A distinctive feature of Microsoft Flight Simulator is the presence of a map of the entire Earth. The creators of the game separately worked on some of the world’s landmarks, and the rest of the objects were made using the procedural generation of the Blackshark.ai neural network based on Bing maps. Cybersport.ru decided to check what other places, besides the most obvious ones, the developers created with their own hands, as well as how the neural network coped with the locations that the designers did not pay attention to.
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Barringer Crater in Arizona, USA
Barringer Crater, also known as Arizona Crater, is one of the largest craters in the world created by a meteorite. A hole 1.2 km in diameter and 230 m deep was created by a space object weighing 300 thousand tons. The collision of the meteorite with the Earth happened more than 50 thousand years ago, but even for such a long time the wound from its impact on the surface of our planet did not heal at all – the Barringer crater is visible even from space, and its edges rise 46 m above the surrounding surface.
The quality of crater development in Microsoft Flight Simulator is very impressive. During the flight, its impressive dimensions are perfectly felt – if desired and with good preparation, you can even fly into it on a Boeing 747, describe a circle in diameter and fly out. The detail is also pleasantly surprising – if you haven’t seen a real photo of the crater before, then a screenshot from the game can be easily confused with reality.
1/2 Arizona Crater in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Lake Hillier in Australia
Lake Hillier, located on the Australian island of Middle Island, has long been one of the most mysterious on Earth. Scientists could not explain why the water in it has a pink tint. The initial hypothesis implied the presence of some algae, which changed color, but studies in 1950 did not confirm it. After 66 years, scientists again checked water samples and found that not only algae were the cause of this color, but also other microorganisms that experts could not detect before. And Hillier is not the only pink lake on Earth. There are more than a dozen of them in the world.
In Microsoft Flight Simulator, Hillier doesn’t quite look like the lake in the photographs. In real shots, the pink is much richer than in the game. However, the general outlines of the reservoir coincide with the real ones, and some shade is still present, especially closer to the shores.
1/2 Lake Hillier in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Hydroelectric power station “Three Gorges” in China
The Three Gorges is the most powerful power plant in the world. It is located on the Yangtze River in China’s Hubei province and was commissioned in 2003. The construction of a dam weighing 65 million tons and a length of more than 2 km cost $ 30 billion. The station contains a huge volume of water – according to general estimates, it is 22 million cubic kilometers. The installed generating capacity of all 32 power units is 22.5 GW. For comparison, one Moscow CHPP generates a capacity of about 1 GW, and the Kalinin NPP, consisting of four power units, 4 GW.
“Three Gorges” from Microsoft Flight Simulator immediately reveals one significant flaw in Blackshark.ai – poor recognition of the elevation grid, especially against the background of water. Where the dam actually rises above the river, a ravine has appeared in the virtual world. As for the building itself, everything is bad here too – instead of a concrete dam in MSFS, you can find only an ordinary green embankment with houses on top.
1/2 The Three Gorges hydroelectric power plant in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Nuclear Waste Storage Facility at Enewetok Atoll
Enewetok Atoll, which is a territory of the Marshall Islands, was a US nuclear test site from 1948 to 1958. It exploded 43 charges, including the world’s first hydrogen bomb Ivy Mike with a capacity of 10-12 megatons. Before the construction of the landfill, all local residents were relocated to other territories, but in the 1970s they began to return to their lands. The atoll had to be cleaned and decontaminated, so it was decided to bury all nuclear waste and radioactive debris in a crater that was formed after the explosion of one of the charges, and then fill it with concrete. This is how the dome appeared on Runit Island.
In Microsoft Flight Simulator, the nuclear storage was recreated by a neural network, and again it worked imperfectly. Instead of a shallow dome, the game has a cylindrical structure with a flat roof and vertical walls. And at the top there were technical elements of the building that were not on the original storage.
1/2 The Enewetok Atoll Nuclear Waste Storage Facility in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Mount Fuji in Japan
Mount Fujiyama is located 90 km southwest of Tokyo and is the highest point in the country at 3,776 meters. It is considered active, but it was last erupted more than three centuries ago. Fujiyama is one of the most beautiful places in Japan: its almost perfect conical shape is decorated with a dark shade below and a snow-white peak starting from the middle of the slope. It is a sacred place for the followers of Buddhism and Shintoism. It is privately owned by the Shinto Great Temple of Hongu Sengen.
