I suspect something isn’t working as intended and Microsobo aren’t aware of it.
Because Bing Maps is 3-10 years outdated compared to Google Earth, or doesn’t cover lots of areas arround Earth…
A lot of this as they were explaining in the video, there are three different layers to consider and the info comes from different places as well as the team building models to fill in.
There is much more going on then simply taking Bing data and it just appearing in game.
Plus some areas Bing does not have and they then need to make it.
Toss in the fact the game uses 3D modeling for cities and Bing only 2D and well… it’s a work in progress.
I am happy that they have a dedicated team to work on modeling of the world. Things are only going to get better for us and that is great news.
This is actually quite false.
Since a (small) part of my day job is reviewing scenery for MSFS, I have to compare bing and google earth imagery often with recent real life photography and video sources in order to gauge the accuracy of what I’m reviewing.
I have found several instances in which Bing was and is more recent than google. It simply depends on the area.
For example, at the time in which I reviewed them, Santiago (Chile), Fukuoka (Japan) and Fort Lauderdale (US) airports had significantly more updated imagery (at times by years) on Bing than on Google.
Adding to that, the latest airport I reviewed (Athens) is blurred on Google, but visible on Bing.
The comparison between Google Earth and Bing Maps is definitely not as one-sided as some make it up to be.
I’ve actually seen a few developers base their research on Google Earth likely assuming it to be updated, unfortunately with rather lackluster results, as their airports ended up releasing outdated already.
I can agree with this. As a general statement, it’s mostly correct. But it’s not a blanket rule by any means. Areas where I’ve lived in my life, Bing actually has higher quality and more recent data than Google, surprisingly enough. Granted, I’ve lived in either remote or rural regions, and my current city isn’t exactly a major metropolis.
However, there’s a caveat here. In most major urban centres and their surrounding regions in North America and Western Europe, Google’s data is generally higher resolution. Maybe or maybe not more recent. Generally speaking, Google data is better. But like you said, this is nowhere as clear-cut as that.
Google definitely has more photogrammetry coverage, and for the most part, it’s of higher quality.
As far as I remember they have never said it was real time, nor that Blackshark was constantly updating the data, unless constantly means every few weeks or months. They mainly update the imagery in their world updates. Maybe there are some other minor updates from time to time but what you see in Bing Maps is not necessarily what you see in the sim. This could be seen in the case of Switzerland. The new imagery had been in Bing Maps many weeks before it was in the sim. That‘s at least how I understand it.
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Agreed. But many people are under that impression. And Jorg’s comment in the last Q&A saying if it’s in Bing, it’s also in MSFS (for aerial imagery) just reinforced that false perception that people have.
Again, if that were true, this thread wouldn’t exist.
And my area has the same aerial imagery that was in the sim at launch. It’s never been updated that I can tell.
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Now that you mention it, in one of the first interviews one of the devs, I think it was Lionel, said that when Bing Maps gets updated it would show up in the sim. It sounded as if it the data were drawn directly from Bing Maps in real time. I guess that was just imprecise wording and what he meant was that at some point what you see in Bing would be in the sim. Anyway, they clarified it on several occasions that Bing Imagery isn‘t streamed „live“.
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I can confirm that the world imagery in MSFS is not current. South of San Francisco, the imagery is dated sometime before 2015, the year that football’s Candlestick Park stadium was demolished, though I am glad that stadium is rendered in the sim, just for old times sake.
Now the Candlestick Point area has been developed for other uses as shown in current Bing maps.
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Fun irony, many MS simmers would love if a certain field on the lake in Chicago was back dated.
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