MSFS2020 as a New Research Tool? 1:1 ETS3?

[Esproquet]

Google Earth has been with us over 15 years but the latest placement of Microsoft Flight SImulator offers HD real world environments and although only a small number of cities have photogrammetric quality I can see people at SCS taking advantage of it when discovering unknown places.

On the other hand, I know this all started within Bing-Microsoft, but can this technology get more accessible and evolve so that it can be used in an eventual ETS3? Maybe the interior of cities would take an infinite rework... but interurban areas around a limited number of roads could be realistically tackled.

[Some newbie driver]

Absolutely not. It has been alredy discussed by here Esproquet since that FS appeared. That 1:1 map has sense in FS because most of the time you flight high and a great speeds. At terrain level and with the speed (and closeness) of a truck the technique isn't viable for a good graphic result.

Also there's the point that most people forgets about 1:1 scale and that IRL driving a truck for HOURS and still arrive nowhere could be really boring. Last but not least, there's the question that the scale changes linearly but the content to the square. So, even a wider scale could be nice and possible (a lot has been discussed to to apply UK 1:15 one to all the ETS2 map); go further that point is objectively unfeasible for SCS and will keep being so for a lot of years. Just to move to 1:10 scale would mean SCS had to do 4 times more work in every DLC map that they do now. So, 4 times the people working on it, 4 times the cost and supposedly 4 times the price.

Regards

[Esproquet]

Good recap, I didn't come up with the idea of using the search box, just browsed the last 2-3 pages of active topics looking for something like this.

Anyhow, I think that maybe in the future we will see an increase in services for game developers and end users in order to share game elements, models and environments for a different assortment of games, in the same way that today a game engine can be shared by many companies. If I create a city/region/country that exist IRL, who wants to use it in their games? I'm probably suggesting something that already exists but, hey!

[Plum]

Maybe in many years time there could be the technology to have the same quality on Streetview level, at least in some areas. But that won't be for at least another decade, but it's not impossible at all using similar technology once we have a lot more data. But for now, we have to live with what we have.