4 hours ago, Shack95 said:

I checked some more “exotic” and remote places, where there are no OSM footprints. It turns out that all the buildings are there and placed accurately.

Cotahuasi Canyon, Peru:

Near Islamabad, Pakistan:

Dongxingpucun, China:

The same can be seen in the non-OSM areas posted further up by ca_metal and me. What I take from this is that we might indeed have almost every house in the sim and most of them accurately placed and with the correct roof colour. Hight, plausible textures and shape is another question.

One more interesting detail. In last week’s Hong Kong screenshot we can see the Shatin Sewage Treatment Works. Although most of the tanks (encircled) are covered in the satellite image, you can clearly see water texture showing through in the sim. This might suggest that they don’t use image scanning to determine water bodies but rather other sources such as OSM, where these tanks are marked as water. Also the racetrack stables on the left look a bit “OSMish”.

By the way this is not meant as criticism or nitpicking. I’m amazed by what they can do and how it all looks. It’s pure curiosity (and procrastination from work😅).

Thanks for one more interesting investigation 🙂

Interesting discovery regarding remote areas with infrastructure placed accurately. Yet in one screenshot I was wondering if it was really 3D infrastructure that we see or the aerial image buildings with an impression of 3D as optical illusion?

If they are 3D, does Bing have footprints for those? Knowing Bing does have its database of footprints as well...

As for the industrial area in Hong Kong it could be one more example of multiple data sources being used. It could be that OSM is just used for its footprint data knowing that OSM has way more than that to build a global scenery like this one. Yet Asobo did not use the vegetation zones from OSM, they said they scanned those...

This brings me to think again about the road network that for some reason is still not implemented in the actual Alpha versions. I am wondering why. And then will the road data come from Bing, OSM or another source... I have the feeling it should be Bing data. Let's see. 

5 minutes ago, Claviateur said:

Thanks for one more interesting investigation 🙂

Interesting discovery regarding remote areas with infrastructure placed accurately. Yet in one screenshot I was wondering if it was really 3D infrastructure that we see or the aerial image buildings with an impression of 3D as optical illusion?

If they are 3D, does Bing have footprints for those? Knowing Bing does have its database of footprints as well...

As for the industrial area in Hong Kong it could be one more example of multiple data sources being used. It could be that OSM is just used for its footprint data knowing that OSM has way more than that to build a global scenery like this one. Yet Asobo did not use the vegetation zones from OSM, they said they scanned those...

This brings me to think again about the road network that for some reason is still not implemented in the actual Alpha versions. I am wondering why. And then will the road data come from Bing, OSM or another source... I have the feeling it should be Bing data. Let's see. 

Like I said before, there are plenty of remote places that have buildings in the sim, accurately placed (roof colors matching), that Bing/OSM doesn't have the footprints. The fact some buildings are not there on the sim, or they blend multiple buildings into one, in my opinion, is because the A.I. isn't perfect (like humans) and produces some inconsistencies. Also, bad imagery (a lot of artifacts when you zoom in) can confuse the A.I., we've seen, for example, some buildings being placed on the water, where there's a pier in the imagery.

About roads, water bodies, powerlines, wind turbines etc, they are probably using Bing data. 

23 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

Like I said before, there are plenty of remote places that have buildings in the sim, accurately placed (roof colors matching), that Bing/OSM doesn't have the footprints. The fact some buildings are not there on the sim, or they blend multiple buildings into one, in my opinion, is because the A.I. isn't perfect (like humans) and produces some inconsistencies. Also, bad imagery (a lot of artifacts when you zoom in) can confuse the A.I., we've seen, for example, some buildings being placed on the water, where there's a pier in the imagery.

About roads, water bodies, powerlines, wind turbines etc, they are probably using Bing data. 

I still think and agree that multiple data is used but the combination of buildings has nothing to do with the AI, It is clearly and plainly OSM manual tracing. I got the data for the area, I compared it in the editor and inspected its shape and tags. I do this to generate my actual scenery so I see no AI here sorry.

However, I think it could be very possible that the scanning is ongoing and temporary data is being used and the other areas with no OSM or Bing footprints having accurate infrastructure are based on the data from the completed or ongoing scans.

But trust me, the blend of multiple buildings has nothing to do with AI... It's very obvious to me that it's from the rough manually traced OSM data...  

Edit: Unless the AI scanned the area (Bangkok) and was added t the OSM database 🙂 I doubt...  

