Nothing could be more unfair that critics to photogrammetry. That’s absolute the future to sim, and a big investment and study should be aimed there.
For helicopters, the flight you do in a photogrammetry city do not have anything similar to a autogen, even with the best AI that will appear in a century. Look with your own eyes:
With photogrammetry you can follow the actual heli city charts with absolute accuracy (I am at Harbor Freeway route on LA Heli chart), what gives a whole new level for the student and imersion for the entusiast.
With photogrammetry you do NOT need hundreds and hundreds of manually done scenery (that NEVER reach the beauty reality), and instead you have simplicity and automation that in the long run will make it more affordable, simple and precise.
Even for the airplanes, a well implemented and light photogrammetry would make too a revolution.
The only problem at this stage, not the future, is when you land, it do look like minecraft. Above 500’ is absolute astonished. But that is something you get used to, is really a small price to pay - yet. I am so used to this that I even turned off all the vegetation (I now trully think the actual trees beautiful!kkk) and turn down my overall quality to better mix with the yet poor photogrammetry.
So, in resume, I would urge you to try it and, please, help to demand more and more photogrammetry.
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Not true! Minecraft has much sharper angles and cleaner polygons, lol 
Joking aside, I agree totally! Will be amazing when the detail is finer and actually looks right at low level too.
I’ve been touring the PG cities one by one in helicopter and it’s really interesting. Best one I found so far is probably Malaga (Spain) for the interesting layout of the town. A lot of small hills and valleys with buildings of very unique architecture nestled into every nook and cranny.
Rome (Italy) is very cool too, with a few plazas containing hundreds of (static) people but still looks good to give sense of scale and depth. Venice (Italy) is insanely good.
Was also impressed with some of the freeware (file sizes are a bit crazy though) and there is a Payware of my home town I bought that is top quality — and performance even on my potato PC is super.
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Man… I didn’t experienced Venice on heli… thanks
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Keep in mind that not all photogrammerty is created equal. There is a huge spectrum in terms of quality in the sim right now. Many cities look fantastic, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, just to name a couple. But there are also quite a few where you don’t dare fly that low because the illusion falls apart much quicker, especially in the more recent offerings. Toronto and London are still not very good and have a LOT of issues.
Still, there is no better option than seeing the actual city with the actual individual architecture. That’s for sure.
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Does anyone know MSFS’s roadmap for photogrammetry? Do they eventually want the entire world covered or will it always be limited to certain areas?
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Well, it all comes down to data size and how easy it will be to access and possibly compress that amount of data in the future. I’d imagine an entire small country filled with servers if you really want to have the whole world photogrammatized with the current technology. i would love to see it too. well, not an entire country filled with servers, but the digital beauty of our world today. And nope, no idea how far MS will want to take it. So far they are just getting revved up and learning.
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With a better implemented, optimized process and hardware I think that at least the populated areas would be possible in the near future. Google maps is close to it in US. Maybe for MSFS could take 10 years? All my hope… kkkk
I am still amazed about the flight I just had. I could land in a lot of helipad that was just photogrammetry, with the “actual” trees, some very close and a real challenge, and very like the real life.
And in the end of the day, the sim gave me a gift with this view…
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Totally agree.
This morning i was in Rome watching the Police Helicopter flying over my head 
Nice! They look like real!! I’m sure I didn’t have such detailed statues (or are they Stormtroopers?!)…!! 
Hahaha Very nice zoom. I dream the day Rome is totally photogrammetred… a wide area is much more imersive…
Take the landing challenge!
I HAVE to hardly disagree about sightseeing the architecture of a city!
What exactly do you disagree about? I was saying that photogrammetry is the best thing we got to see a city as real as it gets, even when it’s wonky. It just would be preferable if the quality was on a higher level everywhere.
Sure there are city packs like the Drzwewieki Design scenery for Seattle and others, but even those don’t model every single building.
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That’s the point: you cant even slightest sightseeing a city observing ONE good model in a sea of autogenerated houses or buildings, its just absurd, innauthentic and ugly… So, that is NOT the better option now, for sure.
But a model in a photo area blends VERY nicely…
I cant even fly a helicopter in a non photogrammetred area anymore…
I think it’s worth mentioning that I just released a massive MSFS Vancouver Island scenery that is purely geared for helicopter pilots (and seaplane pilots to some degree). It has 4 fully modelled hospitals with helipads, 6 heliports, including Coast Guard, and some exotic helipads: a cruise ship, a Coast Guard ship, a private yacht and a private mansion with a breathtaking view. It even has 3 car accident scenes to discover, for simulating medevac.
Victoria and large parts of Vancouver Island have full photogrammetry, so flying there is visually amazing.
