I finally got around to exploring my little town and picking out details which either shouldn’t exist, or don’t exist (but should). Just for reference, I live in a fairly small Texas town of 4,000 people, BUT it is also one of the suburbs of a much larger city (which also happens to be one of the photogrammetry cities). What I found should be embarrassing for anyone at Bing Maps.
The first thing that came to my attention was the state of the new subdivision that now exists by my house. The satellite image was taken after the land was cleared, but before anything was actually constructed. It has now been two years since the land was cleared, and about a year and a half since the first houses were finished. What’s even worse is that not only is the satellite image not updated, the actual MAP on Bing Maps doesn’t show this almost completed subdivision as existing at ALL. The roads just do not exist.
I can kind of excuse the map being two years out of date, so let’s move on now. The next glaring issue that I found was an apartment complex that completely does not exist. This is another development that is around two years old, and is not present either on the map or the satellite. Okay, more of the same. The map must be about two years old, which isn’t horrible.
The next, and by FAR the most offensive issue that I found (and the one that caused me to post this) is a busy intersection of two busy highways at the edge of my town. This intersection was constructed after traffic increased and several fatal accidents occurred on the old system, where one of the highways went underneath the other one and they were joined by some pretty sketchy and dangerous access roads. The old access roads are in the game and you can tell where they started breaking ground on the new intersection - the problem here is that this happened five years ago.
That’s right - the map in one part of my town is FIVE YEARS out of date. Meanwhile, ten miles down the road, a large photogrammetry area begins. How is this acceptable to anyone? I am not complaining about the accuracy of the buildings in my town, I am simply asking for some UP TO DATE SATELLITE IMAGES. How hard can that seriously be? Why are the roads in my town the same state that they were in five years ago?
Same here. I live in McKinney, Texas and the images are very old. I don’t understand why a company like Microsoft does not invest in having an updated platform. Heck…they could launch their own freaking sattelites.
Going rate for fresh (“new tasking”) satellite imagery looks like it’s about $28 per square kilometer. The United States being ~10 million square kilometers, every fresh pass of the US would be $280 million. The entire land mass of earth - which we can fly over in MSFS - is about 500 million square kilometers, so a fresh scan of everything I reckon is about $14 billion.
This stuff isn’t free. So as you can imagine, it’s not the undertaking you’d do willy-nilly because some intersection in a tiny town in Texas is a little out of date.
~5 years on satellite data seems pretty reasonable to me, IMO.
If you had read my post, my town is considered part of the metropolitan area for a major city - we are actually the fourth largest metropolitan area in the entire US. Since 2016, we are actually the number one metropolitan area in the US for year-over-year population growth. There is no excuse for our maps to be five years out of date.
Also, if it’s only $28 per square kilometer, who do I send the $237.44 check to at Microsoft to have this fixed? Lmao.
Yes their maps are disgustingly out of date. And worse! If there were clouds obscuring the ground there will be arbitrary trees and such where things like public airports and major cities should be. Not expecting perfect but, gee whiz!
Be a pragmatist. In the grand scheme of things and the pace of how slowly the layout of towns and cities evolve over time, 5 years is the blink of an eye. That applies to almost anywhere.
I just don’t see the cost / value proposition here making sense.
Okay. Let me put it this way - Google Maps is never more than a year out of date for my area. I just looked at the map for my area and, as far as I can tell by recent road construction, the current satellite images are no more than a few months old.
Isn’t Bing supposed to be a direct competitor? What does it say about Microsoft that their game would objectively be better had they used the data from their competition?
Oh wow, I actually thought this was one of those funny posts where OP makes exaggerated complaints to show how most of the complains are just ridiculous. Oops, that’s embarrassing.
@infamousbigj - can we have some screenshots comparing stock FSX/P3D/XP11 to current state of the same area? I am now worried MSFS could be worse! And if it is not accurate in USA, I can only imagine how worse it will be in Europe where I fly. I want to know before purchasing any of those sims as to which one has better ground depictions. I know I won’t see them really from FL100, but it helps to know they are super accurate in case I do 500ft flights above the terrain.
Google Maps is making ~$5BN revenue in 2020 and it can afford to have more up-to-date map data. I doubt Bing Maps can even make a fraction of that and it is more likely to just break even.
However, I am not sure if all Google Maps’ satellite data is proprietary. It could be possible that a 3rd party has the ownership to that data and can sell it to Microsoft later without a re-scan.
I wonder why there’s isn’t a market for Google Earth Flight Simulator mode. I mean they have better maps. Sure PMDG will follow and release addons for that too if there was possibility and a market. I know they have glacial development times, but they announce something a year in advance. Fingers crossed.
Yeah really, way too old and just makes it unrealistic. I asked OP for default pics, but let’s see if I can get shot down - can we have comparisons between non-airport MSFS and P3D, FSX, XP11 (pick your poison) and any add-on scenery you can load?
Not only are Bing maps out of date, they are horribly inaccurate for what they do have. I’m finding a lot of lakes and coastlines whose elevations are set a couple hundred feet about or below the surrounding area resulting in either a canyon/crater where there is none, or an inexplicable pillar of water standing like a liquid monolith among fields.
Once Google start a franchise of flight simulators, then we can compare. Your statement is disingenuous for the reasons you just pointed out. It’s like telling your parents the kid in the other sandbox has better toys.
Compare what you have with what you had before. Forest and trees comparison made by @Aok7696 is just perfect. Anyone is yet to post conclusive proof how MSFS is worse than addon-laden FSX or P3D scenery-wise outside of airports (because payware)
Google don’t own most, they are 3rd party license pipeline which Bing can buy.. Bing are updated, maybe not where you want but if you listened to the latest Jorg neumann interview, they are took new data, airplane are flying since there is no clouds right now.