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.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 announced.
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Soldato
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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.
It’s a waste of time though imo, some parts of the world google looks a bit better, other parts bing looks better.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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I purchased ChasePlane and FSRealistic+ the other day... What an improvement to the sim!
At first I thought hmm not sure about the movement but now I couldn't go back to just how stationary it was before.
Well worth a look.
At first I thought hmm not sure about the movement but now I couldn't go back to just how stationary it was before.
Well worth a look.
ChasePlane is such an improvement over the games camera system. As I often stream the game, it is nice to be able to go through some nice camera angles.
FSRealistic+ has been on my list to maybe get in the future.
Associate
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Interesting news on the FF/LL aircraft updates from FSWeekend. A good selection of aircraft for me in this first batch and it is to be hoped that some more come through soon. I am especially looking forward to trying the An-2 as that has had major problems in 2024.
Soldato
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Pretty sure the building generation is the same regardless of what map provider you use, the only thing that changes is the ground textures.
The only places where buildings are genuinely accurate are in photogrammetry areas and they look and remain the same regardless of whether you use google, apple or bing maps.
One of my pet hates of Msfs 2020/2024 is how much better the photogrammetry areas look, and how bad everything else looks when you eventually fly outside the photogrammetry area and see all the ground textures become low res as well as all buildings switching to generic autogen.
I want the entire world in photogrammetry dagnammit
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I was comparing the gen in the browser sim versus MSFS.
Bought my first GA aircraft for FS2024 yesterday, i.e. a COWS DA-40. Once I'd worked out how to start it (mainly trying to work out which way round on the switches signified "on"), I took a quick 200 mile jaunt to what was built as a WW2 airbase, on which I first learned to drive (at which time it was disused). Now, seems that they've re-laid two runways and have a small airfield. Interesting to see.
What airfield was that out of interest? I'm still slowly making my way along my world tour, currently in Angola heading south, have had some fairly epic storms in the last few flights, lightning in VR can be quite the jump scare lol
LOL, I'm part way into doing the same in a P38. Only made it as far as Dakar so far.
The airfield was Hibaldstow, a little north of Lincoln. It's an ex-RAF satellite airfield.
Heh, I picked the L39 to use as it's reasonably fast. I'm not sure I could cope using anything much slower...
Has the airfield been re-laid in real life or just the sim? Looks pretty defunct on google maps though there are a couple of flight related businesses on site so could just be old satellite images.
Has the airfield been re-laid in real life or just the sim? Looks pretty defunct on google maps though there are a couple of flight related businesses on site so could just be old satellite images.
Dunno is the answer. I've not been there in over 30 years.
The website did imply that they currently use it for parachute events, which does imply that it's now in reasonable condition. Last time I was there, it was a bit rutted.
The website did imply that they currently use it for parachute events, which does imply that it's now in reasonable condition. Last time I was there, it was a bit rutted.