answered After v2.0 of "London Landmarks": most of the City still looking like after an air raid

[raba]

Hello,

 

as it was explained on the forum, the "London Landmarks" entry in my content manager (Steam) was updated to version 2.0 , but most of the City still looks like after an air raid or earthquake. I had hoped version 2.0 of the Orbx Landmarks would supress that horrible mess, but apparently it doesn't work that way? The Orbx additions are very well done but the mixture with the MS/Asobo photogrammetry mess is just awful; no fun to fly around.

I'd be interested to hear of the experience of other users.

[raba]

... I add a few screenshots to my above topic:

[Jon Clarke]

I can only only suggest you disable photogrammetry when in that region. At least the London landmarks will shine

[John Mac]

Had the same “melted effect” as well. Asobo have acknowledged the issue with the photogrammetry in London but when/how this will be fixed is not yet known. If you disable photogrammetry it works quite well. 
John.

[raba]

On 3/28/2021 at 8:56 AM, John Mac said:

Had the same “melted effect” as well. Asobo have acknowledged the issue with the photogrammetry in London but when/how this will be fixed is not yet known. If you disable photogrammetry it works quite well. 
John.

Ok, but then the vast majority of buildings are random / generic, except for the Orbx landmarks - which again turns out to be hardly satisfactory in the end.

As a great many users have stated, the new MSFS was indeed published as a quasi beta, more or less, with a striking amount of major issues (just imagine effects like that in any other up-to-date game!) but 2 milllion sold ...

[John Mac]

Hi Rba,

I agree with you and am left very let down by a sim that offers so much and yet has so many issues. In fairness to Orbx they address any issues post MS/Asobo updates as soon as they can. I can only hope that things improve going forward.

Kind regards,

John.

[Seanmo]

21 hours ago, raba said:

Ok, but then the vast majority of buildings are random / generic, except for the Orbx landmarks - which again turns out to be hardly satisfactory in the end.

As a great many users have stated, the new MSFS was indeed published as a quasi beta, more or less, with a striking amount of major issues (just imagine effects like that in any other up-to-date game!) but 2 milllion sold ...

Just keep some perspective. Two million people are not flying around London. They did the entire Earth. That's a massive undertaking. They are also adding free airports with every world update, updating scenery and points of interest, adding new challenges, new features like VR, and yes, trying to swat bugs. All at the same time. And yet if you watch all the Youtube and Twitch streamers, they've been posting videos successfully with few hiccups for months. That's not a beta quality release, nor are there a striking amount of major issues (again, the streamers wouldn't be able to stream if there was). It is still the best VFR sim ever made and has enough potential to surpass the others in every meaningful way in the near future.

[raba]

1 hour ago, Seanmo said:

Just keep some perspective. Two million people are not flying around London. They did the entire Earth. That's a massive undertaking. They are also adding free airports with every world update, updating scenery and points of interest, adding new challenges, new features like VR, and yes, trying to swat bugs. All at the same time. And yet if you watch all the Youtube and Twitch streamers, they've been posting videos successfully with few hiccups for months. That's not a beta quality release, nor are there a striking amount of major issues (again, the streamers wouldn't be able to stream if there was). It is still the best VFR sim ever made and has enough potential to surpass the others in every meaningful way in the near future.

I certainly do respect your opinion. But still, I basically stick to mine. Photogrammetry as such is a wonderful and highly promising idea, no doubt, but if the visualization partly results in grotesque shapes to such an extent, a commercial release is premature in my eyes.

[wolfko]

9 hours ago, Seanmo said:

Just keep some perspective. Two million people are not flying around London. They did the entire Earth. That's a massive undertaking. They are also adding free airports with every world update, updating scenery and points of interest, adding new challenges, new features like VR, and yes, trying to swat bugs. All at the same time. And yet if you watch all the Youtube and Twitch streamers, they've been posting videos successfully with few hiccups for months. That's not a beta quality release, nor are there a striking amount of major issues (again, the streamers wouldn't be able to stream if there was). It is still the best VFR sim ever made and has enough potential to surpass the others in every meaningful way in the near future.

