Gamers Are Replacing Bing Maps Objects in Microsoft Flight Simulator With Rips From Google Earth (theregister.com) 31
Microsoft's flagship 2020 game Flight Simulator was supposed to showcase Bing Maps and Azure's streaming capabilities. There's just one small problem: gamers are overwriting Bing's in-game 3D photogrammetry with entire cities ripped from Google Earth. From a report: "When playing the game, you're essentially looking at an extremely high resolution image of the entire globe in 3D -- think Google Earth but of a much higher quality," gushed one Flight Simulator reviewer earlier this summer. It may come as a shock to him and Redmond alike that gamers are importing Google photogrammetry into the simulator to replace the default Bing 3D buildings. Microsoft made a big deal of how Flight Simulator's depiction of the entire world would be powered by Bing Maps and data extrapolated from Bing Maps to create reasonably accurate 3D buildings (stand fast, accidental skyscrapers) in the same places as their real-world counterparts.
Microsoft sucks (Score:1)
The OS, Edge, Bing _and_ the maps.
What else is new?
Re:Microsoft sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Hey, they have Office, Project and this last version of "Flight" isn't too bad actually, if you are interested in flying and not sightseeing.
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I was amazed what that could do back then, and I'm still amazed today.
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That won't stop slashdot from carpet bombing us with the constant stream of "microsoft employee X took a shit today" posts.
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That won't stop slashdot from carpet bombing us with the constant stream of "microsoft employee X took a shit today" posts.
I thought they where all constipated.. So that could be news...
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Must be time for another Windows update.
Well ... (Score:2)
At least they're not getting the data from Apple Maps (huge flat areas with minute points of bent 3D buildings and chunky trees)
Bing sucks (Score:5, Informative)
I operate from one of the most-seen airfields in the world (NZTO at Tokoroa New Zealand which is very familiar to many YouTubers thanks to the XJet channel) and I have to say the accuracy of this airfield on FS is awful.
There are buildings that don't exist, a tower that is in the wrong place and in the surrounding area there are thousands of exotic palm trees that simply do not exist.
Bing's images are generally sharper (higher resolution) than Google Earth's for this area but they are many , many years out of date and it seems that a lot of creative license has been used when recreating NZTO in this program.
Re:Bing sucks (Score:5, Informative)
For areas that they don't have photogrammetry for they have an AI that looks at the flat satellite images and tries to create something approximately similar. Most airports have been done that way, only a few have been either scanned or better yet modelled by hand.
The AI result isn't bad, cities generally look reasonably realistic from the air and you can navigate by landmark.
Google has a different approach. Their AI models individual buildings. It understands the shape of roofs and uses street level imagery to build reasonably accurate models, which then have photo imagery of the actual building mapped on to them. So while individual buildings are less detailed than the generic ones the Microsoft AI inserts, they are based on the real building.
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Mod Parent Up (very informative)
Thanks for this information.
Re:Bing sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bing sucks (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I fly out of a Podunk backwater airport that isn't ever going to be specifically modeled because it's VFR only and it's pretty good in the simulator. Good enough to recognize the usual landmarks and find the place VFR. Could it be better? Yea, but the fact that this place is on the map in the simulator is pretty amazing.
I think Microsoft did well, with the data they had available. Things could be better if they had access to Google's better imagery, or if they paid for better stuff (which is available for a price), but I doubt it was worth the costs.
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When Bruce gets done with the CAA, he can take on Microsoft and get this fixed for you.
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Palm trees - that seems to be the default vegetation type when they haven't modelled anything by hand. I was flying around Melbourne having a look and my local area was covered in palm trees. There's not a palm tree in sight when I drive around here.
Is there an meigs field mod yet? (Score:2)
Is there an meigs field mod yet?
Re: Is there an meigs field mod yet? (Score:3, Funny)
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You do realize the (Score:2)
porn industry and hobbyists are going to abuse the customization options even further.
So outdated.. (Score:4, Funny)
I can see the previous owners vehicles from over 5 years ago when flying over my house. Microsoft sold this as current imagery, not ancient imagery.
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I grew up with the original CGA Flight Simulator (Score:2)
I grew up with the original CGA Flight Simulator, so what Microsoft has done with this release is fantastic. I'd buy and enjoy it, warts and all, except I don't own a PC anymore.
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Buy a $50 external hard drive and use the free Windows ISO. Then Google instructions for creating a bootable external drive.
Takes about half an hour to install, with about 3 minutes of actual work. 10/10 would recommend.
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AFAIK Windows on a bootable external drive doesn’t play well with pagefiles. And then you’re also dealing with I/O constraints on an external drive.
I don’t imagine something as intensive as FS2020 would run all that well (if at all), but I would be happy to be proven wrong.
Open Framework, Microsoft Style (Score:5, Informative)
If you do not like out of box experience it it is rather obvious how to expand it to your needs with tools and scripts that are wherever you look within the DEV tools or GitHub. Since there were hundreds of developers in the last generation of FS addons I expect great stuff at low cost to arrive over the next few years.
Why (Score:4, Insightful)
I go to google to find out how to use Microsoft products. Their help systems remain mired in the 1980s reference manual style, where you have to know what you are looking for is called, if it even exists.
Oddly, they implemented context sensitive help 25 years ago, then forgot it the past 10 years.
Yep, all Bing, and nothing but Bing (Score:2)
> (stand fast, accidental skyscrapers)
And no credit for all the data they ripped out of OpenStreetMap, either.
How very Microsoft of them.