Description of the issue: With the new FS2024 aerial images, and the updated SU16 maps in FS2020, the colors in areas with PG are way too washed-out and should be more green than they are in-sim. But in places with lower-quality Bing maps, it’s just the opposite – instead of Australia’s desert being red, it is brownish-green. There are many threads which contain comparisons of how it does look vs. how it should look, but none of them are identified as Bug Reports.
FREQUENCY OF ISSUE
How often does this occur for you: Always
REPRODUCTION STEPS
Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:
Ensure the date is set to the winter months
Load into Europe, United States, Canada, etc. or any area with high-detail maps that are not part of any World Update or City Update (this is the cause of a lot of confusion between us faithful bug reporters). If you have these updates installed, delete them and then perform your test.
YOUR SETTINGS
If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.
What peripherals are you using: N/A
[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it? No
[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12? DX11
[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use? Nvidia RTX3060
[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share? AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
Once again, if you have the World Updates installed in the area you are testing, that may affect what you see. Please delete those World Updates when you try to reproduce this bug.
The new bing map texture colours just look plain bad and unnatural all around. However I’m not sure if the issue is with the fact that the bing maps are just bad or MS hasn’t colour corrected them properly.
Too much issues to report about aerial imagery, even if it’s Asobo’s fault rather than bad Bing data source. I’m tired to report it either. They never cared much about it and maybe never will.
I wonder if it would be more sensible to create dedicated bugs about every single affected landscape. As it stands currently this issue includes all sorts of wrong colors worldwide and as such is practically unfixable in any reasobale time scale. The issues are typically limited to several wider areas around the globe and maybe they can be fixed one by one if they are reported separately.
That is, if this kind of issues are fixed at all by Asobo. (If, for instance, if they have the policy or priority that “up-to-dateness” beats correct colors or cloud-free imagery they won’t consider it a bug at all.)
the colors in areas with PG
The issues of the washed-out and partly bluesish tinted imagery in parts of the European Alps are typically in non-PG areas, so I don’t think this is a helpful criteria in this issue. You might want to remove this part in the description.
Folks - Just a reminder that this is a bug report topic, not a discussion topic. If you can repro the OPs issue, please provide screenshots with the specific location.
If in MSFS 2024, you can enable Dev-Mode & the FPS counter widget, as the widget also displays the latitude, longitude & altitude of your aircraft’s location.
Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
OK, I will pick some partly random places in the European alps. Specific loctions are on the screenshots
East of Schwyz, Switzerland: Colors are washed out and too bright with slight blueish tint (Flight date August):
Note the striking difference in color between the landscape and the imagery on the EFB. The latter is maybe a bit to dark but looks more healthy.
Here’s the location:
In the same affected area the top example with the strongest tint is (imho) a bit north around Einsiedeln, Switzerland. This doesn’t look like planet earth at all:
If you want the worst combination of all that, fly around Bottenwil, Switzerland.
Imagery west of it is OK, imagery north east of it is brownish, and anything southeast of it is blueish bleached. Following screenshot shows a variety of tints:
Flying towards Lucerne, Switzerland (shore of the “Vierwaldstättersee”, e.g. LSHL). I can see the map tiles changing their colors towards the worse if I come closer. In the distance they are green and then they change to the bright blueish tint. I hope this screenshot shows it well enough:
People have already taken the time to list more examples (and describe their location) in the linked threads, so please feel free to browse these for mor examples.
In constrast some locations which look good or good enough (concerning summer colors)
Visp, Switzerland - OK
Innsbruck, Austria. - Maybe a bit too bright, especially the 3D autogen buildings.
Bolzano, Italy. - OK. Following image from that town shows what natural summer colors can and should look like in FS2024:
Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
The bing satellite image are ok. In MSFS 2020 it is also fine.
In MSFS 2024 it looks bad because the satellite texture have some weird color correction applied.
If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
Here are just 2 examples. Top part of image is from bing maps. Bottom part is from MSFS2024. Month is August.
This is in 47.046887 9.011119. There is a huge area to the left with blue filter when the part to the right look great.
After getting similar disappointments in Leipzig and Yosemite valley (bug reports exist) and seeing clouds on the imagery f.e. in Ngorogoro crater or the southern tip of La Palma (Canary Islands) I feel I need to make general statement, at the risk of starting a fundamental debate:
If there is older imagery (or photogrammetry) of an area which has an acceptable quality and natural colors and there is newer imagery resp. photogrammetry of the same area which has quality issues (and be it just poor-looking shadow areas or sporadic clouds), please use the older data, especially in rural areas.
Few people can tell the difference whether images are 10 or 2 years old, but if the colors are wrong everybody notices and complains.
In some regions it might be difficult to get any cloud-free quality imagery, but that FS2020 has better-looking scenery in several places just leaves me shaking my head …
When are we getting an answer for this? We all know that acknowledgement is half the fix. If MS/Asobo refuse to even acknowledge that this is a problem, they’ll never fix it. Come on, folks. You can’t tell me that you’re too busy to say five words: it was a mistake; we did it on purpose; we weren’t aware this was a bug; etc… say SOMETHING.
I recently flew over New Mexico and one particular area was bright green. Checked on Google Maps and it’s sand-brown. Checked on Bing Maps and it’s brown as well. But the high-altitude image is green, and that’s what I was seeing.
I also saw snow on a mountain in Arizona that couldn’t be more than 5,000 feet high. Removed the Live Weather and sure enough, the snow is baked in to the image.
Either fix it, or give us a tool to fix it ourselves. But ignoring it is not going to silence us.
Thanks for listening, because I truly believe you will.
FS2020 USED to have better scenery in some places in SU15. Since SU16 it’s almost identical to FS2024, with the exception of the seasonal colour overlays added by FS2024 that are not implemented in FS2020, which accounts for some of the colour differences between the two current versions. That’s one of the reasons why I created this wishlist item.
