“The team built a “digital twin” of the Earth, much like would-be metaverse companies want to do.” Was this actually a goal of “would-be metaverse companies”?
My impression is that they were much more focused on highly abstracted spaces designed to facilitate work and social interactions.
It would be so cool to use Microsoft's "earth copy" for stuff other than just flight sim. They say it's the most accurate representation of the earth ever. Wonder if you can do some interesting science with that.
MSFS 2020's Earth is unbelievably good from the air, but it (understandably) does not look great and is sometimes not entirely physically coherent up close at the surface (outside of airports and a limited set of bespoke areas).
There's also some crazy errors that are visible from the air, like many rivers being raised up hundreds of feet[0], and many bridges being solid underneath[1].
I always assumed one of primary things in a sequel would be to train an even bigger and better satellite maps -> 3D scenery model, especially one that understood a wider (and better-localized) variety of building configurations, so we'll see.
[0] https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/river-altitude-raised-w...
[1] https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/fix-photogrammetry-brid...
"earth copy" is just marketing lingo. Models are approximations made for a specific goal at a time. You cannot build a model that is both good for gaming and meteorology.
99% of that engine value is procedural terrain and graphical shaders. It looks great but has no scientifical value.
Just like the "digital twin" hype train, cool simulations have fancy graphics, useful simulations don't.
>You cannot build a model that is both good for gaming and meteorology.
This was the prevailing wisdom in AI before generalized transformers as well. We're rapidly moving toward black box hyperintelligent AGI.
I was comparing expert systems here, not emergent ones
We used to be in this space, and with Ayvri/Doarama - which was a 3D virtual world but not a flight simulator, it was used by paragliders to replay flights, commercial drone operators, some defense, transportation planning (trains, maybe others as well), etc etc.
We approached Microsoft when we were selling the company, and the response we got was "you're too close to work we're doing for us to even look at you or talk to you". I assumed that meant they are building out a digital twin, with capabilities to run in a browser at high speed with high resolution (which we did). That was 3 years ago. I'm surprised we haven't seen something from them yet.
Mostly military simulations and training, probably
2024? I haven't even finished the printed concorde manual from FS2000.
Maybe I'm being simplistic of overly optimistic - but I would think that there would be a massive opportunity for collaboration with fluid dynamics to simulate and 'fast-forward' the weather to see likely impacts.
It might not be correct the first time, but as we map the changes from prediction against the reality, we could adjust for factors that we hadn't considered.
It seems to me that we shouldn't be too far from accurate weather prediction and perhaps with huge amount of data capture having a digital twin of the planet in which we have enough confidence in to model potential climate impacts of policies, products could allow us to have robust discussions around where we're headed and what paths we could take to adapt or overcome the impacts we're already facing.
That simply doesn’t work, for the same reason we can’t even model three massive bodies interacting with each other via gravity, which is a much much simpler problem.
predicting weather beyond a very short amount of time is a myth or a delusion. its a chaotic system just like any fluid that goes out of the newtonian zone.
This is the first I'm even hearing of MSFS 2024, I figured 2020 would just be a continuous WIP for a long time to come. I used it for practice but haven't dusted the equipment off in awhile, but this sounds like some nice improvements. 2020 was already pretty astounding in its quality and the leap from the existing flight sims.
2020 is astonishing in VR. I get the same melancholy I do on a real plane and can fly for hours sightseeing out the window. There is also a real sense of peril.
It's quite the experience. I can't wait for 2024.
Why do you feel melancholy?
Maybe it's something like the French saying Le Mal du Pays
"Le Mal du Pays is usually translated as 'homesickness,' or 'melancholy. ' If you put a finer point on it, it's more like 'a groundless sadness called forth in a person's heart by a pastoral landscape"
What sort of headset do you use? What's your graphics card and CPU setup?
I've used a rift S with my 1070 TI and it struggles a bit!
Do you get any motion sickness?
One thing I've always wished Microsoft would do with every version of Flight Simulator but especially this one is have an "Arcade flying" mode.
I want to see the hyper-realistic rendered world in as high resolution as possible.
I want to fly around the planet.
But I don't want to be limited to the detailed specifics (and speeds!) of real life planes.
Why can't we have a mode to make a plane as easy to fly as it is in GTA5. Or "superman" mode where I don't even have a plane, and I can just move around at (almost) any speed [i'm sure rendering would become a problem]
How TF Flight Simulator is not on VR is the biggest mystery to me. It is the most obvious killer app to showcase both the game and VR headset.
It is on VR, has been for years, and yes, it’s pretty much a killer app (imho, the only killer app.)