
Players are fixing Microsoft Flight Simulator’s monuments with Google Maps - danso
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/08/28/players-are-fixing-microsoft-flight-simulators-missing-monuments-with-google-maps/
======
hetspookjee
I wonder if Google or Microsoft would stop this indirect way of copying
through Google Maps. I think Google would claim copyright on the 3d scanned
data that is available through Google Maps. Without this the Open Source
community wouldn't be able to as easily shovel this over through programs into
MSFS.

Though I think Microsoft would be out of harms way for as long as they don't
blatantly paste back the user improved buildings. However, obviously not all
improvements are gathered from Google Maps and dependent on the scale this
might become an issue in detecting these.

~~~
maxerickson
It's a violation of Google's TOS to extract the data (so copyright doesn't
matter a lot).

~~~
echelon
It's against Genius' TOS to copy their lyrics.

~~~
vincengomes
Luckily for Google, Genius doesn't "own" any lyrics.

~~~
echelon
Seems like the law should be written so Google doesn't "own" any of their
mapping data either.

They didn't create the roads, and there's no human actively taking the photos.

It's not like the law cares about effort when it sided with Google against
Genius.

------
sillysaurusx
Also see this 212-floor monolith added by accident in Melbourne, Australia:
[https://twitter.com/liamosaur/status/1296305264870662144](https://twitter.com/liamosaur/status/1296305264870662144)

~~~
fireattack
This is interesting. I thought they use aerial/satellite data to generate 3D
models, didn't know they rely on things like floor number. But isn't floor
height vary a lot? Also I guess it's not the only info they use either?

~~~
Macha
The problem comes from a typo by an OSM editor, as they also import OSM data
for some areas (this is a 2 way relationship, they allow OSM to trace their
satellite images to build out OSM's database)

------
bitL
While I see FS2020 as a monumental achievement and a great version 1, my main
gripes with it are mostly related to the 3D elevation data handling,
simplification and rendering:

\- steep surfaces are both too rounded and textures look like a stretched
pixel strip across the whole surface; most mountains look very underwhelming
when nearby and flying inside Grand Canyon/Marble Canyon looks weird

\- some 3D tiles aren't linked properly, leading to sudden discontinuities in
the surface; try to e.g. fly through the Remarkables mountains north to
Queenstown, NZ

\- some water bodies are upside down, instead of being in a valley they were
processed as "aqueducts"; see Victoria Falls in Africa for a very long
"aqueduct"

\- certain geographic locations have invisible borders one can crash into; try
to land in the Badwater basin in Death Valley

\- when cities switch from procedural to photogrammetry, the detailed city
doesn't match its surroundings color-wise and usually ends up very dark

\- many bridges include water underneath as a wall; SF Bay is full of them

\- satellite imagery is not consistent (usually corresponds to Bing Maps one)
and in many places one can see sharp borders between tiles coming from
different satellite scans

\- some interesting parts of the world don't have consistently high resolution
like Maldives or Kamchatka

\- roads are often projected as textures onto a steep terrain and no effort
was made to carve them out

\- certain type of green is sometimes misidentified as a forest, leading to
obscuring some great views like Kalalau lookout on Kauai etc.

\- some taller buildings end up looking like pyramids from a distance due to
the used shape simplification algorithm; I saw German pyramids near Mannheim
that way

~~~
Stevvo
"certain geographic locations have invisible borders one can crash into; try
to land in the Badwater basin in Death Valley"

The technical reason behind this bug is that Badwater Basin is below sea
level; the game thinks you have crashed into the ocean.

~~~
LoSboccacc
> the game thinks you have crashed into the ocean.

then how come you can land at Schiphol?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjZrizIg2CQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjZrizIg2CQ)

~~~
icebraining
Manual tweaking, probably.

------
AmericanChopper
I think the best solution would be for Microsoft to allow the public to submit
models for review to be included in Bing maps. I don’t think they want FS to
become the sort of “game” where you install it, and then you have to also
install hundreds of mods to get the proper experience from it (like Cities:
Skylines). It would also have the knock-on benefit to MS of having lots of
motivated people to crowdsource Bing maps improvements from.

~~~
TylerE
Flight Sim modding was a thing long before modding for other games...

FS engines are basically mod hosts.

High-end aircraft addons use it for little more than a graphics engine - they
have their own code to run instruments, systems, engines, and even the actual
flight model.

~~~
masklinn
> Flight Sim modding was a thing long before modding for other games...

That’s unlikely to be true, game modding is at least as old as the flight sim
franchise.

