Category: Kev’s Blog

I’ve shared several posts with some pics of unusual issues with Microsoft Flight Simulator (here and here). My favorites so far have to be how cranes are rendered, this is probably understandable given that they are typically very tall and relatively thin structures compared to other typical buildings. What I find interesting is that there’s a couple of ways these are rendered, varying from solid objects (the space under the crane overhang is rendered as a solid object), all the way to spindly structures that are ‘close’ but still not quite right.

Here’s examples of cranes as solid objects.

Oakland, CA docks – one solid, one as a tree:

Solid but melty:

Newark docks, NY – cranes as solid boxes:

Cranes fused into ships:

Tall solid blocks:

Rows of solid blocks:

At the docks at Le Havre, France, the scenery from above is incredibly detailed in this area:

… but as you approach ground level you see in this area there is no attempt to render these cranes as 3d objects at all, they’re just painted to the ground of the scenery (and like most ships not rendered as 3d objects the ship is partially submerged). This avoids the issues with the 3d rendering I guess:

At the docks at Avonmouth, UK (near Bristol), the cranes in this area are not solid which is a different approach, but they’re rendered as if they are heavily rusted, decaying structures:

Some of the cranes look like they could be animals:

This group is my favorite so far:

Possibly my favorite MS Flight Simulator 2020 screenshot so far. I love the Daliesque nature of whatever this structure was in real life:

Before the launch of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 last year I took a number of comparison screenshots in FS 2002, 2004, and FSX but I never went back and retook screenshots from FS2020 after the launch. Here’s one example of the level of photographic detail in the scenery compared to Visual Flight’s VFR photographic scenery add-on for FS 2002. It wouldn’t be a good comparison to the base products without a scenery add on since they were only doing scenery autogen and didn’t even have photographic scenery, but here’s a good comparison just how good the FS2020 scenery is (drag the bar to compare):

Since the recent UK scenery update, here’s a comparison in roughly the same area looking along the Southend coast. Unfortunately I didn’t have a screen from before the update showing where the pier should be – originally it was submerged in the imagery, but as you can see from the image on the right above it’s now a very impressively modeled landmark:

Here’s a couple of other screenshots taking a closer look at the scenery along the sea front and the pier:

It’s interesting while the pier got a full custom model, the fun fair areas each side got a couple of buildings but the rides and rollercoaster where just left as flat imagery: