MSFS “secret” weapon: Blackshark.ai
How are you enjoying the new Microsoft Flight Simulator?
If you have already flown over your house and across the skyline of NY, maybe you are a bit curious now on… how on earth is the entire surface of the planet (pun intended) in a videogame?
Many of you have heard by now of things like photogrammetry, Azure cloud, maybe even deep learning neural network.
Seems something out of a cheap Sci-fi movie, but it’s indeed the foundation of what is making Microsoft Flight Simulator a game changer.
The key that has unlocked this future-tech prowess is non other than Blackshark.ai. A team of more than 50 AI specialists, engineers, data scientists, and real-time rendering developers.
So, what did they do about the fact that 99.8% of the planet’s buildings, vegetation, and infrastructure were not available in 3D?
“Very simple”, have Azure Cloud combined with AI analyzing Bing Maps data, then segment and classify buildings, vegetation and roads using a deep learning neural network. To finish, just using “a patented method” reconstruct buildings resembling the real world ones (having a “recognition value”) and make it all available to stream in real time. How hard can that be?
A comment from Blackshark.ai really got my attention: “Using hundreds of virtual machines in parallel, the entire planet can be processed in less than 72hours.”
Using this system in three years they reconstructed about 1.5 billion buildings, and detected over 30 million km2 of vegetation. Where data is not available, the AI will make a “guess” and fill any gaps.
We can’t recommend enough to play the game connected to the internet, as you will benefit from all this Sci-fi technology to improve your immersion. The game can be played offline, but with simpler graphics.
Check out their website, specially the image slider where you can see how this background technology from MSFS transforms a 2D picture into a 3D environment.
We wish you a nice week
BlackHog Team