~~~
TylerE
The first version of Flight Sim dates from 1983.

I remember commercial addons being sold IN STORES by the mid 90s.

------
rosywoozlechan
I was curious as to what the impact would be on Bing's map product. The flight
sim community is fixing these landmarks and creating files that players then
have to import locally, this doesn't bring improvements over into Bing.
Microsoft doesn't gain anything from this.

~~~
kabacha
> Microsoft doesn't gain anything from this

Of course they do. They get PR and at worst case scenario they get quality QA.

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cableshaft
I knew this would happen eventually, only a matter of time. I'm really excited
for how souped up everything will look in a year or two.

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alphanumeric0
Now Microsoft just needs to update their flight modeling to use blade element
simulation like X-Plane.

~~~
strogonoff
I’d rather see X-Plane improve graphics instead. Feels better to support a
small shop rather than give my money to one behemoth of a corporation.

X-Plane dev team are chill and host live video Q&A sometimes, I think they
have been porting graphics from OpenGL to Vulcan & Metal lately so there’s
hope.

~~~
himinlomax
Google should them by providing them with Google Earth data in order to
compete with Microsoft.

------
systemvoltage
Aside: I wish FS2020 had more indepth tutorials, more focus towards learning
how to fly properly and a ground school with missions. The built-in tutorial
is so lacking, it doesn't even teach you how to use a VOR for navigation. I
think they've done simulation/realism of the physics right and the way the
airplane feels is very real - just the education part should be more of a
focus than the pure entertainment bits.

~~~
ShellfishMeme
I was doing the takeoff tutorial and was wondering why 10 minutes in it still
seemed impossible to get to the desired altitude and speed. Turns out they
never mentioned that you need to eventually move the flaps back. Once I
figured it out by myself I pretty much instantly made it. What kind of
tutorial is it where you need to already know how a plane works to learn how a
plane works?

~~~
g_p
The current training "missions" seem to be straightforward "ports" of the old
training missions from FSX/FS 2004, but without the ground school written
material to match.

I'm hopeful with the advent of YouTube and high quality video capture and
streaming, we'll see video-based ground school lessons emerge that can partner
with lessons.

Who knows, perhaps there's a mini business model here for creators to sell
(via Patreon or even the built-in store?) curated mission lessons that go
along with their YouTube content? I believe MS has confirmed you'll be able to
make mission packs and distribute them via the store. And given how fast the
modding is taking off, you probably already can drag a folder into your
Community packages folder and have it work.

~~~
Fogest
Honestly having to pay to buy the game and then pay a separate creator to
teach me how to play the game feels a bit silly.

I personally played FS2020 and gave up after completing the tutorials because
I didn't know what I was doing still. I feel like I could enjoy the game a
lot, but a good tutorial makes or breaks a game for me. If I have to do a lot
of work outside of a game just to enjoy the game it seems pointless to me.

~~~
g_p
This is good feedback that hopefully the devs will take onboard. I know they
were hiring mission designers recently. Hopefully they'll improve the
training, because you're missing out on a lot of you didn't really get past
the tutorials.

Unfortunately they missed quite a few important things in the missions
(another commenter mentioned not being told to retract flaps after takeoff).

I do wonder if part of the interesting aspect of this being a sim is that you
can actually go online and watch or read a real flying lesson. Perhaps that's
the direction they're trying to go in? So far, the community has been doing
really well in fixing up scenery, perhaps Asobo are hoping for others to fill
the gap with mods.

Re needing to pay, I'm sure there would be excellent free content on learning
it (in fact there already is online), but with value added structured lessons
as a potential mini product.

------
aimor
I'm surprised the game doesn't make more use of Microsoft's existing building
data and aerial photography. Maybe someone can explain. But Bing maps has very
detailed 3D building shape data and aerial "Birds Eye" photography. But in
MFS2020 when I fly over neighborhoods with lots of trees the houses get
mangled in ridiculous ways. Why would they only use low fidelity satellite
imagery for this?

~~~
fjfaase
It might be that architectural designs are copyrighted as well in the
countries and maybe that different rules apply when you want to use a design
in a game than using it in an information service, such as a mapping service.

