Wow, I just took a look at an open cast mining near my home area and I couldn’t agree more.
Google Maps actually has an ok quality satellite image where cars and mining equipment can be identified. It even has the “new” ramp and street at the southern tip and all street overlays are perfectly on the actual streets.
In Bing Maps there are some clouds over the area, the resolution looks way worse and somehow the images are at least 5 years old. Most of the street overlays, except for some main roads, are at least some meters away from the actual roads and whilst having a look at the next village. And it is even worse in the actual simulator. I can understand why MSFS just adds random non fitting houses.
Coordinates are 51,204957, 9,907748 for anyone interested.
In the next big city of Kassel it is even worse. In Google they have really good photogeometry where the whole city and surrounding areas are fully 3D modeled whilst Bing has somehow even worse imagery than at the mining area. It is so pixelated that cars are actually around 10 pixels by 5 pixels big. Just enough to even be able to see them.
With Googles Map data, even their own Google Earth Flight Simulator looks mostly better when talking about the ground structures and textures when 3D buildings are available.
At least the terrain looks good enough from the air to be able to know where I am and navigate routes I know. Let’s just hope they invest in better satellite images and photogeometry because this is not 2020 quality as Google Maps is way ahead of Bing Maps.
Yes, it‘s a real pity that this area has such poor imagery and elevation data. I agree that the Stockhorn looks bad, but go to Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau and you‘ll see that it can get even worse😅. I really hope that Bing update their elevation data (but I‘m not too optimistic) or that Asobo or 3rd party devs add some decent local mesh. I‘m very happy with the scenery overall, but many places in the Alps and the Himalayas look horrible.
Yup, my home in a city of over 100k still looks like a melted crayon when I flew low and slow over it. Using Google maps, you can see the solar panels in my back yard. But Google doesn’t own the satellites, do they? Seems like they would all be sharing the same satellite assets, but the differences are apparent. But FS2020 will get there in time, I’m sure.
I see the logic but I don’t see the necessity for everything to be labour intensive. When I look at the difference between my rural town in FS, based on Bing, and the competition, it’s not that the other side have been labouring with a digital paintbrush, they’re simply using a clever mix of images that are not simply taken from 100 miles up. The buildings are photo-real down to 50m elevation or less. I can practically count the stones in the cathedral a few miles away. Bing has a shapeless grey blob. All it takes is a willingness to buy the data, or go into partnership to originate it. If they want to prettify a few landmarks, fine, but frankly I’d be happy just to fly a plane around the competition’s Earth just as it is.
Not especially, just all historic buildings apart from a few landmarks - when you only have a picture of the roof from 100 miles up, there’s not a lot you can do apart from shove in a concrete box covering the same area.
I’d give it time, I suspect MS hope to sell their FS2020 ‘world’ for other non flight-sim uses, so it should only get better, especially if Google decide to compete on this. Historic Winchester is poor (the cathedral is a flat smudge), but 10 miles down the road you have Southampton which is really impressive. My favourite so far is Madrid where you can really tear it up in the Extra 300 down those wide avenues and take a spin round the Real stadium.
I came to that conclusion due to all churches, and specifically churches both old and young being flat in Warsaw and other cities in Poland. I figured they probably filtered out all buildings flagged as religious locations to prevent controversies (?). Of course I expect Vatican and Notre Dame to still be there, but I haven’t personally checked.
Bing maps certainly is dated when compared to Google maps. One can hope that with MSFS on PC and Xbox Series X Microsoft will see the incentive to update Bing Maps. Another possibility is of course for blackshark.ai to have their AI gather data from additional sources such as Google maps, but partnership deals with Microsoft may prohibit this.
Ultimately, I believe Microsoft has a potential goldmine at their hands if they play their cards well and deeply invest into photogrammetry data of more and more cities as well as high resolution terrain data. Not only is it something that can be used for MSFS, well fleshed out data can be used for a vast array of simulators and games in the upcoming years.
I bought the London pack and it looks amazing. I also used to fly out of Stapleford Airport and to be honest, although the buildings arent of the best quality, taking off and looking at the surrounding area is pretty ■■■■ accurate. I could certainly carry out a VFR flight to Lydd, Southend, or any of the other airfields around using terrain navigation. Admitedly it could be improved, and hopefully will be in time. Aerial data would make a massive differnce though agreed!
Is photogrammetry data something that MS can just buy from a vendor/vendors? I thought that the competitor had to do their own legwork after acquiring the aerial photos from the data collection providers?
Same question regarding terrain data, too. That seems to me to be more a straightforward data purchase, but I’m probably wildly incorrect?
How much of this can MS purchase, and how much of it requires legwork to get functional?
Well, the tech is here! Only the source of the data has to be improved.
I mean, FS2020 does an awesome job in generating terrain and scenery but the quality is not persistent, yet.
We will have to wait. Either MS improves the quality of Bing Maps or 3rd party developers will provide what’s missing.
