4 ms·

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, simplificatio

by bitL 6y ago

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 6y ago
"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.
- bitL 6y ago
  I ran into a similar problem while trying to fly into Wadi Mujib in Jordan so you might be right - Dead Sea is also below sea level.
- rob74 6y ago
  Yeah, who would have thought that there are (dry) locations on Earth that are below sea level? Apparently you can't expect software developers / testers nowadays to be aware of that...
  - endymi0n 6y ago
    If I'm not assuming people wake up in order to do a bad job, the more likely explanation to me is that a) these instances are (seen as a percentage of dry land coverage) rather rare and b) The test of being in water is simplified to `if height <= 0` instead of `if height <= 0 OR location.inside(some_super_complex_polygon_that_needs_to_be_looked_up_every_millisecond)`. Done is better than perfect.
    - rob74 6y ago
      When you're flying over dry land, they already have to do a collision test to check if you have flown into terrain - so the solution would be to simply not check if you are above sea level when you are flying over land...
      - icebraining 6y ago
        You're assuming they distinguish land from sea. It's very likely the map has no such information.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    Manual tweaking, probably.
- golergka 6y ago
  Well, that just adds to the realism. https://www.avgeekery.com/challenge-flying-sea-level/ https://www.avgeekery.com/challenge-flying-sea-level/
Rebelgecko 6y ago
The quantity of trees in the game is a bit insane. My hometown in the Sonoran desert looks like a rainforest. The most common tree there is a palm tree, which the game usually represents as a sort of bizarre obelisk. What they've done with the game is super impressive, but it's really put them into the uncanny valley when there's goofy inconsistencies with reality. I've noticed similar height issues with streetlights, freeway overpasses, etc
dawnerd 6y ago
But at the same time, go back and look at the older flight sims and its pretty obvious how dated they are. FSX for example looks like a complete joke with all the faked autogen and really low resolution maps. Yes it can look good but you have to spend a lot of time (and money) on add ons. I'm pretty hopeful with time they'll iron out at least the most obvious cases.
cricalix 6y ago
There's also the case of the rendering completely missing that things are cliffs (even small ones). If you jump to Barbados' airport and go to the north of the island, the rendering is of gentle sloping land (and static wave imagery crashing on to the shore) - the north end of Barbados is an old reef, and it sure as heck doesn't slope gently to the sea (see [0]). Alas, I have no idea how to give feedback about this to the developers so that it can join the long list of "stuff to fix, some day". 0: https://www.cricalix.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DSC_3615-scaled.jpg https://www.cricalix.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DSC_3615...
- cricalix 6y ago
  And to reply to myself, in case anyone else is wondering - there's a Zendesk site for filing reports. https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
jaywalk 6y ago
Detroit Metro Airport (DTW) has some roads that go under runways and taxiways. In the game, those roads are rendered at surface level, and the vehicles simply disappear when they get to a runway or taxiway.

by bitL 6y ago

Stevvo 6y ago

"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.

bitL 6y ago
I ran into a similar problem while trying to fly into Wadi Mujib in Jordan so you might be right - Dead Sea is also below sea level.
rob74 6y ago
Yeah, who would have thought that there are (dry) locations on Earth that are below sea level? Apparently you can't expect software developers / testers nowadays to be aware of that...
- endymi0n 6y ago
  If I'm not assuming people wake up in order to do a bad job, the more likely explanation to me is that a) these instances are (seen as a percentage of dry land coverage) rather rare and b) The test of being in water is simplified to `if height <= 0` instead of `if height <= 0 OR location.inside(some_super_complex_polygon_that_needs_to_be_looked_up_every_millisecond)`. Done is better than perfect.
  - rob74 6y ago
    When you're flying over dry land, they already have to do a collision test to check if you have flown into terrain - so the solution would be to simply not check if you are above sea level when you are flying over land...
    - icebraining 6y ago
      You're assuming they distinguish land from sea. It's very likely the map has no such information.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  Manual tweaking, probably.
golergka 6y ago
Well, that just adds to the realism. https://www.avgeekery.com/challenge-flying-sea-level/ https://www.avgeekery.com/challenge-flying-sea-level/

Rebelgecko 6y ago

The quantity of trees in the game is a bit insane. My hometown in the Sonoran desert looks like a rainforest. The most common tree there is a palm tree, which the game usually represents as a sort of bizarre obelisk. What they've done with the game is super impressive, but it's really put them into the uncanny valley when there's goofy inconsistencies with reality. I've noticed similar height issues with streetlights, freeway overpasses, etc

dawnerd 6y ago

But at the same time, go back and look at the older flight sims and its pretty obvious how dated they are. FSX for example looks like a complete joke with all the faked autogen and really low resolution maps. Yes it can look good but you have to spend a lot of time (and money) on add ons. I'm pretty hopeful with time they'll iron out at least the most obvious cases.

cricalix 6y ago

There's also the case of the rendering completely missing that things are cliffs (even small ones). If you jump to Barbados' airport and go to the north of the island, the rendering is of gentle sloping land (and static wave imagery crashing on to the shore) - the north end of Barbados is an old reef, and it sure as heck doesn't slope gently to the sea (see [0]). Alas, I have no idea how to give feedback about this to the developers so that it can join the long list of "stuff to fix, some day". 0: https://www.cricalix.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DSC_3615-scaled.jpg https://www.cricalix.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DSC_3615...

cricalix 6y ago
And to reply to myself, in case anyone else is wondering - there's a Zendesk site for filing reports. https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

jaywalk 6y ago

Detroit Metro Airport (DTW) has some roads that go under runways and taxiways. In the game, those roads are rendered at surface level, and the vehicles simply disappear when they get to a runway or taxiway.