Jorg – The past week has been filled with news for MSFS: E3 announce, Xbox Date (Juy 27th), Top Gun, SDK stream, PMDG announced that the DC-6 is coming, and World update is now available.
We will talk about World update VI, a new partner, and a new plane in today’s stream.
World Update Nordics video - Timestamp
Before and after videos - Timestamp
Chat question – For this update, why there’s no new photogrammetric cities?
Jorg – They are hard to get. You need to get overflights rights, get the data, process the data. So, we tried to get us some major cities, but it didn’t work out this time. We will continue to push!
World Update VI – Germany, Austria, Switzerland - Timestamp
Germany screenshots - Timestamp
Austria screenshots – Timestamp
Switzerland screenshots - Timestamp
Plane announcement 4: Junker ju 52 - Timestamp
Jorg – This is the first time put together a plane that coincide with a region update where that plane came from!
Guest: Oliver - Timestamp
Oliver shares some details on how the Junker Ju 52 is made!
Every switch is switchable and its made as much real as possible.
Oliver has been creating planes since 1998 for several simulators.
Jorg – I downloaded an older version of the Junker Ju 52 years ago and it was really good, so we went on this journey together to make an even better version of it! Thank you Oliver for joining the team and make this happen!
The Junker Ju 52 should be available in August for the World Update VI!
Martial – Our audio team had the chance to see a Junker and record the audio directly on the plane.
Are missing airports and airport corrections being actively fixed?
Jorg – The thread was super useful and that is exactly what we are going for. It’s going to take time to have every airport being addressed.
Is it possible to create 3D models on top of boats, piers and marinas?
Jorg – We are looking at that and that’s our goal. It’s a journey to make everything look like reality.
All the world updates to date have been for countries in the Northern Hemisphere. I know you can’t make any specific announcements yet, but are there plans for South America, Africa, and other under-appreciated regions?
Jorg – Our commitment is to update the entire planet. That is the goal! We are going to go there soon.
Can we get airport gate lights to illuminate the ramps?
Martial – This question is for the generated airports (we’ve got all lights for the edited and 3rd party airports). We are not generating this king of lights, because so far, we haven’t find the right rules to create an algorithm that is working everywhere. This is something we want to do!
There was a fix for Building heights that did not include hangars! Why is that and will this be improved in the future?
Martial – Every kind building has specific piece of code, and as stated in the question, we have not done that yet for hangars. So far, we are spawning hangars where they should be.
When are float planes coming?
Jorg – If you watched the Xbox trailer, you can see floats on some planes. It’s coming along with the Xbox release and will be free.
Jorg mentioned that he receives email from people playing with their kids! – I’m super happy to see this! It’s also the next generation of simmers and we know that not everyone speaks English. So we decided to also translate MSFS in Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish. We hope it’s appreciated and make it more accessible for people in these regions.
How often is Open Street Map updated?
Martial – It has never been so far. We know that we need to bring improvement that have been made since the launch. It will take a little bit of time to import the data, test it…but it’s definitely something we want to do.
Jorg – We have been listening to you as much as we could! We are fixing the core sim feature and bugs as fast as we can and we update the world has promised. Next year we are going to get serious regarding open data. We are going deeper into making the sim some sort of community project.
Open street map is a great example, it’s a great tool. We need some tools and right now we don’t have much bandwidth but next year is going to be a big deal to really work on this together.
Are our World Update always going to be by country?
Jorg – So far, we are doing regions by regions and it seems a fair way to handle World Updates. There are also more possibilities (some come from the forum). A final answer would be that for now we continue the country by country (or regions by regions) but it won’t always be that way.
Do you think there will be navigation lights or lighthouses?
Jorg – Definitely, yes.
Watermask that we have, can be generated by AI using satellite image?
Martial – The difficulty is that satellite images are showing a lot of disparities (light position, tides) and it’s really hard for an AI to distinguishing the different type of water. For now, it’s hand made.
Jorg – We are going to experiment. As Seb mention it really depends on the seabed. We will try soon and you’ll probably see the results on 2022
Is there any chance you are going turn off the runway lights on daytime and have them on when you switch to night?
Martial – It’s something we could bring but it’s not working like that for now.
What kind of team have you built for World Updates?
Jorg – Gaia team right now is about 40 people, some work on airport others on POIs. Perfect flight, it’s one individual. With Bing, there are companies and partners with people dedicated to specific tasks.
Martial saw a comment in the chat saying that some POIs were popping too close – It’s going to be fixed.
What role Perfect Flight in our World Updates?
Jorg – They are making our Bush Trips and landing challenges now.
Even though we didn’t have photogrammetry cities for the Nordics update, will they be available later?
Jorg – I am relentless in making the World perfect. We will get as many photogrammetry cities as we can get.
Do we plan on improving the first batch of POI we had?
Jorg – Right now, we are looking at both launch airports and launch POIs. The bar has been raised since launch. We are going to continue adding POIs for the coming year.
Is there a way to simulate high and low tides?
Jorg – It’s clearly one of the things we want to do one day.
Can you go into a little more detail on how the Team is managing missing/fixing airports? (is this internal, external)?
Jorg – We have a main producer on Asobo side who has been leading this effort, and we are up to 10 people focusing on that!
Martial – To clarify a bit on missing airports, it’s sometimes the missing data that prevent us from getting an airport. New batch of data will help us recover the missing airports.
Could you create a new “landing challenges” section where you put all the challenges that have been featured?
Jorg – That is the plan! It’s in the feedback snapshot.
Will aurora borealis will be featured one day?
Jorg – It’s on the feedback snapshot, isn’t it 
? It was one of the things discussed with Seb. It’s been under development since few months now! Is physical, we want to get this right and not fake it.
Jayne reminds the chat that a second Dev Q&A is coming on the 30th