Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 announced.

[picnic]

Come on Asobo, if a browser based flightsim can get ground details this accurate (only tested a couple of locations but they were phenomenal regarding building correctness and ground details) why can't we have it in MSFS too? Yeh, I know, google versus bing data etc etc, just sad to see that we could have something utterly mind blowing with the right systems in place.

Have a play: https://worldflightsim.com/beta/

For where I live it reminds me of flight simulators 20 years ago. Everything is dead flat, no 3d anything except the terrain itself. Ok the ground textures are better quality than the original Horizon Simulations one but I'd rather fly over fake rendered 3d buildings now than a completely flat area.

 

[imtoooldforthis]

You can use google or apple maps instead of bing maps, it’s been possible since 2020 first came out, you just have to get the mod.

It’s a waste of time though imo, some parts of the world google looks a bit better, other parts bing looks better.

 

[Dano]

You can use google or apple maps instead of bing maps, it’s been possible since 2020 first came out, you just have to get the mod.

It’s a waste of time though imo, some parts of the world google looks a bit better, other parts bing looks better.

To be fair, it's more the building generation that really cements it, it actually looks like the area and not a bunch of mis-placed generic constructions.

 

[Rroff]

I get your point - I can't take the area I live in seriously in MSFS and aside from some jankiness with things like trees, the Google 3D map does accurately represent the area where 3D data exists - but aside from the town I work in and the immediate surroundings everywhere else for miles around on Google is flat low res terrain.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

The point I hate the most are how it just stuffs a bunch of flat textures down when it doesn't have anything to put there. Car parks where all the cars appear to have been seared into the floor by a nuke being a prime example. It's the jarring inconsistency that gets me the most. Some of FS looks positively awesome, some other bits positive rubbish.

 

[Brun]

The point I hate the most are how it just stuffs a bunch of flat textures down when it doesn't have anything to put there. Car parks where all the cars appear to have been seared into the floor by a nuke being a prime example. It's the jarring inconsistency that gets me the most.

I think you need to cut them a bit of slack with some of this stuff. While it may be obvious to a human that cars should be removed from the satellite images of a car park, doing that on a global scale is far from trivial.

There are similar complaints on the official forums about the state of trees in photogrammetry areas and wanting them 'removed'. I've suggested these are the sort of things that - in theory - AI should be able to sort out, but it would still be resource intensive and therefore $$$.

One of my biggest grumbles is the vehicle traffic being absolutely dreadful with no improvement since 2020. No localisation in terms of vehicles types, weirdly high speeds everywhere and places where things drive up and over buildings. Meanwhile, they went to loads of effort to add and boast about animals for 2024.

I don't even have 2024 since my game pass subscription expired last year. Keep an eye on the state of things but there's no way I'm spending £70 to get back in.

 

[Rroff]

There are similar complaints on the official forums about the state of trees in photogrammetry areas and wanting them 'removed'. I've suggested these are the sort of things that - in theory - AI should be able to sort out, but it would still be resource intensive and therefore $$$.

Vehicles baked into 2D surfaces in theory is something AI should be able to do really well and relatively quickly and relatively inexpensively with the amount of AI power available on tap these days - AI is very very good at identifying a vehicle in an image and which pixels belong to it, identifying the surrounding, and filling in with something suitable for where the vehicle is. It might get a little more tricky where vehicles are partially obscured by infrastructure which exists over a larger area like a gantry but with a little tuning shouldn't be a huge issue and something which can be refined later.

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Vehicles baked into 2D surfaces in theory is something AI should be able to do really well and relatively quickly and relatively inexpensively with the amount of AI power available on tap these days - AI is very very good at identifying a vehicle in an image and which pixels belong to it, identifying the surrounding, and filling in with something suitable for where the vehicle is. It might get a little more tricky where vehicles are partially obscured by infrastructure which exists over a larger area like a gantry but with a little tuning shouldn't be a huge issue and something which can be refined later.

Fingers crossed eh.
On a similar note, I'm looking forward to AI powered ATC. I think that it would be great if ATC could respond with different accents and localised styles of responses.

 

[BUDFORCE]

It's not too bad for my area, I live in a rural area and the countryside isn't too far off.

The only thing is it can't tell the difference between hedge rows between the fields and trees, and assumes way more trees than there is.

It also thinks a concrete playing area in the village is a small block of flats but whatever.

I should really play this soon, I'll have forgotten everything.