Fujiyama rises above the clouds for a magnificent view from the plane. In Microsoft Flight Simulator, this is clearly visible, especially considering that the volcano is very well designed – as in the case of the Arizona crater, not everyone will see the computer graphics in the screenshot.
1/2 Mount Fuji in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Fly Geyser in Nevada, USA
Fly Geyser can be called one of the most unusual natural phenomena, although man contributed to its emergence. In 1916, a well was drilled at this place, but due to an error, a hole was made in an underground geothermal pocket. In the middle of the 20th century, water from it began to come to the surface, painting the landscape around in unusual colors.
The geyser itself in Microsoft Flight Simulator was recreated by the developers in some detail. However, the surrounding environment is generated by a neural network, and because of this contrast, the landmark does not fit well into the terrain and looks like a toy.
1/2 Fly Geyser in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Hashima Island in Japan
At the beginning of the 19th century, large reserves of coal were discovered on the Japanese island of Hashima. Initially, it was a small rock in the Pacific Ocean near the city of Nagasaki, but when the active mining began, they began to pour it onto the coast, thereby increasing the size of the island. By the 1930s, military factories were built on it, and the area became one of the most densely populated in the world. But in 1974, coal mining on Hasim was stopped, and the entire population left the island. Now there is not a single living soul.
Hashima’s Microsoft Flight Simulator is fully generated by Blackshark.ai. And the nuances of this procedure are also evident – the thin walls of the real island have not been recreated, the steep rock in the center has turned into a gentle hillock, and the buildings, although they are located plus or minus, are not too similar to their prototypes.
1/2 Hashima Island in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico
The Pyramid of the Sun is located 40 km from the capital of Mexico – a two-level structure 64 meters high. It was erected by representatives of an ancient civilization the Teotihuacans around 100 AD. It is the third largest pyramid in the world, but its base is only 3% smaller than that of the Cheops pyramid, which is considered the largest. The Pyramid of the Sun was a place of worship for an unidentified deity (the altar on the second level was not preserved until the beginning of archaeological research), and also served for astronomical observations.
With the generation of this place in Microsoft Flight Simulator, artificial intelligence could not cope with the word at all. On satellite maps, the Pyramid of the Sun looks like a large square with some object in the center, and therefore Blackshark.ai turned it into a kind of shopping center with a strange texture on the roof. In short, almost nothing is left of the popular Mexican landmark.
1/2 Pyramid of the Sun in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Mir kimberlite pipe in Yakutia, Russia
The Mir kimberlite pipe is one of the world’s largest diamond deposits. From 1957 to 2001, gemstones were mined in an open way, and as a result, a crater 535 m deep and 1.2 km in diameter formed in the ground. Due to the presence of an aquifer in the local soil strata, the pipe was filled with water. To prevent complete flooding, the liquid was constantly pumped out by pumps during the production period. When the quarry stopped working, a small lake formed at the bottom of the pipe.
It was this body of water that prevented Blackshark.ai from efficiently generating the “Peace” pipe in Microsoft Flight Simulator. Artificial intelligence suddenly decided that any large natural reservoir of water would necessarily be at sea level, and therefore a ledge with a lake formed in the center of the pipe in the MSFS.
1/2 Mir kimberlite pipe in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Airplane graveyard in Arizona, USA
The Davis-Monten US Air Force Base, better known to the masses as the “aircraft graveyard”, is a storage facility for aircraft in conservation. On the territory of the base there are more than 4 thousand aircraft for various purposes – both civil and military. Their total cost is estimated at $ 35 billion. The location for the base was not chosen by chance – the dry climate of Arizona allows you not to worry about corrosion and other problems that reduce the service life of equipment that is not used for its intended purpose.
It would seem that such an iconic place for the world of aviation in Microsoft Flight Simulator should have been worked out separately. But the creators of the game did not do this. High-quality satellite and aerial imagery allowed artificial intelligence to recreate the Davis-Monten in some detail, especially when flying at a high altitude. But if you go down and pay attention to the little things, then the low-poly models of aircraft with shortened wings, as well as the earthen layers under each of them, are immediately striking.
1/2 Airplane Graveyard in Arizona in Microsoft Flight Simulator
