Photogrammetry rez @ low level - good or bad?

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

Without spilling the beans, I think that most simmers will be surprisingly happy with the the quality of area that are not covered by photogrammetry. 

[Rimshot 1,268]

5 hours ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

...(Transition level in EASA countries is 6000')

That's not true. The TA and TL are different from country to country.

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

55 minutes ago, Rimshot said:

That's not true. The TA and TL are different from country to country.

Absolutley. In some EASA countries I thik it's down as low as 3000'. 

Written in haste and not to draw any fire from our American cousins up there at 18,000' !

 

[bonchie 2,312]

It depends on the quality of the imagery. Since that imagery is publicly available, I'm not breaking NDA by telling you to go use the Bing Earth app and see for yourself. In some cases, there is smearing and distortion on photogrammetry. That's just how it is. 

The good news is, you can turn it off if you don't like. I can't speak directly to what I see in the Alpha, but go look at screenshots and videos of how the AI handles non-photogrammetry areas. It's pretty excellent. 

[Brandon01110 415]

A big milestone is for bing to update its map data.  This would be good for everyone.

[tweekz 2,165]

Photogrammetry is mostly limited to urban areas. You will probably not land in midst of a city. So photogrammetry isn't too much of a problem there.

On the country the AI recognizes what the surface you fly over consists of and places according texture / 3D models. So iit should look good there.

[ThrottleUp 639]

Thanks for everyones replies. Im not that worried now! So in areas where the PG isnt used it will resort to using its own generated textures (depended on geographic location)?

The screenshots and vids look great but Im hoping for more videos showing low and slow out in the boonies over rivers, sandbanks, random dirt strips etc 😊

[ryanbatc 13,201]

First off, 500 AGL is pretty low especially in populated areas (but I get people will want to do it in the sim anyway).  From what I've seen scenery looks pretty good (reasonable) at that low of an altitude, but looks dramatically better at 1000 AGL and then like real above that.  

Outside of those PG areas as per the screenshots, you'll see satellite/aerial textures with some sort of autogen-style buildings.  From flying a lot of XP11 with true earth and Ortho with correctly placed autogen, my brain is easily convinced the area I'm traversing is real when autogen is placed correctly over aerial imagery.

Edited June 25, 2020 by ryanbatcund

[ThrottleUp 639]

1 hour ago, ryanbatcund said:

.....brain is easily convinced the area I'm traversing is real when autogen is placed correctly over aerial imagery.

This is actually one of the things I  was trying to say in my original post. My experience of photo scenery in other sims is poor because at low level its a massive blurry photograph with autogen sitting on top that looked out of place. But as you say if it is done WELL then it wont break immersion.

One example of an immersion-killer I experienced in photo scenery is vehicles and parked vehicles (and houses). From up high they look great but down low - they are all flat - because its a 2D photo you are flying over.

Given a choice Id always go for non-photo scenery but of course that wont be possible as I feel FS2020 is just the start. No doubt things will get better and better in the future, I mean imagine Bing in the future, the resolution will no doubt have increased. 

I am on X-Plane 11 now too and love how it looks right out of the box. I have added denser vegetation mods but I avoid all photo scenery.

Edited June 25, 2020 by ThrottleUp

[Kpeters 42]

19 hours ago, yanfeng12342000 said:

That does not sound good.😅

Google Earth VR is mind blowing.

[suncoastflyer 685]

2 hours ago, ThrottleUp said:

This is actually one of the things I  was trying to say in my original post. My experience of photo scenery in other sims is poor because at low level its a massive blurry photograph with autogen sitting on top that looked out of place. But as you say if it is done WELL then it wont break immersion.

One example of an immersion-killer I experienced in photo scenery is vehicles and parked vehicles (and houses). From up high they look great but down low - they are all flat - because its a 2D photo you are flying over.

Given a choice Id always go for non-photo scenery but of course that wont be possible as I feel FS2020 is just the start. No doubt things will get better and better in the future, I mean imagine Bing in the future, the resolution will no doubt have increased. 

I am on X-Plane 11 now too and love how it looks right out of the box. I have added denser vegetation mods but I avoid all photo scenery.

Also remember this - if you're really not a fan of the photoreal scenery, you can choose to use zero streamed data and the sim will load its own HD ground textures and buildings, just like the old sims.

[KESTL 12]

On 6/24/2020 at 11:06 AM, ThrottleUp said:

Am I mistaken to worry about how FS2020 will look when it comes to low and slow?

This is the number one reason I’m really excited for this sim. VFR flying has never been this possible or enjoyable before. At least that’s the hope. It would be a bummer to have gotten this excited only to see mistakes in the landscape once you get out of the popular areas. Let’s have high hopes and encouraging thoughts directed Asobos way, and I’m sure we will all be happier soon when this thing releases.

[ckyliu 1,749]

I've used photoscenery for years in FSX & P3D for VFR work, it makes navigation much easier and allows for some sight seeing. This was at 1.2m/px resolution with autogen trees placed accurately on top and generally this was fine at 2000 ft AGL or above.

Yes, at very low altitude it starts to fall apart firstly by looking flat and as you get lower, blurry too. Although realistically you shouldn't really be flying below 2000 ft AGL away from airfields, especially in a single engine aircraft! I always felt it was worth the tradeoff and much preferred it to landclass based scenery for VFR. And don't forget that computer settings can have a big impact, such as anisotropic filtering and mip maps.

In my experience I found it far less convincing when used in airliner flying, particularly as prior to P3D v4.3 distant photoscenery was incredibly blurry. The sweet spot was between about 1500 and 7000 ft AGL for me.

The quality of the aerial imagery is obviously going to vary massively, including lighting shadows and colours as well as resolution. But the Asobo screenshots of places in Africa suggest they will use low resolution satellite imagery to "inform" landclass selections for these areas so they should still hold up well. The issue I had with Horizon VFR X is the colours were often poor, fields were often luminous with weird tints of red and purple - Asobo seem to have done much better colour correction and blending for MFS. That's before we consider the autogen buildings they're laying on top too.

Edited June 25, 2020 by ckyliu

[LHookins 3,118]

53 minutes ago, KESTL said:

VFR flying has never been this possible or enjoyable before.

I don't understand this.  For the last few thousand hours I've flown VFR with occasional use of VOR/NDB in stock P3D landclass without problems, all over the world, planning flights in skyvector.com and using that for navigation rather than a GPS.  If anything it's easier with the stylized representation in landclass rather than the photoreal scenery in MSFS.  Of course some in some areas the P3D landclass looks much better than others... P3D doesn't handle desert terrain well, for example.

It would be very hard going back to P3D after experiencing MSFS though.

Hook

[snglecoil 1,829]

Photogrammetry aside, photoscenery has always sort of fallen apart as you get lower to the ground. Even using the highest resolution imagery available around airport environments, you are still left with a flat texture, maybe some grass objects if the developer throws them in. 

With the procedural grass and vegetation that MSFS is using, you can see in the screenshots, the photoscenery probably doesn’t even need to be extremely high resolution and yet still retain that feeling of realism. That is really cool!

Edited June 25, 2020 by snglecoil