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MSFS Satelite Imagery in MSFS: Does it update over time with Bing Maps?

chongwen20110901

chongwen20110901

Messages
57
Country
china
Hi all,
I was working on ZSHC for MSFS, but unfortunately the stock imagery is quite bad. There is a giant area of cloud just east of the airport, ruining immersion. It's gonna cost a lot to buy the satelite imagery for the airport alone, so I've been waiting for bing maps to update their data. When I checked the web version of bing maps today, I noticed that the imagery around ZSHC has been updated with significantly higher quality. So does anyone know if Asobo would update the in-game data with the newer bing imagery? If they do, how often do they update it?
For reference, here's what the stock imagery looks like now:
QQ图片20210612170147.png

And this is the much better imagery from the web version of bing maps:
1623542580842.png
 
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They do update as we've seen for the USA in world update 1, but they do so only in the course of a major world update. I also thought that what we see in the sim world automatically match what we see in Bing Maps, but obviously the Bing Maps data has to be processed by the Blackshark AI to place trees, houses, power lines and so on and that process is not done in real time in the sim. Instead, when there are new Bing images available, Asobo has to feed the images to the Blackshark AI and I guess they also hand correct some mistakes the AI makes, then the result becomes part of a world update. So in your case I guess you'd have to wait for a World Update China or Asia or whatever to see the improved images in the sim.
 
fabs79 said:
They do update as we've seen for the USA in world update 1, but they do so only in the course of a major world update. I also thought that what we see in the sim world automatically match what we see in Bing Maps, but obviously the Bing Maps data has to be processed by the Blackshark AI to place trees, houses, power lines and so on and that process is not done in real time in the sim. Instead, when there are new Bing images available, Asobo has to feed the images to the Blackshark AI and I guess they also hand correct some mistakes the AI makes, then the result becomes part of a world update. So in your case I guess you'd have to wait for a World Update China or Asia or whatever to see the improved images in the sim.
Click to expand...
Hi fabs,
Thanks for the info. I think the chances of getting an World Update China is very low unfortunately. I could buy some lower res satelite imagery to cover up that ugly cloud, but the minimum area of ordering is usually 250km^2, so it's not really worth it. I don't want that cloud to turn customers away either. As far as you know, is there any method to override the stock satelite imagery, and replace it with autogen (like the one used in offline mode)?
 
chongwen20110901 said:
Hi fabs,
Thanks for the info. I think the chances of getting an World Update China is very low unfortunately. I could buy some lower res satelite imagery to cover up that ugly cloud, but the minimum area of ordering is usually 250km^2, so it's not really worth it. I don't want that cloud to turn customers away either. As far as you know, is there any method to override the stock satelite imagery, and replace it with autogen (like the one used in offline mode)?
Click to expand...
Well it should be possible to download free satellite imagery e.g. from Google Earth (which of course cannot be used in a payware scenery , georeference it and save the georeference points, then paint over the satellite images with some generic textures that closely match the aerial, then remove any traces of the original image to avoid licensing conflicts. After that, use the saved georeference points to place your generic image exactly where it should be.
For my freeware scenery I sometimes use Bing or Google Earth images but I heavely edit them, removing airplanes or building shadows, painting over clouds and color correct the whole image. In my case the original image is still recognizable but because I only do freeware IMHO I'm still within the rules of the so-called "Fair use policy". For payware I'd suggest the above procedure if you can't afford the licensing cost. Here in Germany some local governments of the federal states provide free to use for any purpose high resolution aerial imagery, maybe you can find such a source for your region, too.
 
You can easily capture satellite data for personal use. If you are skilled with Photoshop, there is no reason you couldn't use a copyright satellite image for a "template" for art, made to resemble ground photographs.

HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM AERIAL SCENERY IN MSFS

This will not only teach you how to easily refresh your ground textures, it instructs how to orthorectify using QGIS, so you could use the technique to accurately place any photograph, or even a fictional image composed in Photoshop, of an area.
 
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fabs79 said:
Well it should be possible to download free satellite imagery e.g. from Google Earth (which of course cannot be used in a payware scenery , georeference it and save the georeference points, then paint over the satellite images with some generic textures that closely match the aerial, then remove any traces of the original image to avoid licensing conflicts. After that, use the saved georeference points to place your generic image exactly where it should be.
For my freeware scenery I sometimes use Bing or Google Earth images but I heavely edit them, removing airplanes or building shadows, painting over clouds and color correct the whole image. In my case the original image is still recognizable but because I only do freeware IMHO I'm still within the rules of the so-called "Fair use policy". For payware I'd suggest the above procedure if you can't afford the licensing cost. Here in Germany some local governments of the federal states provide free to use for any purpose high resolution aerial imagery, maybe you can find such a source for your region, too.
Click to expand...
=rk= said:
You can easily capture satellite data for personal use. If you are skilled with Photoshop, there is no reason you couldn't use a copyright satellite image for a "template" for art, made to resemble ground photographs.

HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM AERIAL SCENERY IN MSFS

This will not only teach you how to easily refresh your ground textures, it instructs how to orthorectify using QGIS, so you could use the technique to accurately place any photograph, or even a fictional image composed in Photoshop, of an area.
Click to expand...
Thanks to both of these advices. That painting method to cover up the cloud sounds like a very good approach, I will give it a shot. Since we are doing a payware project, we are gonna need some commercially usable imagery anyways, but not having to use actual satelite imagery to cover up that cloud would save me a lot of money.
 
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