Yes it is a little bit worse than the straight Bing image … but just think about all the things it has to do to produce the image in the sim:
- Firstly has to rotate and shift the perspective to match the way you’re looking.
- Then the sim has to work out which parts of the image you can’t see from the Bing image, and then invent them (look at the sides of the white building, these aren’t in the actual image).
- Then it has to work out where the sun is, depending on time of day and latitude, then it has to work out where the shadows should be and put them in (note shadows on the left of white building for example)
- It has to look at the relief of the landscape, so it can show slopes/shadows in the ground - and maybe even hide things you shouldn’t be able to see
- It has to work out where the roads are as everyone wants little cars driving on them
- It has to work out the colour of the light source (sun, hazy sun, rain clouds for example) and colour correct the image based upon that
- It has to check for any water, and work out reflections if there are any
- Then it has to display the image!
And it has to do all this between 20 and 40 times a second!
Of course, the Bing website just displays the image it has stored, and does nothing to it.
I actually think it’s pretty amazing it looks as good as it does. Sure it will be great when it looks even better … wouldn’t it be great to be able to fire up the sim to check the traffic before leaving for the morning commute?