In the March 2024 developer stream, Jörg mentioned that the entire world will be refreshed for the launch of Flight Simulator 2024. For the April dev stream, he gave a little more information:
I am left with some pretty big concerns about this:
How does the AI scenery system determine that our submissions are better or worse than whatever they would come up with?
I’ve seen many airports where the aprons and buildings are shifted over several meters from their aerials. (This may either be because of bad map/aerial projections or because whatever data they trained their AI system on was sloppy.) There was one submission I made where I had to select and shift the entire airport over a little bit. Will it see something like my shift and say, “That’s not right” and bulldoze my airport?
What is the threshold that the AI system uses for determining how far off an apron or some other object is before deciding that it needs to be replaced? 1 m? 10 m? Here is an example of a building that the AI engine placed. My arrow points to the light-colored grass, where the actual building footprint is. If it thinks that this is building is perfectly placed, what’s it going to do to taxiways and aprons that I put directly on the aerial?
What happens to the airport whose developer obsessively watched YouTube videos to ensure that the taxiway signs were perfect to real life? Will it overwrite them? Will it default them back to their incorrect A, B, C random order from before?
The AI system’s tendency is to ignore existing parking spaces and put in its own, often not in the right place, and in far fewer numbers than reality for class D and smaller airports. What does that mean for people’s submissions that strive for authenticity by putting in the exact parking that exists in real life? Will it pave over those parking lots?
How about little details in aprons? Here are some runway patches I put on a tiny airport, 2W2, an artifact of them removing their displaced threshold from runway 14. MSFS on the left, Bing on the right:
This actually took me an hour because I did it by coordinates and I also opened up the existing apron and cut into it, rather than laying multiple aprons on top of it. This isn’t the runway the AI system had in mind.
This next one was much worse. This is BWI. About 90% of what’s in the top picture was edited by me. This took me two days to do just because of how intricate it was, and I had to cut into the existing apron in order to do it:
Will the AI system determine that their lower-detail version is better and destroy all of this?
Knowing that this refresh is coming, I have strong trepidation about what it means for the incredible amount of hard work that the community and I have put into the World Hub already.
Will any testing be done against our submissions to ensure that if they are current, they stay intact?
Will we get notified if our submissions are overwritten?
Will there be an appeals process if they are?
Will we be able to access/download old versions of our submissions to be able to check them against the refresh?
Should we all stop submitting changes until this refresh happens? (Even if we did, they could still get overwritten in future world updates.)
I don’t believe that is what Jörg is saying, he’s talking about the base sim, not screening 3rd party scenery or fixes. He clearly states that the AI is adjusting airports in the base sim for the world updates, and that it’s not always going to get it right, which is why the World Hub exists for users to correct the errors. The AI doesn’t go over user submitted stuff to the World Hub and accept or reject it…
I’m including the exact text that Jörg said, below. I don’t see anything in this text that he’s only adjusting airports for the world updates, or anything to indicate that World Hub airports are off limits.
So, the answer is probably a combination, but I’ll tell you what’s going on. So, we just this week got 200 TB of new data from Bing, which is what we’re going to launch Flight Sim 2024 with, as far as aerials is concerned. Are they newer? Oh yeah, a lot of it. Like 200 – I think in total, the whole thing is 2.2 PB and we have 230 (or something) TBs that are brand new since, you know, since we did the last World Update, essentially. So how is it going to affect the US? Yeah, I mean, there will be newer textures. That means that the airports that have new, you know, additions or retractions or deletions that will be updated, and then the automatic system will be run. So there will be new procedural buildings, trees, etc, etc, etc. So we’re gonna – and that world is shared. So not – I mean, there’s a bunch of features that we sort of saw in the trailer that are – that can’t be shared because it’s a different – it’s a different version of the engine. But the fundamental big data like the digital elevation maps and the aerials will be shared between both. So the team have to go in and actually check the airports, make sure that everything still works right. That is gonna be pretty massive because the US has over 20,000. But that work is now starting. And you will benefit in 2020 from that as well. Will there be mistakes? No doubt. So, and that’s what the World Hub is for. And you can help us get it right. But we’ll have a new shiny set of 2023 satellite images. For both sims.
