thats mostly water tough
139 million is the land mass
Gotcha - yep. Anyway, doesnât really matter how you calculate it, no-one is going to be able to afford true earth for the whole earth - and you get that for ÂŁ60 (or $60 ish) with MSFS. I know there are scenery glitches (although it makes me laugh when people complain about a missing bridge or building in a specific town as if Asobo had the ability to check every building on earth individually - all 2bn+ of them that they say are in the game).
I live near Edinburgh. MSFS made a pretty bad job of modelling that with the autogen and AI - no Forth road or rail bridges, the castle was a block of flats etc. It was still 1000 times better than xplane - I could easily navigate to my house following the roads and landmarks. In xplane I was stuck on the runway and couldnât take off becuase there was nothing giving me any clue as to how to start the ****ing plane.
Meanwhile, someone in the community has knocked up a free Edinbrugh scenery patch, which fills in the bridges, the castle and a dozen other key landmarks. Brilliant. And I donât have to worry about load order, or breaking something - I just stick it in the community folder and it works. Nice!
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Google? Lol.
To play devils advocate, half the world is in a state that looks almost as bad as vanilla X-Plane. There are areas of the world where the textures as not good enough to use in the sim so they had to replace them with generic ones.
But even if only 50% of the world is pretty itâs still a massive bargain.
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Any company or individual competent at 3d modeling can do it.
My point was there is already such a company. It just wasnât used for this particular game title.
We had this before. Microsoft will certainly not use Google for their data 
Just like Boeing does not use the Airbus cockpit because it is better. Itâs silly.
Who said anything about Google? Any competent company or individual, such as Orbx, can create 3d imagery.
Sorry what?
You mean someone competent should create a company that provides Microsoft with 3D data for the entire Earth because they canât do it themselves? LOL! If you can provide 100 million or so in start capital, this might get going.
Austin should partner with Google for X-Plane 12, or simply X-Plane like MSFS (I know you are reading, dear genius, get to work and make it happen! 
)
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There are thousands of freelance 3d modelers and companies who could contribute in a collaborative way. It doesnât have to be one company, and it doesnât have to happen overnight.
Even better would be clearer and higher definition satellite imagery that could auto-create 3d structures.
Austin already said he doesnât like Orthoscenery 
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Using google, millions licence, charging 10-20$ per users subscription, you need to redone all airports from hand, correct all issue, tiles, colour, expensive server, It management, high bandwidth per month, all data from xplane will not works anymore, 6-7 years step back. Melting, missing, bridge, different quality photo sat or not usable, trees issue, at ground altitude is present with google.
There is only one person doing modelling\ airports and coding is Ben, 3d modelled airports take 2-3 per month, do your own conclusion.
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Hope he changes his mind. MSFS in a couple of years will have most issues addressed and XP will fade into oblivion.
Gotta stay relevant and XP is in dire need of a visual overhaul that does not require the user to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars in expansions that look worse than stock MSFS.
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No one said it would be easy. And if thereâs one person that can pull this off, that person is Austin 
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And a high-definition 3d world could be useful in much more than just aviation simulation.
Austin only do and works on flight model, the rest he donât do anything. Ben canât do miracle with such awful task job, he already stated there will be always issue on flight sim, because itâs too much wide.
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I suggest you to read the whole thread. It was about the performance (fps) and not about the coverage.
Actually i spent much time to install MSFS than installing all my ORBX together. The Microsoft technical support even told me to get my money back because the âGameâ wasnât working after hours and hours spent online. In 35 years of using PCâs itâs by far the worst piece of software iâve ever seen. And even now, it starts only 1 out of 3 times and i have to restart my PC to make it work.
Anyway, same comment than in my previous one: the discussion was about the performance and not about the coverage. So i would suggest you to read the whole discussion first.
Thatâs exactly why iâve done for now. I will wait for MSFS to be better usable. Letâs start with correct live-weather. For now iâm having much more fun using XP for my IFR-flights indeed. Thanks. And please donât feel butthurted.
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