I wish that MSFS 2020 could use the Google Earth instead of Bing Maps as it is more up to date ,at least in Europe that is. I believe they haven’t update the imaging for more than 3 years…
P.S. Of course I know that they could only use Bing Maps as it belongs to Microsoft.
I’ve found areas in MSFS that are close to 10 years old. Stuff that hasn’t existed in nearly 10 years is in the sim.
But for the most part, it seems that (at least in the parts of North America I’m familiar with IRL), we’re looking at data that’s 2-3 years old.
All of us wish that.
It’s not only the age of Bing maps images, it’s also the frequent quality drops and cloud irregularities…
Any idea you guys from MSFS or Microsoft ,when Bing Maps will update the world imaging?
@TemperedPaper48 my wish is MFS and the community would make Microsoft update Bing Maps. Here in Africa a lot of locations are depicted with legacy data.
I have looked at my house on both engines and Googlemap is much better. Without comparison …
Make the comparison, you will see …
I’m not sure I would agree with Google Maps being updated so recently - definitely not in my area of the UK, anyway.
The image on the satellite view of Google maps for my street and my house has been the same since it was first released - and it still shows old sheds I took down many years ago, doesn’t show the two new ones I built, and has a red car on the drive - a VW Golf that I got rid of in 2004.
Aside from being not updated and improved, there are some areas across the globe where Bing Maps don’t have any aerial image to show in the sim, and we are left with ugly FSX ground textures and cartoon looking roads…
I am sure we have all heard the phrase, “First world problems”.
About 7 months ago, I could not fly true “IFR”, (I Follow Road). In August I downloaded a new sim. Now I can actually fly bush trips where the only navigation aids are the forestry roads and little bends in the river that gets me to the deactivated strip carved out of the forest.
Now I come here and read complaints that you can’t make out your spouse mowing the lawn when you know they are out there, 'cause you can see them out the kitchen window. I can think of a fairly common phrase that describes this issue…
Well I wasn’t too bothered about the OPs topic, but I would say you are being obtuse and (deliberately?) missing the point.
Here’s an example: Near where I live the local church tower is the tallest in England and was used in the middle ages as a beacon for traders and farmers to find the market.
It doesn’t exist in FS2020.
The local City (Lincoln) has a lovely big cathedral on the top of a steep hill. It’s often used as a VRP and navigation reference - it also does not exist in the sim (and no hill - the elevation data is pretty dire for England).
One of my favourite activities in the last sims has been flying tours of UK framstrips and a large part of my navigation is done visually, using roads and rivers or other water features. On the roads, the sim does very well and I hope to enjoy some lengthy flights around the many strips that the sim also includes. However, the water features in particular, and such reference points as mentioned above, often can’t be used because they either aren’t there or, in the case of water features, are grossly oversized (local drainage ditches are shown as wide as the rivers and canals) or have things like a copse of trees in the middle of a reservoir.
On top of that buildings can’t be used because there are lots of random buildings around that are depicted so far from what they actually are (farmhouses as blocks of flats!) they are useless.
Now, whether this would be better represented using Google maps, I really don’t know - but they might be and therefore afaic the point raised by the OP is valid.
I’ll be content to get on with it with things as they are, but it would be really nice if the things mentioned were improved. Maybe they will be in the UK update later this month - but I’m not particularly optimistic about these sorts of things. We’ll see.
Sadly, handcrafted landmarks is the only solution to that kind of detail. The algorithms that generate the scenery from a satellite image are not quite intelligent enough to recognize or recreate specific buildings.
I would respond in kind. We are dealing with AI generated scenery based on actual satellite imagery. This is not payware, modelled scenery that some team or individual spent hundreds of man hours creating. My point is, we should maybe take a step back. What are our complaints, really? That a computer AI can’t recognize your local church from space and faithfully recreate it? We have been horribly spoiled in a very short 5 months. The scenery we could only imagine a year ago is now the basis for complaint because it is not accurate enough.
There will be add-ons and updates and improvements published by intrepid 3rd party developers that will awe us again but in the meantime we need to realize that we are asking an awful lot from a $160 piece of software. Maybe just go flying and say, “Wow! this is a long way from generic tiles.”
Maybe I am “obtuse” but I am, truly, NOT missing the point. What, exactly, will make users just look out the window and marvel at where we are?
Just a point of clarity here. As I understand it, neither Google nor Microsoft control the satellite imagery. They purchase or lease that data from satellite image providers. Both companies are somewhat at the mercy of when these vendors provide updated data. Not only that, there can be different vendors depending on zoom level of the region.
This is an old topic - see this post and the thread. Not going to happen.
Give me any other flight simulator that can do justice to Russian wilderness in winter like this:
No other sim can get this right. I am continously blown away since the release of this game of how accurate this game is sometimes.
Yeah I’m thinking you’re maybe not “obtuse” haha.
Geez that was well said- I agree 100% with you and was thinking the same thing as i read the thread.
I think you got me wrong. Make no mistake Asobo, Microsoft, Azure and all the other partners gave us the MOST amazing game in the last decade and we are all so grateful to them. It was not really a complaint that I raised just an observation. On the other hand this is what science is all about… to always move the boundaries to always want something more and not be complaisant of what we have, otherwise we cannot evolved and progress. If we were happy of what we have we would have never moved from the lamps to the transistor, to the IC from the first Ford car to the ones we have now, from Earth to Mars and beyond. It is a man’s nature to want more and more to the benefit of all. So our suggestions here are constructive ones and by no means criticism to Microsoft and Asobe. Who knows maybe the next generation of Flight Simulator would be live imagery…
Stelios
According to the last Q&A, Blackshark is trying to implement churches for the UK update (although it‘s not 100% confirmed yet). Of course the churches won‘t exactly match their real counterparts, but I think even if they all look slightly similar (English Gothic style I’d expect) I‘m sure it‘ll be a huge improvement.
They also said they were creating some 50-60 POIs, so there‘s a good chance that we‘ll see handcrafted models of some the most famous churches such as the Lincoln Cathedral or the York Minster.
Regarding elevation data, they were talking about 50cm to 2m hight data for England, Scotland and Wales, which sounds quite promising (+ a completely new set of aerial imagery). I only hope they will have resolved the coastal glitch by then, so that we can really enjoy all those beautiful coastlines.
In the Q&A they said they would introduce around 10 new procedural building types. They didn’t talk about farmhouses, but who knows. Since they were talking about the UK update I take it that those new building types will be UK-style, so it should make towns and villages look more „British“.
How well all those things will turn out remains to be seen but I think it sounds very promising.
Does the game still pull roads and building (non photogrammetry) data from Open Street Map? If so any idea how long does it take for and edit in OSM to be reflected by the autogen in the game?
that’s exactly what google maps is doing, though. granted, there are aerial photographs used for this as well, but the 3D structure from photos (called photogrammetry) is completely automated in google maps afaik.
edit: schloss neuschwanstein in google maps 3D (sorry for the music, not my video).
handmade 3D models will always be superior, of course.
Good question. I still don’t quite understand the role of OSM. Some buildings seem to be based on OSM data. For instance, in the sim there’s a highrise in the suburbs of Basel, Switzerland, that doesn’t exist in real life but that’s there in OSM as well. There used to be a similar case in Melbourne. But there‘s also the footprints extrapolated from areal imagery by Blackshark AI. Are those only used where there‘s no OSM data?