I also don’t know if World Hub airports should be off limits to the AI system. There are a lot of submissions now that include very minor changes to the overall airports. If someone goes in and fixes a windsock but the system detects a missing taxiway with the new aerial, I see no reason that the system shouldn’t generate that new taxiway, even though the airport got updated in the World Hub. There is a lot of nuance in this, and as someone who has put hundreds of hours into the World Hub since launch, I would like some reassurance from the team instead of worrying if my changes are going to be there in six months.
Jörg isn’t talking about world hub data being deleted, he’s talking about airport generated data by ASOBO for MSFS for the base sim. They’re updating all the base airports utilizing AI and then will have humans manually verify them on their side, exactly the same way that they did for MSFS2020. This has NO effect on world hub. In fact he also mentions that base airports will need world hub contributions to make them hyper accurate.
How you’ve somehow assumed that they’re talking about running AI over world hub additions I have no idea. You seem to completely misunderstand what Jörg is saying here.
As a former 3rd party photoscenery, elevation data and airport matching 3rd party developer and member of the FS11 Design Advisory Board, DTG FSW and FSFS game design developer and a career in FS spanning since Sublogic FS 2.0 on both the Apple IIe and C64, I can reassure you your fears are unfounded and outside the scope of what Jörg has said.
Imagine a scenario two years from now when most of the major airports around the world have been updated in some way through the World Hub, some large edits, some small edits. But most have been touched. Some new aerials become available for a world update and the airport generation system cannot touch any of the airports because they’ve been edited in the World Hub. I just don’t see it.
I congratulate you on your credentials. While I don’t come from the world of professional flight sims, I do have a multi-decade career in professional software development, myself. And I don’t appreciate the tone you are bringing here. Rather than trying to allay the fears of someone who has put hundreds of hours into the World Hub, your attitude toward me is one of exasperation, condescension, and, “I can’t believe you think this.” So, I won’t be engaging you further in this conversation.
It would be beneficial to learn how MS/Asobo plan to handle the update of aerials. I “assume” the current aerials will be replaced by new aerials and World Hub data will be untouched, but it would be helpful and a motivator to know for sure. Assumptions are often wrong.
Jörg answered a small part of my question. (Although, I didn’t ask it this time…was there a form for questions this time around?)
We are getting new aerials, and new aerials will move stuff. That’s what happens when you get new aerials. There’s always – not always, but oftentimes an offset. So I don’t want people to go edit a bunch of stuff that then potentially changes under their feet. So I think we’ll leave it in the current state. We might actually – probably a good idea to update where the aerials [are] new. As I said earlier, we’re getting, I think, about 200 TB. It’s about 50% of the planet coverage is new since the last world update, basically.
It does sound like some World Hub contributions are going to end up getting trashed. Unfortunately, we still do not know what tolerances the AI-based system is going to have when it looks at an existing airport and it looks at the new aerial. These questions are still out there (and I’m sure others have questions, too):
If I’m taking something from the Bing aerial right now in my World Hub contribution, and that’s the aerial that’s going to get loaded in November, what how many meters (or centimeters) off will something have to be before the AI system decides to overwrite it?
What about aerials that are incorrectly shifted from their current positions? E.g., 4N1, which I discovered had some places that were shifted by as much 4 m. Will they be correctly shifted, or will the projections continue to be off, and airports like that will get blasted away?
If it decides to overwrite something, will it throw the entire airport away, or will it take pieces from what’s there and only overwrite what it thinks is different?
If it can’t see something like a windsock, but it sees that a human placed it in the World Hub, will it throw that away?
Will it destroy all the taxiway signs we put in?
If we put nuances into the pavement off of the Bing aerial that the AI system didn’t identify, are those going to get thrown out?
And then verbatim, all the other questions I had:
Will any testing be done against our submissions to ensure that if they are current, they stay intact?
Will we get notified if our submissions are overwritten?
Will there be an appeals process if they are?
Will we be able to access/download old versions of our submissions to be able to check them against the refresh?
Should we all stop submitting changes until this refresh happens? (Even if we did, they could still get overwritten in future world updates.)
