V1.19.8.0 Scenery Comments

[jimjones]

Photogrammetry continues to impress, especially in Frankfort and Vienna. Vienna has many impressive old buildings and a very large industrial area for oil processing. Unfortunately Vienna is washed out spoiling it's beauty. The St. Stevens Cathedral POI's beautiful roof is impressive yet has a few transparent areas.


Several unpublished POI's in the release notes are scattered about in Frankfort, Munich and around the Matterhorn, in particular the Gurneroft South Observatory. Perhaps these are to be Easter Eggs or there are too many POIs to list. Some POIs are not found when keyed in the search box, but do exist. The Matterhorn is improved but freeware is better. Switzerland POIs have a few very scenic mountainous locations for castles.


Mount Rushmore, Devil's Tower and Crazyhorse now do not float above the surrounding area, but Half Dome does. Devils Tower has two outstanding problems. If the POI is used the plane still is launched to about 60,00 feet. Flying toward Devils Tower the plane crashes into an invisible barrier about .55 miles from it.


Sculptures are impressive such as that above Brandenburg Gate. There are several other sculptures atop and around some of the new POIs. It was worth taking a close look to see the detail.

 

[K5083]

I was interested to read your post because I was just going to post a rant saying that the photogrammetry in Vienna looks terrible. The overall theme of my post was going to be that MSFS is very bad at historic cities.

Vienna is a beautiful city, and I was eager to see if I could now drop the addon scenery that I have been using it make it look decent, so it was one of my first destinations after this update.

I know that there are some cities, especially Venice and other cities in Italy, where photogrammetry does a good job and is very preferable to autogen for sightseeing. In most cities, photogrammetry produces vague, gray, uneven buildings that look more like bombed-out ruins than actual buildings. Vienna is one of those cities. I don't know if the attached pics of the area around the Habsburgs' downtown palace are hi-res enough to make my point. But the photogrammetry images are not acceptable, to me, for low-level sightseeing. The buildings are misshapen, the historic buildings around the palace (which is a hand-made item) are recognizable, but damaged-looking, and 90% of the trees are just giant green blobs. And this is with the game paused, having waited for the photogram to fully render. When actually flying, on my rig at least, there often is not time for it to fully render, and most of the buildings are just big blobs like the trees.

When photogram is turned off, the buildings look nice and sharp and clear, and fully colored, and the trees all look great. But the historic buildings are all replaced by ugly modern warehouses and office blocks.

A few sites in Vienna are hand-made in the new update, and look equally good with photogram on or off. These include the downtown and Schonbrunn palaces, the cathedral, I think maybe the sports stadium, a few other places. Less than a dozen altogether, I think, pretty much the ones identified as new POI on the world map.

Overall, it is a disappointing dilemma, a choice between flying over the way the city might look in a Fallout game or a historic city replaced by ugly modern buildings. This is the same dilemma I face with MSFS in the majority of important cities, from Amsterdam to Washington DC. The only real solution is that despite the much hyped visuals of MSFS, these cities still need aftermarket scenery addons.

I can think of ways MSFS can be improved in this regard that I feel really should be implemented when Asobo claims they have "done" a city or region, especially given its touted focus on visual quality and suitability for sightseeing:
(1) Make a lot more hand-made buildings in key cities, like basically the entire historic core of a town like Vienna, and most of the major modern towers.
(2) Make new autogen templates appropriate for the historic cores of such cities and teach the sim to put them there.
(3) Wait for the resolution of photogram to improve, and maybe improve the algorithm for cleaning up the building shapes and textures that it produces. I'm sure this last is just a matter of time, as photogram on Bing and Google improve to the point where anyone will be able to see what brand of car and TV I have, and eventually that will be incorporated into the sim.

August

 

[heywooood]

manage your expectations..
I don't believe developers of MSFS goal is any different to what was for FSX - the default scenery isn't going to be perfect - it is going to be a placeholder.
A very much nicer placeholder for MSFS than FSX ever had - but a placeholder nonetheless.
As an example of what is possible, the PG scenery is impressive, but needs to be heavily augmented by hand, a task that isn't suited to an already overwhelmed flight sim developer.
3rd party scenery developers however can and will eventually provide the details needed for those intent on having a more perfect world (or at least local region to themselves) to fly over.
Regardless of any claims or perceived claims made by MSFS / ASOBO the only way to get into the weeds with accurate to the last detail scenery is with 3rd party developers.
Think of the footprint of MSFS if all the world were even 50% more enhanced than it already is...or of the data transfer rates and vram usage each end user would have to deal with.

If you want to fly over a true 1-1 representation of our world you'll need a pilot license - or a buddy with one

 

[Priller]

manage your expectations..
I don't believe developers of MSFS goal is any different to what was for FSX - the default scenery isn't going to be perfect - it is going to be a placeholder.
A very much nicer placeholder for MSFS than FSX ever had - but a placeholder nonetheless.
As an example of what is possible, the PG scenery is impressive, but needs to be heavily augmented by hand, a task that isn't suited to an already overwhelmed flight sim developer.
3rd party scenery developers however can and will eventually provide the details needed for those intent on having a more perfect world (or at least local region to themselves) to fly over.
Regardless of any claims or perceived claims made by MSFS / ASOBO the only way to get into the weeds with accurate to the last detail scenery is with 3rd party developers.
Think of the footprint of MSFS if all the world were even 50% more enhanced than it already is...or of the data transfer rates and vram usage each end user would have to deal with.

If you want to fly over a true 1-1 representation of our world you'll need a pilot license - or a buddy with one

True, but there is something else as well. I'm not going to name names, but it seems that a few people always run into problems, often the same people... So I revert to your first comment: "manage your expectations" and I will add "manage your urges and impatience". Read the ubiquitous online literature available on updating MSFS and take heed. Before updating, take the necessary precautions, run the update and when launching the sim after the update for the first time, make sure to have an empty or renamed community folder.

It's not rocket science, it's just self-control.

Again, this is just MHO.

Cheers,

Priller

 

[SteveDra]

Flying toward Devils Tower the plane crashes into an invisible barrier about .55 miles from it.

That is accurate behavior in the real world around Devil's Tower......sheez....didn't you ever watch Close Encounters?

Its aliens....they have powers, LOL