People who get really in to flight sims are often very dedicated hobbiests who end up with a pretty wild array of specialized equipment and peripherals just to play. As the article says, what the game is streaming in is immense amounts of geospatial and photogrammetry data - aerial and satellite images processed to provide detailed 3d maps of the real world for the player to fly around in. It sounds like they might be getting in to wacky things like real-time weather modelling, too, which... woooooah.
Real time weather has been in MSFS for a while if you want to turn it on, there were a ton of clickbait videos on YouTube about flying through hurricane Milton or Helene over the past few weeks.
People were flying in tropical cyclones when MSFS2020 came out (in the middle of north Atlantic hurricane season), too. I'm guessing the live weather data might have higher fidelity or something in 24
Are they streaming textures?
People who get really in to flight sims are often very dedicated hobbiests who end up with a pretty wild array of specialized equipment and peripherals just to play. As the article says, what the game is streaming in is immense amounts of geospatial and photogrammetry data - aerial and satellite images processed to provide detailed 3d maps of the real world for the player to fly around in. It sounds like they might be getting in to wacky things like real-time weather modelling, too, which... woooooah.
Real time weather has been in MSFS for a while if you want to turn it on, there were a ton of clickbait videos on YouTube about flying through hurricane Milton or Helene over the past few weeks.
People were flying in tropical cyclones when MSFS2020 came out (in the middle of north Atlantic hurricane season), too. I'm guessing the live weather data might have higher fidelity or something in 24