So we know there are not many areas that have water masks applied yet, but I do like to visit the ones that are already there. Does anyone know if there is a list somewhere with these locations? If not, maybe we can collect some locations in this topic together? I tried to find a list or a topic full of locations, but I couldn’t find any, does this mean there aren’t more locations?
I only know the locations ObsidianAnt mentioned in his recent YouTube video on this matter:
South Caicos
MYAP | Spring Port
MBGT | Jags Mccartney Intl
Thanks for the video… why is this? I an trying to understand… yes, they are showing beautiful coral reefs, water masks etc. in the trailers. I know there have been countless threads on this, however do they actually have someone working on this currently? These are drastic in comparison. I know the package usually sells the product in most cases, but this is something that really should be remedied at some point soon.
No one knows for sure, but it probably has to do with the sim showing satellite imagery under the sea globally without restrictions in early builds. The promotional videos might have been captured with these early builds at cherry picked locations.
If you look in Bing maps you will see that this will often result in ugly transitions and clouds at the bottom of the sea. So they probably removed the visibility of satellite imagery under water to prevent this, except for the first few meters from the shore (this was actually expanded in one of the earlier updates).
By hiding the sea bottom globally they now have to manually select areas to make the sea bottom visible again, this process is called water masking. But this will take a lot of time. But I’m quite curious where to find these locations so we can at least enjoy the ones that are available.
Visit South Caicos for a good impression of what is already available in the sim right now.
This is one of the issues that most upsets me about Microsobo. It was clearly false advertising. Users should not be giving them a pass on this. It was clearly shown in marketing material to make people believe that this is what they would see in game. If they were not trying to be deceptive they would have put a disclaimer in the advertisements.
Anyways, are the three locations listed in the OP the only known areas that have the watermasks applied. I too would like to know where all the locations are to see these areas.
Nice to see folks like ObsidianAnt giving this some prominent public attention. Unfortunately he makes the same natural assumption of many that this imagery is a coming feature in development, and not simply the default scenery from a much earlier build.
Saw the video also thought it was interesting that the perception was that the advertising footage related to a future release. But everything i have read seems to indicate that the water was from an early development system, then these feature removed due to issues with displaying them. Showcasing features not present in the sim makes no sense, so I’m not sure why they are doing it.
However this sort of advertising is common. Just try heating up anything bought in the frozen section or your supermarket and comparing to the picture on the box.
What makes it hard to understand why Microsoft are showing stuff that doesn’t exist in the product, when there is so much good stuff that is there. My guess is that all the trailers were developed using a very early development system, and just released if and when they are needed. Thy person hired to do these trailers has probably moved on to their next job long ago.
These are not old, you can see change from bigger ripple water bump effect ( that no one like it under 15 knots wind and got removed recently). These water mask are newly made.
They already stated they have made many when possible without clouds\tiles artifact from Bing, for some reason they are not available yet.
Well to be honest all these threads were about complaining they are missing and stuff like that, I was just hoping to get some more locations to explore which have the water masks already applied. Wasn’t able to find much though in the previous posts about water masks. According to some comments on the ObsidianAnt video these should contain them (haven’t tried them out though):
From Rose Island (near Nassau, Bahamas) all the way to South Eleuthera (Bahamas)
Dahlak Marine National Park, Eritrea
Witsunday Islands, Queensland Australia
Bahamas near MYEH North Eleuthera
But there must be more, I accidentally stumbled on a location which had them a while ago, it was beautiful, but I cannot find it anymore.
Great, thanks man, will check them out! I also tried a lot of ones from older forum posts, but there was no water masking present. Saw some reports from people telling some locations were once beautiful but that the water masking was no longer present.
Since USA update I lost all water masks, at least, the places that had it before now lost it… Nassau is not showing anything anymore, Eritrea (Dhalak reserve) shows just standard water now. Anyone else have this issue?
Yes Seb said on the latest live stream that in a matter of days, the watermask data will just be pushed into the sim as an independent update with a list of locations that they will show up being pages long. Something to keep our eyes out for and look forward to!
