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Microsoft Flight Simulator maps entire globe with AI
- bitxbit 6y agoHow long would it take to model out the entire world in reasonable detail? Something similar to open world games such as GTA V?
- godzillabrennus 6y agoIt’d be kind of amazing if GTA 6 was using this kind of tech to create its open world environment when it releases. Sadly though, I expect it will need to have a free to play mode with micro transactions to support the ongoing investment into keeping the infrastructure up for delivering the open world imaging.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoMoreso if they donate resources to OSM to make such data more reliable and accurate and then they just freeze a snapshot when they contribute to make a game from.
- vlunkr 6y agoConsidering GTA V has made literally billions of dollars I doubt they'll need any free to play mode.
- madeofpalk 6y ago“Making lots of money” does not seem to suppress companies from trying to make more money. See, Apple and App Store.
- WilTimSon 6y agoI think their point was that GTA 5 was not free-to-play and still made billions. It could be sold at full price up until 6 releases and then 6 could be sold at full price for years and people will still be interested.
- jon-wood 6y agoGTA 5 has an interesting revenue model, the game itself has to be bought, and you can play all the single player with just that. Once you get into multiplayer it’s much of a free to play model, with the usual choice of grinding through to acquire resources or just paying real money for in game money.
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- ukyrgf 6y agoGTA is supposed to be satire on the real world. That's why you have your Cluckin Bells and Ammunations. If it was just a 3D environment based on the current world it would be pretty boring.
- bufferoverflow 6y agoDepends on how much money you throw at the problem. It's a problem that's easy to parallelize.
- dweekly 6y agoGenerally speaking, mapping out an area in high quality requires imagery that was captured not only relatively close to the subject (flying at a few thousand feet vs on orbit) as well as capturing objects from multiple oblique angles. This requires intensively flying a "waffle fries" pattern over a subject area of interest with a plane with a bunch of cameras on it pointing in multiple direction. E.g. https://www.sanborn.com/oblique-imagery/ https://www.sanborn.com/oblique-imagery/ So - many orders of magnitude more expensive than just capturing satellite imagery.
- Havoc 6y agoThe cities they picked to hand model are bizarre as hell. Major ones like London and Paris are missing but completely unknown ones are in.
- ceejayoz 6y agoLondon and Paris have fairly uninteresting airspaces from an aviation standpoint. Flat, not many airports. If sightseeing is your thing, there are better ways. I wonder if it’s based on usage from previous versions of Flight Simulator.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoI'd say the approaches into Heathrow (as least on westerlies) are pretty iconic, being that they tend to turn final over central London.
- ponker 6y agoMaybe those are so well known that errors would get easily noticed so they’d have to do a much more thorough job?
- maydemir 6y agoI think they must be release a map/navigation app by using this data.
- meheleventyone 6y agoIt’s based on Bing so it already exists.
- macspoofing 6y agoI hope not. My city of 400k is barely recognizable.
- meheleventyone 6y agoThe results are super iffy, if your area matches the designed solution it’s great otherwise you are in for the weird version of the place. Which seems par for the course with these AI based solutions. There’s some obvious funny issues that have cropped up in the media but in general the results are mediocre from the perspective of actually representing places you know. Iceland for example has a loooooot of trees and the height data is just bizarre in a lot of cases. It is however much better than anything that has previously existed and as long as you squint a bit and accept the flaws it’s great fun.
