I’m flying over an area of the Teton Range that I know well irl, but noticed it looked really bad and had a lot of infrastructure and ground details missing. I assumed this area must have been covered with clouds in Microsoft’s data. So I was curious and I pulled up the same area in Bing maps, and saw not only was the area completely cloud free and detailed, but it also had a very realistic hue. Perfect imagery.
Here is the exact same area viewed in MSFS. As you can see it’s blurry, extremely patchy, missing infrastructure (large parking area), and has an unnatural bright green hue:
So I’m wanting to understand why the drastic difference between the two in this area. I thought MSFS used the same sources, especially in areas that have had World Updates and, in the case of the USA, two world updates. Thanks for help understanding this.
Sim just loads the Bing online data (or offline generic set in offline mode). Then in case of using addons in the area it will also load the satellite image for the area (cgl files) if available and the polygon/apron textures configured on addon. CGLs are the base texture and they override the default Bing maps for that area. The others (polygon/apron assets) are intended for closer distances but they can be still visible at high altitudes depending on the size of the texture area.
The problem with missing textures is the original aerial image taken from Bing and the areas definitions (if that´s a town, a forest, a lake, etc). You can find many artifacts in the raw Bing data and also shadows or clouds hiding big areas as origianl images are sometimes generated by interpolation of data taken by satellites during several days, so lights and colors may not be the same. AI procedures can find issues to process those situations. For instance a big cloud shadow over an industrial area can result in game in an empty dark area. If the area is included in the populated areas or roads, lakes, rivers, etc definitions, meaning that game knows there´s something of a particular type there, the probability to reproduce the 3D scene decently is higher.
So the clearer the original satellite data and the more precise the definitions the better for final results. Unfortunatelly this is not the case always. World Updates normally include better definitions and eventually more recent satellite textures, but this does not solve all situations always. Remember most of the work is automated via AI processing. On the other hand what you see on Bing, Google, ERSI, etc on your browser is not necessarily the same data set used by game. Most of the times the browsers just get very old data (even from years ago) so they don´t match with what you see in game everytime.
I think another difference is that Bing in your browser will switch between image sources based on your zoom level (going from satellite to aerial as you zoom in, for example). I’m not sure MSFS does that, to avoid jarring and sudden resolution changes that would seriously break immersion. But I don’t know.
thanks for the technical info. so what do you think is happening specifically in the example area I posted? the Bing image is very clear and near perfect, but the MSFS version is the opposite of that. do you think it’s simply a case of MSFS using old satellite images? thats why i mentioned it’s had 2 world updates which I thought meant it used up-to-date imagery.
Keep in mind that Microsoft is purchasing or licensing the imagery from third party providers, and their agreements may not allow use for another purpose besides the Bing Maps website. What you see in your browser may be an image that MSFT is not contractually allowed to use for broader Bing applications like MSFS. So the sim image may be older, or lower-resolution than the current Bing Maps web image. Just speculation on my part - I have no inside info on this or anything.
I think the problem is the AI processing. As you said the parking lot is missing, however the roads and water bodies are there so definitions appear to be ok. Color is too green, as everywhere in game indeed, but some vegetation is missing. So AI placed the green areas but didn’t identify the trees/bushes.
If you have a particular interest in this area it would be better that you create a custom CGL for it by importing Google or ERSI textures directly.
indeed it is! the whole reason i flew there in MSFS was to try and retrace my route from last year. backpacking around the lake and up into the mountain pass. one of the most beautiful hikes in the world.
which is the main reason i was able to tell something felt very off with the sim scenery, and went checking other map apps to see what was going on
While Msfs does use bing maps, it may not be using the exact same set of data that we see outside of the sim.
Blackshark AI still has to do the blending and colour correcting and this is not done ‘live’ but rather is streamed via cached data, so if a new data set is uploaded to bing maps it takes blackshark awhile to update the ingame set.
yeah good point. That’s what I thought one of the main points of a World Update was, to gather the latest Bing satellite imagery and update that cache you mentioned. So that’s why I was a little surprised at the discrepancy between the two, as the US has had 2 world updates now.
But seems like we’ll need a third to get the good satellite imagery we see in my screenshots. Hopefully soon as it’s really good compared to what’s currently in MSFS