Edited May 6, 20206 yr by Claviateur

2 minutes ago, Claviateur said:

I still think and agree that multiple data is used but the combination of buildings has nothing to do with the AI, It is clearly and plainly OSM manual tracing. I got the data for the area, I compared it in the editor and inspected its shape and tags. I do this to generate my actual scenery so I see no AI here sorry.

However, I think it could be very possible that the scanning is ongoing and temporary data is being used and the other areas with no OSM or Bing footprints having accurate infrastructure are based on the data from the completed or ongoing scans.

But trust me, the blend of multiple buildings has nothing to do with AI... It's very obvious to me that it's from the rough manually traced OSM data...  

Do you know the source of this data on OSM? Didn't Microsoft shared their footprints with OSM? Are you sure those footprints were made by a person (an OSM user)?

Bing has those same footprints (blended ones), but I'm not sure if Bing imported from OSM or it was the other way around.

Just now, ca_metal said:

Do you know the source of this data on OSM? Didn't Microsoft shared their footprints with OSM? Are you sure those footprints were made by a person (an OSM user)?

Bing has those same footprints (blended ones), but I'm not sure if Bing imported from OSM or it was the other way around.

Well, I edited my previous note and made a joke about the OSM being from the AI 🙂 but now if Bing has them too, and you are right, same shapes, it could be either that MS scanned them as you said and handed them to OSM (yet OSM has more footprints than Bing there as far as I could see?) or Bing uses the footprints from the OSM manually scanned data, but not in real time. That means OSM footprint data is brought into Bing when updates to Bing happen. 

@ca_metal I forgot about the feature in OSM but I went to the website and picked one of the buildings that is a combination of multiple infrastructure and took a look at the edit log and I got a name of a person (Mapper) who seems the one who edited the shape like 8 years ago.

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/138950005#map=19/13.74263/100.49722

If it's AI, then it should have been scanned more than 8 years ago and then someone from the Mapping community decided to edit the shape afterward, like 8 years ago. Ummm not sure.

So I see a manual tracing hint here. 

57 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

Do you know the source of this data on OSM? Didn't Microsoft shared their footprints with OSM? Are you sure those footprints were made by a person (an OSM user)?

Bing has those same footprints (blended ones), but I'm not sure if Bing imported from OSM or it was the other way around.

According to their website, MS/Bing have AI extracted footprints for Canada, the US, Uganda and Tansania. Whether these are already in OSM is not entirely clear to me. On their website it says

"With the goal to increase the coverage of building footprint data available as open data for OpenStreetMap and humanitarian efforts, we have released millions of building footprints as open data available to download free of charge." https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/building-footprints

What would speak against it is the fact that we have seen buildings in US that are in the sim but not in OSM (that "little house on the prairie", ie. Trout Lake). Given the fact that we have accurate footprints in places outside these countries + where there's no OSM data, we have to assume that the devs have yet some other sources. Or that Bing has more footprints than those made available for free.

Is there a map similar to OSM somwhere, where we can see Bing footprints?

Edited May 6, 20206 yr by Shack95

12 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

According to their website, MS/Bing have AI extracted footprints for Canada, the US, Uganda and Tansania. Whether these are already in OSM is not entirely clear to me. On their website it says

"With the goal to increase the coverage of building footprint data available as open data for OpenStreetMap and humanitarian efforts, we have released millions of building footprints as open data available to download free of charge." https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/building-footprints

What would speak against it is the fact that we have seen buildings in US that are in the sim but not in OSM (that "little house on the prairie", ie. Trout Lake). Given the fact that we have accurate footprints in places outside these countries + where there's no OSM data, we have to assume that the devs have yet some other sources. Or that Bing has more footprints than those made available for free.

Is there a map similar to OSM somwhere, where we can see Bing footprints?

Thanks for the link, I did not know about this MS official website for their open data footprints. I had the blog and Git Hub links...

I think many GIS data companies have footprints one can buy just like any mapping data but I think it's limited per zones and urban sectors. I suppose these were done manually for the company.

It's relevant and very possible for multiple projects and reasons MS is using its in-house scanning capability to make a large open data resource available for footprints and could be that it will feed OSM at one point. 

