Some thoughts on NZ in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Posted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 5:16 pmThe most recent Discovery Series video -- Airports -- fills in a lot of the gaps in what we knew about how airports will look in the new sim, so although this is mainly speculation, it does seem like a good time to imagine what New Zealand might look like. Normally when I get a new sim, I have a set list of flights to try -- including Christchurch, which is my where I grew up, the Central Plateau, and the Alps, mainly around Mount Cook. However with the new sim, whether I get to use the alpha, beta or have to wait for the release(!), I plan to start at one end of the country and visit each airport until I get to the other end. I suspect that this will make a lot more sense than any other sim out of the box.
There have been three New Zealand areas showcased in Microsoft's videos -- Lake Tekapo, the Central Plateau, and now Queenstown Airport. Most of this post will centre around these, to keep things grounded, so to speak.
Tekapo was the first look we had, which was very useful, as I'd previously done Tekapo scenery for all MS sims plus Prepar3d, going back to FS2002. First I have to mention the sky/atmosphere/lighting etc. For me, this is the true great leap forward. Lighting in all other sims -- including X-plane -- has always been rough, at best. Lighting always seemed to be based on a simple set of rules, whereas now we appear to be getting a lot more rules. This is tricky to explain, but I'll try. First, imagine an aircraft parked at your favourite airport, as it would appear in your sim of choice. Now if you zoomed in on the fuselage, could get describe the lighting confidently? Is it in full sunlight, or the shady side of a sunlit aircraft, or is it cloudy? How much cloud? What time of day? In my experience it has been impossible to tell, until now. The Airports video shows some remarkable lighting, the shadow side of the sunlit aircraft isn't just a darkened texture, it has a touch of blue where it is being lit by the sky only. There are a couple of poor weather shots in the video where you won't wonder what the hell you are looking at, lighting-wise, which is normally the case in Prepar3d and X-plane.
The sky in the new sim becomes a new landscape, one with as much character, detail and variation as the ground underneath. This makes so much sense when you think about it, as that's where you'll spend most of your time. The secret is 'integration', or something, where the lighting more accurately reflects the conditions/time of day, but it also lights things realistically. I compare this with some beautiful airports in Prepar3d and X-plane, where there are always a number of features, such as vegetation, which just never look like they blend in, simply because the sim is struggling to light them properly.
The first thing I noticed in the Tekapo video was the sky. A bit of mist down low, some clouds which are both ordinary, in that they are commonly seen like this, and mind-blowing, because we've never come close to clouds which are properly lit, and don't rotate/disappear at the slightest provocation. Today I was looking at NZQN in Prepar3d (Orbx's, plus my photoscenery), at a similar height to the MFS video, and I thought it looked great -- until I rose up a bit, and the mist suddenly and completely disappeared. I suspect that we won't see anything like that in the new sim. Which might help explain my ramblings a bit -- I want a sim which looks great all the time, not just when the conditions/elevation/lighting are spot-on.
The ground, however, is nothing mind-blowing. I'll state here up front that although some of what I say might appear negative, this is still better than anything else, and I just want to point out what we can expect to see, and what could be improved upon, either by Asobo down the track or by a clever developer with experience with Tekapo scenery... Yeah, funny, Rob.
Now the ground is the ground, and it relies heavily on aerial imagery, so there are always going to be limitations, many of which have been 'discussed' in depth elsewhere. A specific question regarding Tekapo might be 'what about seasons?', as this is one area which sees significant snow in the winter. I had two specific questions when I first saw this video -- what about the lake colour?, and what about the runoff? Anyone who had bought a Tekapo scenery from me would know that I make a big thing of the lake colour, which is pronounced, eye-catching, and year-round. Nobody fails to notice the colour when they first visit Tekapo. Then there's the runoff into the lake from the river, it discolours it quite a lot, and you'll almost always see this to some extent. So this is one area where I can't wait to have a crack at improving the look of the lake.
The volcanoes is another area I'm worked on in the sim, going way back. My first reaction here was Good Grief! I never suspected that we'd see a sky that good in this decade. Yes, there's one impressive landscape under there, which was always a great place to fly in previous sims, but I really, really want to fly in that sky -- even if there aren't any volcanoes to gawk at. Once again, like the Tekapo shot, we don't get to see enough detail to know how vegetation will look, for instance, but then along came....
