France seen from the sky

On April 13, 2021, an aviation simulation video game, presented by Microsoft, flies an airplane over Paris in a video presentation of updates to the flight simulator. — On April 13, 2021, an aviation simulation video game, presented by Microsoft, flies an airplane over Paris in a video offering updates to the flight simulators. (FRANCEINFO / RADIOFRANCE)

Of course, we can hardly travel any more during this health crisis, nor take a plane, but video games allow us to do with it flight Simulator, Microsoft’s oldest license, launched in 1982. Microsoft has recently released a new update to the latest version released in August 2020, thanking Bordeaux Studio Asobo for developing the license.

The entire planet does the modeling but the studio brings it there, with this update, a real added value to the French landscape. Explanation with Editorial Director of Brice N’Guessan Video game magazine.

franceinfo: The pictures are amazing. How does one get into such realism?

Brice N’Guessan: Thanks to the work of machines allied to humans. First, to reproduce the environment in such a successful way, we use the technique of photogrammetry. It involves recovering environmental elements scanned by aircraft or satellites. Then, thanks to the artificial intelligence of computers, they will be able to give life to the environment by generating them alone, for example, buildings, materials or trees that are most loyal to reality.

We call it mLearning to learn but sometimes machines reach their limits?

Actually ! Machine learning is efficient because the computer accumulates a lot of data and manages to create a base from which it can draw, with only one Eiffel Tower on the other side. And there, the machine is no longer able to produce a rendering as faithful as reality. This is when artists arrive.

The studio has worked on it so much that it is called the point of interest…

Yes, it is really a question of reproducing recognizable locations. And it is indeed human, which artists would create for example from A to Z Parc des Princes, Notre-Dame de Paris, Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coir or even Archeology de la Défense.

Isn’t Paris the only city that has the right to this attention to detail?

Yes, the studio has tried to see the tourist spots of France. We find the attretat, Strasbourg Cathedral, Pilate’s Dunes, Lily’s Citadel, Château d’If, the Gulf of the Somme, the cliffs of Fort Boyard, obviously not having time to mention them all, but know that. It is a real invitation to tourism that we present you there, sitting comfortably in front of your computer. Finally, small accuracy, the game available today on PC will arrive on Xbox series consoles this summer.