- tpmx 6y agoBefore anyone gets excited and goes to buy the game outright: First: Please consider trying out the game via the Xbox Game Pass for PC program instead. $5/month, $1 for the first month instead of buying it outright. Do remember to cancel. Thank me later. Second: The whole download/install experience is a trip. You need to download about ~90 GB of data (no problem!). However, the downloader is abysmal. It's not optimized for throughput at all, each (often small) file is individually downloaded and then uncompressed in sequence. Is this 1997? My favorite bug: if you minimize the download window it starts using 100% of the GPU. This is kind of indicative of what you'll experience later on - that special kind of randomness that stems from developer incompetence. Most people (including me) seem to need to restart the whole thing a couple of times. Loads of people are simply stuck at the download step. Third: Loading times with this game are insane. It can take a minute or two (with a very fast 6-core CPU, 1 Gbit/s network connection, M.2 SSD, etc) to load the main menu, because it seems to download the scenery for the stuff that is vaguely visible in the background scenery every time. Then another minute or two for actually getting started with your flight. And when going back from flight mode to the main menu: yeah, another 1-2 mins. Fourth: When you actually get to start the aircraft: - There are loads of bugs that cause insane FPS drops/frameskips. - There currently seems to exist an issue that causes FPS slowdowns when the Azure-based geometry servers are slow. Did they do blocking networking in the same thread as the rendering? :) No idea, but the propblem is for for real. The typical FPS is higher when fewer people are playing. All of those gorgeous youtube videos you've seen from before the launch? Yeah, those are no longer representative. Also, I think most of them have been carefully edited. There are just way too many random FPS and frame skipping bugs abound. It's a mess. I recommend looking at a recorded live stream (from recent days) to get a better understanding of the simulation performance. (I've spent maybe 6 hours with MSFS2020 so far.) Fifth: This is a very complicated application. There is no documentation. Sixth: I'm running on a GTX 1070 with 8 GB of video memory, so sadly I can only run this at 1080p. When everything is working perfectly it's kinda smooth - about 40 fps. Most of the time though, something is causing a severe FPS slowdown, so closer to 5-10 fps. It's all kind of random. It seems like most of these issues are bugs, rather than the hardware meeting actual limitations. Changing the display quality (ultra/high/etc doesn't really impact these random variations in FPS much.) Seventh: The in-game credits start with this sequence: DESIGN, UI DEVELOPMENT, PROGRAMMING. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here, but to me this order could sort of explain why this disaster shipped in its current form. This is just the tip of the iceberg. So many insane bugs. Most infuriating of all: The constant social media spam about how this is fantastic. Talk of framerate issue issues/slowdowns/bugs is constantly downvoted e.g. on reddit. Anyone thinking about getting this game should first read through https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/ic3o90/bugs_issues_megathread/?sort=new https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/ic3o90/... Of course there are also many positive aspects of this app/game. I just wanted to bring attention to what I think should have been showstopper issues.
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- faebi 6y agoTo be honest, I expected the AI to be a lot better and nuanced. It‘s good enough but does not catch a lot of things who should be obvious based on satellite and street view data. I think the google data would be a better source than bing but I understand the issue there.
- jimnotgym 6y agoCan I ask a different question, putting the scenery apart, is it a decent flight sim?
- bitxbit 6y agoIt’s probably the best flight sim to date. I see huge potential for addons to leverage the map data. Perhaps an arcade mode to make it more accessible to casual gamers.
- ppod 6y agoOverall maybe, but I'd say the jury's out on the flight model vs X-Plane, and it (currently) doesn't model airliner systems quite to the level of the payware X-plane airbuses or the Zibo boeing. It really crushes X-Plane on weather currently.
- dudus 6y agoApparently yes. I watched a few pilots on YouTube that were beta testing and praising the way different planes behave as highly realistic.
- dawnerd 6y agoYep, there’s just the usual post launch bugs from complex systems. If you’re just flying GA then it’s for sure the best out.
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- bob1029 6y agoI feel like Microsoft needs to take this a step further and just put the simulation on the server too. Considering their current global footprint (latency) and the fact that the game already requires a massive amount of always-on bandwidth, it would seem like this is a less painful conversation in this case.
- bufferoverflow 6y agoWith some hilarious results: https://i.imgur.com/hpNfPtZ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hpNfPtZ.jpg Notice the little porches added by the AI. It's actually impressive how good the 3D models turned out.
- neolog 6y agoWhat is the explanation of what happened there?
- mhh__ 6y agoIf I had to guess it's an AI going wild on some kind of military (swept wings?) airfield - they looks like plane's but I'm assuming the AI system they use assumes everything not terrain is a house or a road or similar.
- maxerickson 6y agoIt can be OpenStreetMap again (like the obelisk). There's a tag for museum aircraft, 'historic=aircraft', but the tiles rendered for openstreetmap.org don't show it, so people add a tag saying it's also a building. It's only a theory, I haven't correlated a picture from the game with matching data. Here's an example from the USS Intrepid: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/277980026 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/277980026
- tiagobraw 6y agoalso this one https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/21/21395084/microsoft-flight-simulator-melbourne-obelish-openstreetmap-bing-maps-data-glitch https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/21/21395084/microsoft-flight...
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- yayr 6y agoI think this is a quite impressive piece of tech, especially the AI generated landscape, flora and fauna. Of course there is always a gap to 100% accuracy, this is the case with every AI model I know, no matter what domain. I wonder how they measure accuracy here?
- skybrian 6y agoI don't have Flight Simulator, but someone on Facebook posted a screenshot of a friend's house in a suburban area in Florida, and I duplicated the image in Google Earth. It's just one data point, but here's what I noticed. - The water looks better in Flight Simulator. A large pond has ripples and reflections in Flight Simulator but it's just flat in Google Earth. - Trees and houses look better in Google Earth. Flight Simulator put trees in the middle of a house and in the middle of a street, and they seem a bit more crumply. - Neither one gets palm trees right. On a major road with palm trees next to it, Flight Simulator turned them into green stalagmites and Google Earth didn't model them at all, leaving them as flat shadows on the ground. It seems like if you like good-looking water or clouds (which Google Earth barely has) then Flight Simulator would be better, and obviously clouds are important for flight simulation. But if you just want to see the sights, Google Earth is pretty good and Flight Simulator isn't necessarily going to model things better.