Queenstown is a popular location in the sim, rightly so. Orbx did a great version, and I've worked on the surrounding landscape of mountains and lakes more than once. Yes, this new sim is stunning, once again we get a sky which we've only ever dreamt of before, and the water colour/shade/reflection is a great contrast to what we've had before, where it can look good if you squint just right.... Now I suspect it'll look great most of the time, and certainly realistic all the time.
I suspect that this is one of the 80 special airports, which had some extra attention, but I'm not sure. Whether or not it is, this is still going to be a popular location for simmers as it is. Sure, it isn't a custom model like Orbx's, although it is a bit more up to date, but I'd probably buy a new Orbx version if it was offered, and I had some money. Here we get a vague idea of what some ground detail will look like -- there's a row of bushes in the middle ground, for instance, which look to be about halfway between Orbx quality and real life. Which are both a huge improvement over any default sim, which have tended to be close to 'noddy land' trees, so named by Ian Warren, a long time ago. He'd love the new trees.
The foreground tarmac gives a big clue to how the ground will work -- I mentioned the base aerial image forming the airport surfaces, just tidied up a lot and with a surface detail added to deal with the close-up look, plus handle the dirt/specular/wet properties. The funny looking light patch to the immediate left of the 'Queenstown' label is I think the result of the process explained in the video -- in the Bing image of Queenstown, there's an aircraft in that location, and I think that the process of manually defining areas like this for an automatic clean-up would give the result we see here -- something not quite right about it, but does the job.
Which brings me to the imagery used. I'm not sure that Bing has any New Zealand photogrammetry, so it may be a while before we see the type of scenery shown in Europe and the US. And Bing's NZ is variable at best -- for example, Lyttelton has about 40% cloud cover. All the photo scenery I produce uses LINZ imagery, which is all cleaned up and mostly cloud-free, although not colour-matched, but I'm not sure if there would be a market for custom photo scenery here. We can only hope that it is 'mostly' acceptable, and great in parts.
It will be interesting to see some big cities, but in the meantime I'm thrilled by the possibilities. At the moment, like most developers, I'm struggling to sell anything for the existing sims, but I can a lot of potential here, maybe even moving to just one sim, with some changes to the 'Real NZ' product -- a lot less photo scenery, and a lot more airports. This is where we should have been all along, and being able to have the 'base' NZ we always wanted is a gift beyond what I would have expected.
There have been three New Zealand areas showcased in Microsoft's videos -- Lake Tekapo, the Central Plateau, and now Queenstown Airport. Most of this post will centre around these, to keep things grounded, so to speak.
Tekapo was the first look we had, which was very useful, as I'd previously done Tekapo scenery for all MS sims plus Prepar3d, going back to FS2002. First I have to mention the sky/atmosphere/lighting etc. For me, this is the true great leap forward. Lighting in all other sims -- including X-plane -- has always been rough, at best. Lighting always seemed to be based on a simple set of rules, whereas now we appear to be getting a lot more rules. This is tricky to explain, but I'll try. First, imagine an aircraft parked at your favourite airport, as it would appear in your sim of choice. Now if you zoomed in on the fuselage, could get describe the lighting confidently? Is it in full sunlight, or the shady side of a sunlit aircraft, or is it cloudy? How much cloud? What time of day? In my experience it has been impossible to tell, until now. The Airports video shows some remarkable lighting, the shadow side of the sunlit aircraft isn't just a darkened texture, it has a touch of blue where it is being lit by the sky only. There are a couple of poor weather shots in the video where you won't wonder what the hell you are looking at, lighting-wise, which is normally the case in Prepar3d and X-plane.
The sky in the new sim becomes a new landscape, one with as much character, detail and variation as the ground underneath. This makes so much sense when you think about it, as that's where you'll spend most of your time. The secret is 'integration', or something, where the lighting more accurately reflects the conditions/time of day, but it also lights things realistically. I compare this with some beautiful airports in Prepar3d and X-plane, where there are always a number of features, such as vegetation, which just never look like they blend in, simply because the sim is struggling to light them properly.
The first thing I noticed in the Tekapo video was the sky. A bit of mist down low, some clouds which are both ordinary, in that they are commonly seen like this, and mind-blowing, because we've never come close to clouds which are properly lit, and don't rotate/disappear at the slightest provocation. Today I was looking at NZQN in Prepar3d (Orbx's, plus my photoscenery), at a similar height to the MFS video, and I thought it looked great -- until I rose up a bit, and the mist suddenly and completely disappeared. I suspect that we won't see anything like that in the new sim. Which might help explain my ramblings a bit -- I want a sim which looks great all the time, not just when the conditions/elevation/lighting are spot-on.