 

Very well said.

[John Dow]

7 hours ago, raba said:

I certainly do respect your opinion. But still, I basically stick to mine. Photogrammetry as such is a wonderful and highly promising idea, no doubt, but if the visualization partly results in grotesque shapes to such an extent, a commercial release is premature in my eyes.

Flying around at normal cleared altitude, say 1500', and not looking for problems, rather, enjoying the panorama, the photogrammetry isn't a big problem for me. But I do prefer to turn it off and enjoy a traditional flightsim landscape. I don't live in Londinium so the default buildings between the modelled buildings don't worry me at all 

[raba]

3 hours ago, John Dow said:

Flying around at normal cleared altitude, say 1500', and not looking for problems, rather, enjoying the panorama, the photogrammetry isn't a big problem for me. But I do prefer to turn it off and enjoy a traditional flightsim landscape. I don't live in Londinium so the default buildings between the modelled buildings don't worry me at all 

Ok, I understand what you mean. But look, all respective forums are filled up with observations and screenshots of that kind; it's not just in London, but e. g. at many locations in the U.S. too, with huge coloumns popping out of the ground instead of trees, for example, and other kinds of weirdly deformed shapes. It seems to happen almost everywhere when the photogrammetry algorithms attempt to generate 3D structures from BING photographs.

And this is the general aspect I'm talking about: If a company largely promotes a certain technology or feature, that certainly is an invitation to look at it, to use it, and to have a certain amount of expectation; and if that technology obviously isn't really well developed yet, its commercial release is premature (resp. "beta") - I cannot but stick to that conclusion.

I assure you I didn't "look for problems" but instead I quite simply came cross them when flying and looking around!

[bwestenhofer]

10 hours ago, raba said:

Ok, I understand what you mean. But look, all respective forums are filled up with observations and screenshots of that kind; it's not just in London, but e. g. at many locations in the U.S. too, with huge coloumns popping out of the ground instead of trees, for example, and other kinds of weirdly deformed shapes. It seems to happen almost everywhere when the photogrammetry algorithms attempt to generate 3D structures from BING photographs.

And this is the general aspect I'm talking about: If a company largely promotes a certain technology or feature, that certainly is an invitation to look at it, to use it, and to have a certain amount of expectation; and if that technology obviously isn't really well developed yet, its commercial release is premature (resp. "beta") - I cannot but stick to that conclusion.

I assure you I didn't "look for problems" but instead I quite simply came cross them when flying and looking around!

They did bring us the entire earth with an unprecedented level of detail.  No harm in pointing out issues so they get attention and are fixed, but again if you were to look at this as a stated goal I suspect yould find the anomalies amount to a fraction of 1% of the total land mass.  As an overall metric to judge success of achieving their goal I’d say that’s pretty darn close.  Nothing else, AAA titles included have come anywhere near this in terms of the volume of scenery you get straight out of the box.

 

PG like anything else has it’s strengths and weaknesses.  I’m quite happy with it down to about 200’ agl.  It’s a trade off for sure that you see many imperfections as you get close, but I balance that with every other virtual example of London (even Orbx’s own Southern GB for XP) and I’ll take the melted look of that means I can literally make out the apartment window I lived in for 2 years and can read (albeit blurry) the text of the pub across the street.  In the past the best yould get is attention to landmarks and then a bunch of generic-ish autogen for the rest.

 

Maybe someday some engineering genius can find a way to protect PG textures and shapes on open street map data to clean up the shapes a bit and we can get the best of both worlds.

 

In the end I don’t think it makes one a cheerleader to appreciate the new way of seeing the world that MSFS/Asobo has given us.  Adding to that the great additions Orbx and the other 3PD developers are giving us - its pretty awesome.