 

1 hour ago, Shack95 said:

According to their website, MS/Bing have AI extracted footprints for Canada, the US, Uganda and Tansania. Whether these are already in OSM is not entirely clear to me. On their website it says

"With the goal to increase the coverage of building footprint data available as open data for OpenStreetMap and humanitarian efforts, we have released millions of building footprints as open data available to download free of charge." https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/maps/building-footprints

What would speak against it is the fact that we have seen buildings in US that are in the sim but not in OSM (that "little house on the prairie", ie. Trout Lake). Given the fact that we have accurate footprints in places outside these countries + where there's no OSM data, we have to assume that the devs have yet some other sources. Or that Bing has more footprints than those made available for free.

Is there a map similar to OSM somwhere, where we can see Bing footprints?

Do you have windows 10 on your PC?

If so, just open the MAPS app. There are two layers there Maps and satellite. The Maps layer shows the footprints.

As Ca-metal mentioned Bing and OSM are very similar. And in this Bangkok area for instance, after more comparison, I see indeed, the same footprint shapes in Bing just like in OSM.

So this area just like other areas, could have been processed from Bing data, that is most probably the same as OSM data... No matter who gave the data to whom... 

55 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

If so, just open the MAPS app. There are two layers there Maps and satellite. The Maps layer shows the footprints.

🤦I never really checked that out. In my hometown only POIs are there so I guess I assumed that there‘s no footprints. Thanks!

Well, of course it makes sense that they use their in-house data. But there are still many places where Maps doesn‘t show any footprints but where buildings are accurate in the sim. 

52 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

🤦I never really checked that out. In my hometown only POIs are there so I guess I assumed that there‘s no footprints. Thanks!

Well, of course it makes sense that they use their in-house data. But there are still many places where Maps doesn‘t show any footprints but where buildings are accurate in the sim. 

Maybe they have two layers of buildings, the first one is made by Bing data and the second one made by the data they extracted from the scans. Also they might prioritize the first layer over the second (where Bing has the data, the data from the scans are suppressed).

 

But still wouldn’t explain how the in-sim scenery still has color matching roofs everywhere, including areas that were supposedly built with Bing data. I’m not sure if OSM/Bing footprints tag the colors and type of the roofs.

29 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

But still wouldn’t explain how the in-sim scenery still has color matching roofs everywhere, including areas that were supposedly built with Bing data. I’m not sure if OSM/Bing footprints tag the colors and type of the roofs.

These are few links describing how a footprint (aka building) could be tagged in OSM for maximum amount of details.

Now this is the best practice but then not everyone who maps applies these for various reasons. Most people just trace the shape and if you're lucky, they enter the type of building and the stories or height...

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Simple_3D_buildings

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:roof:shape

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:building

 

11 minutes ago, Claviateur said:

These are few links describing how a footprint (aka building) could be tagged in OSM for maximum amount of details.

Now this is the best practice but then not everyone who maps applies these for various reasons. Most people just trace the shape and if you're lucky, they enter the type of building and the stories or height...

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Simple_3D_buildings

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:roof:shape

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:building

 

I mean, I’m not sure if those examples we are seeing, like Bangkok, have the roofs tagged right. Every time I checked the OSM data I’ve seen what you are saying, footprints with almost no informations tagged. 
 

If not, they are using the scans data at some extent (using the footprints of Bing and adding the roofs according to the scanned data). Just a guess here.

Edited May 6, 20206 yr by ca_metal

27 minutes ago, ca_metal said:

I mean, I’m not sure if those examples we are seeing, like Bangkok, have the roofs tagged right. Every time I checked the OSM data I’ve seen what you are saying, footprints with almost no informations tagged. 
 

If not, they are using the scans data at some extent (using the footprints of Bing and adding the roofs according to the scanned data). Just a guess here.

Oh, the OSM data has most of the Bangkok area with almost no valuable tags for such 3D application. I saw  Building = Yes, Type: Residential or  sometimes commercial or retail. I also noticed a couple of instances where the stories/height are entered.  

But if the theory of Bing having similar to OSM footprints is valid, then probably the Bing versions do not care about the tags except maybe the height or stories. 

Now the roof enigma, in my opinion, and I could be wrong, it could be similar to the vegetation zones. Asobo said they scanned the vegetation zones. They did not use any available data including OSM for these zones, they decided for these precisely, to scan them in-house.

So perhaps, the roofs could be an independant type of scan as well. Now scanning roofs to me is also detecting the roof area so by doing so, the footprint detection is almost achieved. But then are we talking about roof colors only or the multiple possible type or roofs + colors... Not sure about it.

Edited May 6, 20206 yr by Claviateur