Photogrammetry for every national park in US update

Photo realistic scenery in national parks would be great to see. There are a lot in my home state of Utah alone so I can’t expect all of them but the major ones would be nice.

I agree! I’m in Arizona I feel the same about our Parks.

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I absolutely want this! Washington State

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The geological features really need it. Monument Valley is a real mess in Bing and the sim.

But unless they replace the vegetation with AI/autogen, large parts of these parks could actually wind up looking worse.

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Yeah. That wouldn’t be good. I’ve flown over a few like Zions and Bryce. They’re not terrible but could be better. Monument valley does definitely need an upgrade. I’m sure 3rd party developers will be adding in more and more of these but I’m like a lot of people and am nervous about adding them unless they’re in the marketplace.

Those extruded textures are horrible

I have flown around a few USA National parks and find the scenery lacking details of major attractions. Example, recently flew around Arches National Park and was quite disappointed.

I flew around trying to find the Delicate Arch and this was the only Arch I found, which doesn’t even come close. I’ve been to the park and know it’s location and really didn’t find it. This looks more like one of the Window Arches.

It would be great to see the National Parks updated next time updates are done to the USA.

I know, we are very demanding :slight_smile:

Update:

This is more what I think about when I think about Arches National Park. I know a lot to ask for out of the sim :slight_smile:

BTW, I love Moab, the town just south of Arches and Canyon Land National Parks. Off-road cruising in a UTV is incredible and something I will be doing again this summer.

I have a Motorhome and travel about six months out of the year. I really don’t know what I will do about flying. I don’t want to take my big PC and monitors and I’m considering buying a gaming laptop. But internet is poor in a lot of places, so I don’t know if I should spend the money on a laptop, when I can’t get good internet access.

If I don’t get a gaming laptop, I will certainly be having MSFS withdrawals.

Great idea. We have been to half of them and I would like tho both revisit them and see the ones we will never see in person.

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Yes, great idea - would be nice if they do this as part of a future US update.

If you want in the meantime there is this… :smirk:

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The one in your picture is Landscape Arch. Delicate Arch is in the sim and sits about 5 miles southeast of Landscape Arch.

I flew around for a while and I couldn’t find it, I will try again. I visited the Delicate Arch and thought I remembered the road I used to get there and what I thought I had followed.

But anyway, flying over it in the sims really looks noting like it. It really does it no justice.

They didn’t even any POI indicators for anything. Unless you know where it’s at, you won’t even know you are flying over it.

Update:

I did fly around and found Delicate Arch. I originally flew over the road to Windows Arches and there are no arches there.

In essence I think there are only three detailed areas. Hopefully we will get some more.

In the mean time I will try the add-on mentioned by @Renoi71.

I live in southern Utah about 20 minutes from Zion National Park. The in game version is really bad and doesn’t do justice to the park at all, but there’s a mod over on Flightsim that’s amazing and looks how it’s supposed to look. I’m not sure why some things Asobo does looks so bad while fans are over here making things look 100x better. The same goes for Monument Valley. The one that Asobo added looks bad still while there’s a Google Maps photogrammetry one on Flightsim that looks just like it. I wish they would’ve used Google Maps instead of Bing Maps for photogrammetry and stuff. I believe that’s where most of the problem lies. A lot of cities in Japan have full photogrammetry in Google Maps but they don’t in Bing Maps.

Normally there are two archs but one is almost impossible to pass with the addon… :grimacing:

But on this Addons I do not find that the archs are well done, the decor around it is good on the other hand…


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Yes, the National Parks are very poorly rendered.

I seriously doubt that MS will ever use Google Maps, however, they can still do some hand crafted detailed scenery for our most precious National Treasures that we have in our National Parks.

Please have your friends vote on this topic to try to get MS and ASOBO to update our USA National Parks!

They probably already have a full caseload, honestly. They were supposed to have the seasons update come out this year, but on their roadmap they pushed it to next year for reasons beyond me. I’m not sure what they have going on but I know it’s a lot. Also, speaking of seasons…I just bought a seasons mod for the game yesterday and it is honestly one of the best and most amazing mods for the game. Period. It adds so much more life and diversity to the game. If you get the chance I suggest you get it too :slight_smile:

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Overall, I am very happy with the scenery of MSFS and it is excellent, but as we all know, we always want more :slight_smile:

To be honest, I thought the arches looked kind of terrible against the base scenery. These weird smooth lumps that jut awkwardly from a low resolution landscape. I backlit them to hide all of that when I got these screenshots.

I think it’s too much to ask Asobo to remake all of these features. There’s an entire world out there, and they only have the time and resources to give us a handful of things to look at. When they have to rush to move on to the next thing, sloppiness is the result.

Instead I think the users themselves need to make this scenery. Rather than amassing more and more add-ons in the community folder, we need to keep voting up and asking about the Scenery Gateway system: users contribute to the base simulator scenery that’s downloaded by all users. Such a system needs to allow importing of custom 3D models, which then hopefully get incorporated into the scenery that’s streamed to the client, rather than downloaded as part of the base sim during an update in those huge packages. This is probably going to require a bit of an overhaul of the simulator as any custom scenery that is not on Bing Maps must be downloaded to the client rather than streamed. However, if we want the world to really come alive, the answer is having the thousands of us players out there make it ourselves.

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@SkipTalbot,

That’s a great idea, but I think it will overall cause more problems. A lot of users don’t have the technical knowledge to be able to produce a stable and bug-free add-on.

I know that MS and ASOBO incorporate enough bugs on their own. Just think, if there are thousands of other users adding on stuff which can’t be tested by a good QA group, it will lead to more problems.

We don’t need more problems than what we already have.

Update:

I read that thread and as long as MS and ASOBO test it and implement it into the base, I think it’s a great idea. I voted for it.

BTW Skip, do you live in mid-eastern Florida. I know a Skip that may be you. We may be neighbors.

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Yeah, Asobo would have to properly implement the system, but if they focused on that then they could devote so much of their resources to other parts of the simulator rather than scenery design. Ideally, I’m thinking this would actually be a project for the Bing Maps team and for user contributions outside of Flight Simulator entirely. Kind of like a Wikipedia of maps. Flight Simulator would just consume that data then. After that, it’s important that there are volunteer moderators that check submissions to make sure they satisfy the rules and meet the quality standards. We wouldn’t want some newb to come in and start drawing on the map, wrecking everything. So user edits would definitely have to be approved, and could be flagged for review. But just think if only 1% of users were making scenery contributions. That’s still several thousand users I’m guessing. We’d see all kinds of great additions all over the world in no time. I think there are models for how such a system could work, but it’s going to be an enormous job implementing all the necessary tools.

I live in Illinois. :wink:

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