700! I sat there thinking how are they ever going to clear that back log. Perhaps spending some of the huge amount of cash they have made from selling MSFS into bolstering the department that deals with that intake.
Did they also say something like 10-15 a day being added, or did I make that up in my head.
That sounds like its 2-3 people doing it, and probably as a secondary duty to something else.
Indeed. While older data, resolution and coverage was good overall. Vancouver was only 1/2 covered (much wider coverage now), but at least it looked good. How absolutely no one noticed this downgrade is beyond me. And the fact they didn’t even using the new PG data in the promo video for Canada (at least in one of the Toronto sequences) is even more boggling.
We got the short end of the stick. Where other world updates received NEW PG cities, we got no new PG cities with this update. All we got was a very noticeable downgrade to what was there previously. And performance is worse now because of all those extra polygons from misshapen, melted buildings that need to be rendered.
Americans would be livid at the disregard shown to their cities, and rightfully so. It really feels like the Canada update was an afterthought and very little effort was put into it. Like they just wanted to cross it off the list ASAP and move on.
They’re gonna fix the CN Tower and tower in Calgary. That’s all that got “promised” in the Q&A. The bad PG was acknowledged, but nothing was really said about this getting fixed. I don’t see the PG data being fixed any time soon. Remember, they profusely apoligized for the sorry state of the London (UK) data 2 years ago and promised a fix, and still it hasn’t been updated.
Will they fix Canada? Maybe at some point. But I think we’re going to be waiting a long time to see any updates that fix this mess in any noticeable manner.
If you count the city update the U.S. and Germany have both had a couple of enhancements to their part of the world. Both seemed fairly good to me - judging by the locations I’ve personally visited. It’s tempting to think that they are basing the attention to detail on the potential local user population. As for the U.K. though that line of thought doesn’t seem to hold true. London’s center looks OK but much beyond the City Rd. and the apocalypse returns.
I hope it’s not based upon local user population. With New Zealand having a population similar in size to the Greater Toronto Area it would not bode well for their WU12 update. Those nice people and their beautiful country deserve to be treated with respect.
I’ve been a Flight Simulator user since the SubLogic days. I’ve had most versions between that version and the current one. In general terms, and conceptually, I love the current version. Do I really want to spend time trying out various hacks to get back what was lost? No. Not when the updates like WU11 take longer to install than many operating systems.
I have lots of projects in the works that take my time and give me joy. Given a choice of working on those - or launching MSFS and being offended again - I choose the former.
Various hacks? It’s literally just a little menu item operation that takes all but 30 seconds and a sim restart and you are good to go. You would only remove a couple of 3D city files, a few KB each, that inform MSFS what data to stream. They can be reinstalled in seconds as well, should you want to use them again.
If that is too much and reason enough to throw the most amazing simulator we ever had out the window, so be it. I don’t know what else to tell ya. Have fun doing other stuff, I guess …
Literally, go into the content manager and uninstall the Canada update. Restart the sim. Done. There’s no hackery required. It will restore Canada to its former decent PG.
Like I said in an earlier post, unless you fly to those out of the way bespoke airports that typically no one goes to, you’re not missing out on anything without the Canada update. You’re better off without it.
Jorg said that they were “working on updates to the Canadian cities,” and that other cities were in the works with teams working on it. That sounds like a bit more than just one or two POIs, but yeah, not it’s not exactly clear when, how or if broader photogrammetry or terrain issues will be fixed in WU Canada.
I’ll have to go check out the Q&A again to make sure I got it right. But outside of mentioning Calgary and Toronto (the towers particularly) and a major effort to fix bridges, I don’t recall him saying anything except that the PG data they got was newer, but lower quality.
I guess we’ll see then. In any case, Canadians got the short end of the stick one way or another with this update.
EDIT: Ok, I guess I had missed that. Just watched the section. He says Calgary has been fixed and “others”. We’ll see what comes of this.
Despite the fact I seem to have lost my exalted title of “Alpha Tech” guy, I’ve been around since the beginning. And while there have been ups and downs and glitches here and there, for me most of them resolved themselves as the regular updates came out.