- user_501238901 6y agoHalf the point is the delay of gratification. If you want to see the different islands of Hawaii, there will be some downtime while you're cruising. The tension starts building once you get closer and closer, until you finally get to see the absolutely epic view. Comparing Google Earth vs Flight Sim is the same as watching 3D images of hiking trail end points vs actually walking through the trail.
- skybrian 6y agoI guess, but in practice, wouldn't you speed up the simulation for the boring parts? Can't you put the plane wherever you want and start flying?
- wjossey 6y agoLots of folks here saying “it’s impressive but...” The game was probably released faster than what one would expect from a super polished title, but the game is still extraordinary. The visuals are superb, the detail is spectacular (I can see my real house with our pool as I fly over), the mechanics are incredible for a base flight simulator (lots of stuff you’d normally pay extra via addons for), and the game has been out less than a week. They’re going to make the game better, and if you’re into flight simulators it’s a super easy purchase. I went into this week with high expectations and my expectations were greatly exceeded.
- saiya-jin 6y ago> if you’re into flight simulators I think this will be a problem a bit - apart from initial WOW effect, not that many people are into civilian flying. Its way too complex for casual gamers and learning curve is almost vertical, you need ultra-expensive hardware (how many want to spend 1000s in covid times?) and to be honest, non-combat realistic flight sims are really not for everybody, I would say not for most gamers. People rave about details, but plenty of places look on similar level as if I would take google earth's built in flight sim - I am talking about what I've seen around Mont Blanc, not exactly a remote place. Yes, few more nicer buildings and slightly more detail, but that's hardly enough for non-geeks. Sorry to sound so pessimistic, it is a fantastic game in its own tiny little niche and I am sure most issues will be resolved over time, I just think nowadays that niche is pretty small and won't expand that much because its not something that's easy to grasp and have fun quickly.
- xnyan 6y agoI will agree that it’s definitely a niche and not everybody likes it, that said you really don’t need thousands of dollars of gear to enjoy it. The breadth of controller support is actually one of the most incredible aspects of the game to me - Basically everything is supported including an Xbox One controller. I’ve actually used the gamepad a little bit and it was a perfectly enjoyable experience. I think you would get more out of it with some more specialised gear. For less than 100 bucks you can get a perfectly good joystick and yoke combo that will give you quite a bit of depth.
- perryizgr8 6y agoI wish I had a PC powerful enough to run it. It sounds amazing looking at all the memes.
- ourmandave 6y agoI've been watching a few unboxing videos on youtube where MS has sent influencers a box with the Deluxe Premium Ed (comes with 10 DVDs for install) with full HOTAS controls. (Even after the install there's a 19g download update.) I wonder if everyone who gets one has a system with the specs to run it?
- fyfy18 6y agoI have an 8 year old workstation as a gaming PC, with a 3GB GTX 1060, and a 2.5" HDD as a data drive, and it works fine for me on medium graphics at 1080p.
- ourmandave 6y agoYeah, I'd only seen a spec list from a guy playing max setting on 4K. But he was on a brand new stupid level hardware PC.
- jturpin 6y agoThis game has been a ton of fun for me. The load times are annoying, but it runs well for me most of the time on my two-years-ago-it-was-high-end PC (6th gen i7, 1080 not-TI, m.2 drive, 16Gb RAM). I managed to find my 10 year old flight stick from when I played FSX and thats been great as apparently this game has caused a flight stick shortage. I would recommend people try it out, I have not encountered any game-breaking bugs (except for maybe the rudder control being weird but that could be the aforementioned flight stick). My recommendation is lower the sensitivity way, way down. I have mine at -60% on all axes. Medium graphics look pretty good too.
- mrkeen 6y agoMicrosoft Flight Simulator's (69,99€) AI is so good they'll charge you not to use it! The Deluxe Edition (89,99€) includes everything from Microsoft Flight Simulator plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports. The Premium Deluxe Edition (119,99€) includes everything from the Microsoft Flight Simulator Deluxe edition plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.
- xnyan 6y agoOr, you can pay $1 and use it for one month via xbox game pass for PC, or $5 if you’ve already used the $1 offer in the past. I’d strongly recommend this if you’re not very sure you’ll like the game.
- 0pranav 6y agoI wish this game launched with xCloud. I understand that simulation enthusiast won't be interested in that but for many people like me who don't want to worry about streaming and storing all that world data, as well as people not having enough resources to run the game it would be the perfect opportunity to try game streaming.
- nickflood 6y agoI think, it's down to the Xbox version not being available yet. I'm sure once it's out, it'll be available through xCloud.