I get what you are saying but I do care the imagery is more recent regarding cities. I hope the can do both in the next update for this are (better quality and more recent).
Pretty bad regression in Switzerland. But i am sure that this replies here will be ignored or worse, censored as any posts slightly critizising the product. But it is a fact, this WU18 is two steps back regarding Switzerland. BummerâŠ
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I agree with your observation: the mesh is better, but the steep slopes of many Swiss and Austrian mountains look weird. Other examples that come to mind are the east face of Mt Niesen (just west of the Thuner See) and the south side of the Hasli Valley (just south of Meiringen Airbase). A close look of these and many other sites reveal detailed slopes with much elevation detail. BUT⊠the slopes have no forests, houses, or other details - just a uniform dark green color. All the beautiful detail that exists in the real world such as rock cliffs and waterfalls is missing. This is a big step backward from the previous version of these areas which had a much better representation.
What happened? It seems these bare slopes are where dark shadows fell on steep slopes when the new aerial photos where taken. When MS/Asobo processed the new photos, the AI software that identifies the position of 3-D objects such as trees did not see anything but a dark shadow, so no 3-D objects appear on the slopes.
The following is guesswork as I have no detailed knowledge of how MS/Asobo constructs itâs beautiful 3-D world:
Can anything be done to solve this defect? Obviously, a better set of aerial photos, taken in good weather in the summer around noon to eliminate shadows on slopes would be ideal. I think that prospect is unlikely. I think must be hard enough to get a set of good photos covering a large land area, all taken in clear weather with similar color balance.
A second possibility would be to identify major shadowed slopes and run the MS/Asobo AI routines on other photosets which cover the same area with different shadowing (such as the ones they just replaced) The sole purpose would be to identify the position of the missing trees and other objects to add to their 3-D objects database in the sim.
A third possibility would be for some generous technically-competent individual to use the simâs SDK tools to add appropriate forests or groves to the shadowed slopes - sort of the reverse of the service done by the nice guy who creates the free âFix Treesâ add-ons that remove forests where they obviously do not belong.
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Yes, Swiss Government Maps are free to use:
https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-82509.html
Sorry, no English Version of this text available. Only DE/FR/IT.
But yes, MS/Asobo could fully and commercial use the official Swiss aerial data.
But instead, they use poor, lowres, yellow/greenish tinted Bing Maps.
Even worse since Jörg Neumann currently mentions in every Interview and also the Dev Q&A from August that the new aerials they now use are âmuch betterâ
WTF 
They could use data that is sooooo much better, itâs not even funny.
But they donât.
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Itâs because they use terrible new Bing Maps.
Jörg Neumann called these âmuch betterâ⊠but they are not. Not at all. They are worse than what we had before, as far as I remember.
They could use the MUCH MUCH better, FREE official Swiss government maps.
Check it out!
But instead, they use their very bad Bing Maps.
The colours are yellow/greenish, the resulution is low⊠itâs horrible.
Their Bing maps donât even properly line up with the DEM in Mountains like Pilatus, SĂ€ntis, and many more.
Very disappointing step backwards.
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Itâs the same for the Germany & Austria area so not unique to Switzerland.
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I am also of this opinion I do not understand how they can accept such a degradation. Maybe a strategy to sell their FS2024 
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hmm,to get the same there after a few yearsâŠno reason to buy then 
Since they already said officially that this is the ortho data they also use in MSFS 2024 and this should be a preview for MSFS 2024. But we need to keep in mind that the terrain engine from MSFS 2024 is more advanced and maybe can apply overlays hiding the bad ortho quality.
@Austria: at sim release we had quite good (but somewhat outdated) aerials, with the first DACH update this regressed a lot since tree placement was not correct, baked in snow in several valleys⊠and this seems to continue with the latest DACH WU. Same as in Switzerland, in Austria we also have better orthos available.
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Hi,
For non German speakers, DACH means:
D = Deutschland (Germany)
A = Austria
CH = Confederation Helvetica = Switzerland
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Catastrophic colorimetry texture problem, photos in variable seasons. The regions of Biel, Delémont = colorimetry. The regions of the Alps south of Sion (Zermatt, Verbier) photos in a bad season (spring) with photo snow. Please be more attentive and careful with the injection of satellite photos
7 Likes
I had almost identical issue. I looked at the Content Manager and there was the reason: WU was âpartially installedâ. Donât know why, but running the install process over again cured the problem.
I donât know if that would work with you but for me it helped.
Are the Bern and Salzburg airports ok with your system?
How it looks like when itâs partially installed, how do you notice it, does it read somewhere itâs partially installed?
So how do you continue the installation or did you have to delete the partially installed update and redownload it?
Iâm just curious, because I have this problem too, but nowhere reads its partially installed, just plain installed and up to date.
-eelis-
In the Content manager there was that information. I did not delete anything, just pushed the Install âbuttonâ.
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i really have to give my +1 on your comments. itâs usually not my style to be negative but this time i canât help myself: itâs a huge disappointement. in switzerland we have one of the worldâs best data available when it comes to maps and DEM and then we get something like that. old satellite imagery (and i mean really old - several years for example in zurich!), poor elevation model (look at the northface of âvorder glĂ€rnischâ for example) and no love to detail overall (hard breaks between many many tiles). of course the area is huge, but come on you canât miss that the grass is flying on top of the terrain in all TIN-areasâŠ
and please Asobo/MS: get that swiss government data into the sim again!! we have every single tree with itâs height, every single house with its shape⊠all of that is publically available:
and then still those stairs on sloped terrain. what are you doing to that data? i was very much looking forward to that update and was hoping for a leap in quality again so close to MSFS24 and guys please put some effort into that for the next version. otherwise flying a helicopter, backcountryflying, exiting the aircraft to walk around - all of that wonât make much sense if that isnât fixed and improved.
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Thatâs strange, it was there when I flew in.
I did some more mountain flying around Garmisch-Partenkirchen and so many mountain slopes are just uniform dark green without any trees. As others have observed before, seems like these regions were in shadows when the imagery was recorded. I actually did not see this effect with the older WUs, at least not to this extreme degree.
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Thatâs a very unfortunate problem with many TIN areas. The more TIN gets used the more places will get ruined for off airport landings (helicopters!), unless you switch photogrammetry off.
Itâs an issue that really needs to be fixed.
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first delete the rolling cache and normally if the download wasnt completed it should restart with the next update. So yes, if the download failed that delete and/or restart the download
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to back up the topic about old aerials here the comparison between bing and MSFS:
MSFS -Zurich Police Departement. that construction site is so very old and not there anymore since a long time!
same location on bing⊠why donât we have the same data in the sim?
and yes, i deleted the rolling cache and also checked with an empty community folder. i also switched off all the online services and switched them back on to redownload everythingâŠ
and yes i know that we never had something cool and detailed as we have here now and i really love the sim and enjoy the experience as a whole, but it could be better because the data would be available. thatâs what is such a bummer to me!