As this is my home area, I was really looking forward the WU11…and I was so disappointed. Now it is true that you are going to be more critical of your local area or areas that you are familiar with, but this was just awful…and in most cases worse than what there was before.
The discussion has been on the CN Tower etc., but that’s not the only issue. The terrain anomalies don’t seem to have been fixed and the “upgrade” seems to have introduced some that weren’t there before!
In the last Q&A, Jorg seemed to commit to fixing this, but I hope it’s not just “make the CN Tower look good” and move on.
I remain, hopeful.
Thought about what you said. I came to the conclusion that I was procrastinating due to the offensive impact of what was done in the WU11. In the content manager there was no option to remove the photogrammetry city files selectively. Only the option is to delete Canadian photogrammetry cities entirely. I tried it and agree that Toronto’s appearance is somewhat better. Thanks. When I get the time I’ll give it, and the other cities, a more detailed look.
I would be tempted to dump the entire WU11 update but do like most of the new POI content (other than the puzzling condo) and have seen some minor elevation improvements in the rural areas I fly. Guess I’ll wait to see if we get a passable fix when the WU12 update comes out and then decide.
It is a good workaround for the time being. And who knows, maybe the promised improvements to the photogrammetry will be good and arrive soon.
I hope you can rekindle your enjoyment of the sim!
I’m still baffled that there has been no Toronto Pearson Airport on marketplace for Xbox users. I mean it’s just a tiny little airport why would that be there right. Was hoping maybe the Canada update would give us a decent version. Silly me getting my hopes up.
I think what he said was that the “PG is newly captured” compared to what was originally in the sim, essentially covered a lot more area than the previous PG, which was why they chose to go with it (but not in these words), but was admittedly not of the same quality in certain aspects (e.g. the Toronto Tower). I think he also said they could do a better job of QA (using London as another example), though perhaps, also, in not so many words. That was my impression anyway. In any event, the text is available for what was said.
yea unfortunately the two that are out wont be coming either, FlyTampa isn’t bringing theirs over to console and RegDesigns is in the middle of restructuring after their previous owner took off and left. FSimStudios is trying to bring CYTZ over but has run into issues of their own last I checked on that too.
I don’t envy the person(s) tasked with cleaning up PG data.
Yes, you can go in with a 3D viewer of the raw data, and start deleting things, but where do you draw the line? What do you delete, and what do you leave behind? Do you replace it with anything or just leave gaping holes where messed up geometry was?
I think at some point, and it’s going to have to be a human decision, though it could be augmented by AI by looking at face angles, the “gaping holes” and bad geometry will need to be filled in by human and/or AI created models.
Certainly AI could be used to help sort through the geometry.
Not that I envy the people tasked with the job. But, hey, there’s all types. I’m sure there’s some out there who enjoy that sort of thing. There is a certain level of satisfaction with fixin’ stuff, kind of like winning a game of solitaire on your phone…
Maybe tools could be created (perhaps they exist?), for pushing and pulling on vertices as well for quick fixes, which hopefully maintains connection with the textures on those faces.
Yes I think some automated correction is technically possible but it’s definitely not an easy problem to solve without making other errors and glitches instead. Impossible to manually check everything so you’re in the hands of the computer to make decisions. I wouldn’t trust it fully 
— and coding the rules for that is a gargantuan task on its own I imagine so we’re probably stuck with waiting for cleaner original data and another pass to update areas they’ve already done. Will it ever actually happen?
I really hope all this focus on the CN tower doesn’t mean that’s all that gets fixed for Toronto. In fact, there’s a nice CN Tower mod at .to that will rectify this problem, at least for PC users. I can’t believe it would represent much of an improvement for Toronto flyers, to experience a pristine CN tower and condo building in an otherwise nuked city.
The real tragedy here is that the PG data on Bing is actually pretty good. And no, what we have in the Canada WU is NOT what’s currently on Bing.
It’s far better quality than what we got in the world update and It looks suspiciously like what we saw in the Canada Update trailer video.
Oops!
Not that he’s going to answer here, but… Jorg? Care to comment?