The ground, however, is nothing mind-blowing. I'll state here up front that although some of what I say might appear negative, this is still better than anything else, and I just want to point out what we can expect to see, and what could be improved upon, either by Asobo down the track or by a clever developer with experience with Tekapo scenery... Yeah, funny, Rob.
Now the ground is the ground, and it relies heavily on aerial imagery, so there are always going to be limitations, many of which have been 'discussed' in depth elsewhere. A specific question regarding Tekapo might be 'what about seasons?', as this is one area which sees significant snow in the winter. I had two specific questions when I first saw this video -- what about the lake colour?, and what about the runoff? Anyone who had bought a Tekapo scenery from me would know that I make a big thing of the lake colour, which is pronounced, eye-catching, and year-round. Nobody fails to notice the colour when they first visit Tekapo. Then there's the runoff into the lake from the river, it discolours it quite a lot, and you'll almost always see this to some extent. So this is one area where I can't wait to have a crack at improving the look of the lake.
The volcanoes is another area I'm worked on in the sim, going way back. My first reaction here was Good Grief! I never suspected that we'd see a sky that good in this decade. Yes, there's one impressive landscape under there, which was always a great place to fly in previous sims, but I really, really want to fly in that sky -- even if there aren't any volcanoes to gawk at. Once again, like the Tekapo shot, we don't get to see enough detail to know how vegetation will look, for instance, but then along came....
Queenstown is a popular location in the sim, rightly so. Orbx did a great version, and I've worked on the surrounding landscape of mountains and lakes more than once. Yes, this new sim is stunning, once again we get a sky which we've only ever dreamt of before, and the water colour/shade/reflection is a great contrast to what we've had before, where it can look good if you squint just right.... Now I suspect it'll look great most of the time, and certainly realistic all the time.
I suspect that this is one of the 80 special airports, which had some extra attention, but I'm not sure. Whether or not it is, this is still going to be a popular location for simmers as it is. Sure, it isn't a custom model like Orbx's, although it is a bit more up to date, but I'd probably buy a new Orbx version if it was offered, and I had some money. Here we get a vague idea of what some ground detail will look like -- there's a row of bushes in the middle ground, for instance, which look to be about halfway between Orbx quality and real life. Which are both a huge improvement over any default sim, which have tended to be close to 'noddy land' trees, so named by Ian Warren, a long time ago. He'd love the new trees.
The foreground tarmac gives a big clue to how the ground will work -- I mentioned the base aerial image forming the airport surfaces, just tidied up a lot and with a surface detail added to deal with the close-up look, plus handle the dirt/specular/wet properties. The funny looking light patch to the immediate left of the 'Queenstown' label is I think the result of the process explained in the video -- in the Bing image of Queenstown, there's an aircraft in that location, and I think that the process of manually defining areas like this for an automatic clean-up would give the result we see here -- something not quite right about it, but does the job.
Which brings me to the imagery used. I'm not sure that Bing has any New Zealand photogrammetry, so it may be a while before we see the type of scenery shown in Europe and the US. And Bing's NZ is variable at best -- for example, Lyttelton has about 40% cloud cover. All the photo scenery I produce uses LINZ imagery, which is all cleaned up and mostly cloud-free, although not colour-matched, but I'm not sure if there would be a market for custom photo scenery here. We can only hope that it is 'mostly' acceptable, and great in parts.
It will be interesting to see some big cities, but in the meantime I'm thrilled by the possibilities. At the moment, like most developers, I'm struggling to sell anything for the existing sims, but I can a lot of potential here, maybe even moving to just one sim, with some changes to the 'Real NZ' product -- a lot less photo scenery, and a lot more airports. This is where we should have been all along, and being able to have the 'base' NZ we always wanted is a gift beyond what I would have expected.
Absolutely.
). You can actually see all photogrammetry regions included using the Earth View 3D App. This can be downloaded (for free) from the MS Win10 store. It has a button (right to the plus in the menu, not obvious it's the proper one) where you can search for all Bing photogrammetry regions worldwide and display them in the App.
