I had just read a great interview with Jorg Neumann on twinfinite.
I was surprised to read that Jorg partially chooses where to do a world update based on available imagery and photogrammetry.
I think what you should expect is that we’re going to continuously update the entire world and that has something to do with available data. We just announced yesterday France and Benelux. It’s not because of any other reason than us having really good data. ~ Jorg Neumann
I thought why shouldn’t we try to offer ideas on areas with known data to us so they can be inspired with the possibilities?
I will start with my own suggestion… Israel.
It has a some companies like ‘Ofek’ and ‘Simplex’ that have high-res imagery of the country, including most large cities with full photogrammetry cover.
Hi there, thanks for the reply.
I thought that as well but on the 21st of January update they revealed that they used a data provider for their UK update.
The Bing Maps team is working hard to make this happen and the data provider, Bluesky, is helping as well.
I do not know what price Microsoft are willing to pay, and maybe developers for paid sceneries are looking here too and can get ideas.
I believe local fans can surprise even the largest companies with such info.
Honestly I’d prefer if they just had a strike team that would identify hotspots around the world players wanted to see updated (various coastline water meshes for example). This could be a monthly update that targets small projects within their scope but result in a happier community for fixing what they wanted done. Should also allow the rest of the team working on the big world updates to maintain their ~3 month cycle and ensure it’s up to par.
I suspect that Asobo might also look at it’s user base to decide which area to update as well. I suspect North America is it’s biggest market, so that was first, followed by Japan, the UK and Europe.
Not sure that the demand in places like the Antarctic the Arctic and North Africa would be too high, but South East Asia is an area I would expect to see before long and perhaps Australasia too. Not sure whether South America is on their radar yet
I fully agree and would suggest a poll could be a good idea every now and then? however I guess the problem is data - Jorg has mentioned several times that they need to get very good elevation data and that takes time, so they cannot easily commit to updating a location we request.
Not necessarily by request, but more so by reviewing frequent reports and sentiment on the forum. Polling various things to be prioritized would be nice as well. These updates would supplement the usual sim updates, providing a bit more QOL and focus on the “nitpicky” items.
