That’s a cool site and I’ve seen it before. But what I’m proposing is a bit different.
Imagine users who created those scenery addons listed in that site, submitted it to Asobo. After quality checks, Asobo implements that handcrafted scenery into the default scenery. So when you install the next update, it’s available to every single MSFS user for free.
I’ve covered it I’m more detail in this topic.
Greenland is absolutely awful, I have seen better scenery on mobile apps sadly but hopefully it can get worked on I do love the sim .
Which aircraft do you think has the most accurate flight model?
Well I was talking more about systems modelling rather than “flight” modelling, but I’d suggest many of the light GA aircraft seem to handle pretty realistically. Not sure which is “most” accurate.
My backyard is from 12 years ago. On google it looks crisp and up to date. Bing maps is way behind.
Agreed. The GA Garmins clearly have issues, but for the most part work. I’ve not touched the airliners, but I have seen they have a lot of functionality missing, although there is that group working on that A320 mod, which Squirrel did a comparison video on.
I’ve heard the 152/172 are pretty well done, and in fact both are fun to fly. They seem to handle much like their XP counterparts, at least as far as the 172 is concerned, even down to stall behaviour.
Yo’re talking making this a community effort, sounds very interesting. Where’s the main repository of mods, community add-ons etc? Any idea?
What about the tower of Pisa, a not so iconic tower in MSFS 
Overall the world scenery is outstanding and amazing.
I disagree with the idea that 3rd party developers can be expected to replicate POI’s features in cities. We are talking about 2.5 million cities globally, just how many of them do you suppose 3PDs can actually model? Its not realistic to model the worlds points of interest the “old way” and this new sim was supposed to be going in a new direction to achieve what is obviously otherwise impossible using those old techniques.
My city does not have photogrammetry in the sim, in Bing, or in Google Maps. In fact, even the Google Street View images are six years behind. However, I can easily recognize neighborhoods from above based on a building’s shape, angle, or location. I can identify neighborhoods based on street layouts, parks, fields, etc. NONE of the buildings comes close to actually looking like the real thing but aesthetics aside, the science behind the locations, the sizes, the slopes, the angles… the science is SPOT ON - at least in my region.
This is like moving from a 500 sq. ft. creaking, run down row house next to the tracks, to a brand new 3500 sq. ft., three level house out in the suburbs, and then complaining that the mantle is missing some tchotchkes and trinkets.
And a lot of this comes from people not understanding where the scenery in this flight simulator comes from, and being stuck in a 15-20 year old mindset of how video games used to work. You’re using a Bing Maps viewer when you fly your plane, not a generic, simplified, and hand made world model. There are astronomically larger amounts of scenery data at your disposal, but also all of the quality issues that come along with it. We’re at the mercy of Bing Maps update cycles and data, not scenery designers. The devs have to spend most of their time wrangling with that data using algorithms, rather than hand making specific parts.
You up the detail levels an order of magnitude and it becomes that much harder to introduce landmarks in the game and have them not look like cheap, cardboard knockoffs, which is exactly what would happen if you simply copied the FSX landmarks into Flight Simulator. A box with a texture and no material finish properties doesn’t cut it anymore. The devs simply don’t have the time and resources to make literally thousands of these points of interest in such detail. I wish the Flight Sim team was 10x larger, but folks are just getting their hopes up too high it seems.
You got a much bigger house with a solid foundation, the contractors just aren’t quite finished with it yet, and it needs a homey touch.
Don’t you think that also means that it’s going to take awhile, and probably more source data, to do the new way?
Absolutely, my point is the new techniques need to be the focus for accurate modelling, not 3rd party developers and yes, it will take time, assuming of course that BlackShark are genuinely interested in trying to improve the autogen AI and are given time and money to do so, that last part is the bit I am dubious about.
Bonanza and CJ4
Both great to fly.
Well I happen to have several hundred hours on variants of the 172 so it’s definitely an aircraft I can speak for.
Once again, a lot of things need work. The Garmin avionics suite is an obvious one that needs pretty significant work. Other little things like engine response to mixture leaning also strike me as a bit off. Performance characteristics might be a little off, but I haven’t flown a regular 180hp C172S in a while now so it’s difficult to say for sure. I do a fair bit of flying in a retractable C172RG at the moment.
Handling-wise, it’s actually kind of hard for me to fault. I obviously have to make allowances for the fact that the nature of it being a simulator, I don’t get the same control feedback I do in the real airplane, but at the same time I seem to feel right at home flying it in the sim.
Well this is what happens when you advertise as a Scenery Simulator. I am just waiting on them to get the Airliner aircraft AP systems working to make it into a Flight Simulator. All these complaints about scenery is crazy. It is the best scenery made so far. Now back to the PLANES in the FLIGHT SIMULATOR. Yea I yelled.
I’ve said this before and it would be a great tool they could release to the simmers. It would go like this.
They could do whatever QA they need to be sure it’s not a totally fake representation. And then they would just make it available to see those scenery changes/updates for FREE as scenery is streamed like it is today.
I think this is an oversimplified way to do it, but I still say put the power into the users to build up the world for them.
The complaints aren’t crazy if those complaining bought a scenery simulator and then found the scenery somewhat lacking. But I take your point. It’s just that it’s fairly obvious that the success of this sim has a lot more to it than people simply wanting to fly virtual planes. The whole ‘virtual world’ thing was, as you pointed out, a major selling point.
It isn’t photo real, and the poor Bing Maps quality doesn’t help either. But for places I don’t know exact how the buildings look, it’s pretty good. Even building style in auto generated places looks good.
The biggest issue is that they had to choose Bing instead of Google. Bing satellite map is amazingly bad in Norway, but that isn’t the game developers fault.
That I cannot find the opera house in Oslo is not that important, compared to all the great experiences I’ve had so far.
Currently I’m aware of two sites
The issue with these is these aren’t tested for maximum performance in the sim nor ensure long term compatibility.
Their reach is also limited to only those users who are aware of these sites.
With a gateway system, the repository will be owned, managed, and quality tested by Asobo, and can also be available to every single MSFS user.