------
Mountain_Skies
Maybe in a year or so from now once they have enough usage telemetry and have
cleaned up some of the errors, they'll be willing to release an Ultimate
Edition on a terabyte SSD that includes the sim and the scenery that is most
commonly used. That would make a nicer "out of the box" experience and would
make things better for those with limited bandwidth or data caps.

~~~
ec109685
Amazing that would only cost $34 for the drive:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FGZBCWQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_ax...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FGZBCWQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_axitFb9ETAKE1)

~~~
raphlinus
That's not a 1TB USB drive, it's a tapestry. Then they took the listing for
that and changed it to a USB drive so they could harvest the 5 star reviews.

Amazon has turned into a flea market.

~~~
whynaut
They are actually selling a USB drive through this listing now, though. From a
review:

"Attractive case, but the guts are actually just a 16 GB drive with the memory
addresses looped around to try and hide the fact that it's a low-mid capacity
drive. It'll make folder structures just fine, but as soon as you hit 16 GB,
BAM! It starts overwriting from the lowest address. Made for a nasty, nasty
surprise when I was collecting data only to check it later and find nothing
there but empty folders."

------
panpanna
Is MSFS was just a front to improve Bing Maps for free?

~~~
LeoPanthera
Only if developing a modern flight simulator is free.

~~~
bronco21016
I would imagine it’s at least a break even right? They do charge for it after
all.

~~~
penagwin
They charge a full $59.99 too. But I know the target audience would happily
pay full price.

~~~
bhupy
It’s actually $120 for the highest deluxe edition, which includes the 787, SFO
airport, and Heathrow. I imagine a decent chunk of folks on this site wouldn’t
want to play without the decked out SFO experience.

~~~
throwaway43234
Curious, whats so special about SFO? I searched for some images and it doesn't
seem terribly special (certainly not 2x price special).

~~~
leoedin
My guess from the list of premium airports is that Microsoft has made a
judgement based on wealthy geek density. People love to fly their local or
familiar airports, and the kind of people in San Francisco who play flight
simulator are wealthier than most. All the premium airports are either tech or
financial hubs.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eurogamer.net/amp/2020-07-3...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eurogamer.net/amp/2020-07-30-whats-
the-deal-with-microsoft-flight-simulators-premium-airports)

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johnghanks
Isn't the joke on Google in this case as MS has successfully gameified
"stealing" assets from Google to be used in Bing Maps?

~~~
giancarlostoro
It would wind up in OSM which means it will wind up helping much more than
just Microsoft.

------
tjungblut
Flying over the Redmond campus over the weekend, I found it quite sad that
they didn't really put some effort into it. It looks quite flat and
unpolished.

------
kebman
Have they fixed the castle (Kastro) in Myrina / Μύρινα on Lemnos yet (Kavala
in Arma 3)? I saw a nice vide of it here, complete with a comparison with Arma
3: Exploring Arma 2's Chernarus and Arma 3's Altis' REAL WORLD AREAS in
Microsoft Flight Sim 2020! by OperatorDrewski
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGcMyYL17PQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGcMyYL17PQ)
I think a lot of Arma 3 fans owning MS Flight Sim will want to fly over there.
:)

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chinhodado
I don't understand. Are the models actually missing from Bing maps, or did MS
remove them for copyright reasons?

~~~
IshKebab
The flight simulator buildings are procedurally generated, guided by an AI.
They probably went this route because it makes better looking buildings with
fewer polygons and less disk space.

99% of the time it works great because you don't really care if a virtual
house exactly matches the real house. You just want to see some realistic
looking housing estates.

However the downside is when you go and see some well known landmark. They
didn't write a procedural palace generation routine so when the AI sees
Buckingham Palace it has to pick the closes "normal" building which is
apparently an office block.

I suspect the best way to fix that would be to detect when the AI fails and
fall back to Google Maps style scanning, which looks worse, but actually
matches reality. You could also do landmark detection fairly easily - Bing
Maps must have enough data about what people search for and take photos of.

~~~
Nition
Where "Google Maps style" 3D buildings and terrain are available, it's used in
MSFS. It's just that there are many places without it, where the game only has
a 2D satellite map to work with (plus some extra data that's available like
number of floors in the buildings). In those cases it uses the AI generation.

~~~
IshKebab
Really? But Bing Maps doesn't seem to have 3D buildings anywhere, and surely
they'd have made London a fairly high priority?

~~~
Nition
Yes, here's the full list of cities with photogrammetry 3D instead of AI
buildings:
[https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/08/18/all-341-photorea...](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2020/08/18/all-341-photorealistic-
cities-in-microsoft-flight-simulator-2020/)

There are 341, but note that London UK is not one of them. Many are in the
USA.

