFS2020 still uses some legacy code but you're not calling it FSX. 🙂

Also... Prepar3D isn't for you... it's for the training industry... and the training industry will not find MSFS2020 very useful at all... for a great deal of technical reasons.

13 minutes ago, WarpD said:

ESP doesn't exist any longer.  Hasn't for years. Not sure why you feel the need to claim otherwise. Prepar3D has had a ton of the original internal coding that was part of the ESP product replaced.  Even MSFS2020 still uses some legacy code but you're not calling it FSX. 🙂

Also... Prepar3D isn't for you... it's for the training industry... and the training industry will not find MSFS2020 very useful at all... for a great deal of technical reasons.

I don't agree 🙂

To my knowledge for P3D, ESP was licensed and updated in an incremental way, some core parts were refactored to match 64 bits and modern hardware etc. But they did not take the ESP bits and pieces they want and planted them in another in-house Engine right? The World architecture of P3D is ESP even in V5...

In the case of Asobo, it's Asobo's engine, not ESP or FSX. They only took from FSX the bits of code that are not related to the world architecture... The bits of codes are related most probably to logics that were already done and could be reused in Asobo's engine (and refined) like AI, ATC, Traffic etc. And most probably the FSX flight model was planted as well for what they called Legacy mode...

In other words, the bits of codes and logic Asobo took from FSX could be plugged in any world engine...  They could be applications on their own... Or plugins in other cases like in XP...

So no it is not the same at all. P3D is an updated ESP... MSFS is a brand new engine (Asobo's world engine) with bits of codes that drive additional features not related at all to how the world is built and rendered on earth and in the skies... 

Edited May 2, 20206 yr by Claviateur

The discussion if - and possibly to what extent - P3D still uses the ESP engine like FSX comes up every now and then. To me that is a purely academic discussion.

What I see when I look at the latest version of P3D is that it still pretty much looks similar to FSX. It is improved, for sure. But to a large extent many aspects of how the scenery is displayed are easily recognizable from FSX.

MSFS on the other hand looks - different.

 

Edited May 2, 20206 yr by RALF9636

On 5/1/2020 at 2:39 PM, Claviateur said:

This screenshot seems to summarize nicely the 3 types of infrastructure we could have in MSFS

• Extruded footprints, similar to what we call "Facades" in the other simulator. 
• Generic (ready made) 3D library infrastructure (classified per region) placed procedurally. They are those with more details on the roofs I suppose , and don't match the exact footprint.
• Custom 3D landmarks

Edit: Ok now I see what looks like extruded footprints with details on the roofs ummm

I think the extruded buldings will be the ones with the detail on the roof, as their shape is already based on satellite imagery / OSM (like) data.

The generic 3D library buildings should only be used in areas with lack of detailed data including the offline mode, like we know it from other sims.

Edited May 2, 20206 yr by tweekz

48 minutes ago, WarpD said:

ESP doesn't exist any longer.  Hasn't for years. Not sure why you feel the need to claim otherwise. Prepar3D has had a ton of the original internal coding that was part of the ESP product replaced.  Even MSFS2020 still uses some legacy code but you're not calling it FSX. 🙂

While there certainly is truth to your argument, I think it is obvious where P3D is coming from by looking at it. Can't say that about MSFS.

Edited May 2, 20206 yr by tweekz