Africa needs love

I’m flying across Africa and can’t help but notice the scenery is substandard. The continent needs some love. I understand that with so many countries it will be hard to get good elevation data and satellite imagery. But a guy can wish, right?

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That’s why there is a forum called “wishlists” if Africa is not already requested.

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Hello,
There are a handful of Africa Wishlist topics (not many, but a handful).

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/search?context=category&context_id=163&q=tag%3Aafrica&skip_context=false

If you don’t see something you’re looking for, feel free to create a new Wishlist topic and tag it #africa . We ask for no more than one country per request. (Having multiple countries has caused difficulties when merging duplicate topics in the past.)

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My memory might be faulty, but I’m fairly certain Jörg mentioned in the last Q&A that Africa was on his radar, but given how large the continent is it wasn’t going to be a quick fix.

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Considering the previous history of the WUs, I doubt there would ever be anything of the scope of an “Africa World Update” - we’d get something focused on individual country, or a region comprised of two to four smaller countries.

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There are some areas in the sim with gorgeous high quality imagery across Africa. I’d highly recommend a flight across the Sahara from Mauritania east across southern Algeria and southern Libya if you’re looking for a route across the continent.





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Yes and that would be fine :slight_smile:

I am pleased to note that I am not the only one with the … African sickness.

My work in rogress (WIP)

ETM Eye of Sahara - Mauritania

This is an Enhanced Terrain Mesh derived from Sentinel-1A mission of the European Radar Observatory for the Copernicus joint initiative of the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA), 10 meters / 0.324 Arc sec





Or you can find Angola or Kilimanjaro here.

ETM10 Enhanced Terrain Mesh 10m for Mount Kilimanjaro

Angola ETM12 Enhanced Terrain Mesh 12m vol_04 -Luanda\Bengo\Cuanza Norte\Malanje

Enjoy.

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Hello @nerfmuerf,

We agree and would love to see improvements to the scenery and terrain for the African continent. It’s certainly something the team has on our “to-do” list, although as Jorg has said a few times during previous Dev Q&A livestreams, the order in which we develop World Updates is heavily influenced by the quality of available data. Sadly, there isn’t as much geographic data and photogrammetry available for most of the African continent as is available for other global regions like Western Europe and North America, for example.

We definitely hear this feedback, though. In the meantime, there are some parts of Africa that look beautiful in Microsoft Flight Simulator even without a World Update. If you missed it, we held a Community Fly-In event over Namibia a few weeks back, and the desert dunes looked absolutely stunning! See the video below if you missed it live:

Thanks,
MSFS Team

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Yes, I know what you mean :slightly_smiling_face:

I started a world tour from the UK and have suspended it for the moment around the South Africa area because of the somewhat generic scenery

Anyway, as you say, we can but hope :slightly_smiling_face:

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I have been an advocate for any type of update on this continent. People see these threads and then dismiss them entirely at once. For clarity, I’m not advocating for an entire continent uplift at once.

Any type of update is an improvement, even just a few select cities, countries, places, perhaps just a few airports.

Meanwhile other parts of the world get multiple uplifts, even update do-overs.

There’s a “chicken and egg” problem here as well I think. The telemetry probably says that not as many people explore Africa. I contend that people will not explore Africa when it’s substandard quality scenery to begin with. If some effort is put in, even just a small amount, people will explore it.

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Any African update would be very much appreciated! And the same goes with the Central America.

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It’s not a question of effort but the hoops producers of meshes have to jump through for governmental permissions to use such data; Africa consists of 54 sovereign nations. Before MSFS there’d have been very little demand for such data, certainly not enough for the costs involved.

“We cant do this one thing, so we’re going to do absolutely nothing else.”

On this logic, regardless of the accuracy of such regulatory claims, we’re not even going to bother with updates to even famous airports.

  • Nairobi
  • Johannesburg
  • Cairo
  • Casablanca

Right on cue, another “im coming up with a reason why we cant do literally any other type of unrelated uplift” view.

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Europe consists of 44 sovereign nations, didn’t stop Microsoft from dropping, dunno, four? World Updates and one (the only) City Update for Europe.

There are 48 sovereign nations in Asia, didn’t stop Microsoft from dropping the Japan World Update.

You don’t need permission from the 43 other states in Africa to do, dunno, a South Africa update. Nor do you need permission from South Africa to do a World Update focused on the African mediterranean coast.

This is a complete non-argument and it baffles me how it keeps popping up again and again and again.

(Numbers may vary depending on source - I just took the first ones I could find.)

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All I can say is you find the suitable data seek the required permissions and pass them on to Microsoft. Either that or re-read and digest SeedyL3205’s post above. Yes it’s frustrating especially if it’s your region but I’m sure there is always good reason for exactly which updates are worked on.

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All I can say is that I reacted to a specific argument, which is not even from SeedyL3205’s post. If you disagree with my argument, you are free to provide a counter-argument. But “if it’s so easy, you do it” is not a counter-argument.

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Well I do disagree in parts. Many African governments have bigger worries than their inclusion in MSFS including their military secrecy I’m sure. For all I know that might even include South Africa.

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No, you do not disagree with me because neither of the points you are making is at all related to my argument.

I do not know how willing any given state in Africa is to provide DEM information and aerial photography to Microsoft/Asobo so you may be right.

But that still doesn’t invalidate my point that the “Asobo can’t do an Africa World Update because there are too many countries in Africa” line is a bad argument. If anything, more countries would increase the odds that at least some of them are willing to fork over the stuff that Microsoft needs.

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