#Google earth pro flight simulator android#
#Google earth pro flight simulator simulator#

It offers a bunch of basic games, and workouts based on Google Street View data. It connects a virtual reality headset to either a smart bike or a cadence sensor, to allow your pedalling on a normal exerise bike to correspond to on-screen action. This company was previously known as VirZoom. One other company is already doing something similar to what is laid out here, VZfit. We always take, probably, a more calculated approach in how we grow our business,” iFit President Mark Watterson told me, when asked recent about the impact rival Peloton has made with its major spending strategy.Ī less glamorous view of virtual reality workouts VZfit We’ve always made sure that we want to remain profitable. Whether iFit would be interested in such a development-intensive project is in doubt.

#Google earth pro flight simulator android#

Those with lower-end treadmills and exercise bikes could still feel terrain changes, even if the software itself was displayed on an iPad, Android tablet or TV. All of its bikes and treadmills have automatic resistance, speed or incline changes over Bluetooth. Its parent company ICON Health and Fitness also owns NodicTrack and Pro-Form, which produce consumer-grade exercise bikes with iFit integration. A partnership with Google is already in place. It already lets you create routes based around Street View slideshow images. So who else might develop this kind of software? However, what better excuse would there be for a solid subscription fee than it running right off a server-based service similar to Microsoft xCloud, PS Now or Google Stadia? Who could make it?Īpple suddenly announcing a smart bike with 'Apple World Workouts' may seem a pipe dream. This kind of fitness “game”, of course, also be a fairly intensive application to run, just like Microsoft Flight Simulator. A million kilometres of routes or a thousand are both valid choices. Route-making could either be a free-for-all, or tied to smaller areas in order to make the world feel more densely populated. You’d have a fitness platform as vibrant as Zwift, but far more realistic. Add virtual pedestrians and avatars representing other people on the platform. What next? Apply machine learning to remove the cars and people captured by Apple’s cameras, and to improve 3D models and building textures. Using Look Around as its framework, Apple could make the most visually advanced virtual run and cycling platform in the world. It turns the still image data taken by Apple Maps’s capture vehicles into convincing motion. London, New York and San Francisco, for example, already look like the 3D maps from a video game.Ī view of Tokyo from Apple's Look Around Apple Zoom right into Google Maps and Apple Maps and you will see the level of 3D modelling already in place in today’s mapping software. However, a shift of perspective is all that is required.

#Google earth pro flight simulator simulator#

Microsoft Flight Simulator is predominately designed for the view from the sky, not 6ft from the ground. The very same approach to world building would not quite work for a fitness platform designed to let you run and cycle through a virtual version of the real world. The assets involved are so epic much of the image data has to be streamed from servers, even after a 100GB installation. Combine these techniques, and add some of the most realistic clouds ever rendered, and you end up with Microsoft Flight Simulator. Other parts of the world, most notably airports, were filled-in manually by developer Asobo Studio.

Microsoft Flight Simulator quirks provide an idea of how its world generation works VIdarCR This offers a clean 3D-modelled environment at any elevation, aside from the odd glitch like a 212-floor monolithic structure looming over Melbourne’s suburbs. The game uses OpenStreetMap data to determine the characteristics of buildings, filling in towns with suitable models. Other buildings and cities are populated using procedural generation. This results in incredible-looking skylines as you fly by, but it tends to look rough down at street level.

The buildings of New York City, for example, are extruded by analysing photos. Hundreds of key cities are also mapped using intense photogrammetry. When paired with terrain elevation data you already end up with a good-looking environment at 10,000 feet. Satellite imagery from Bing Maps is used as the base. How Microsoft Flight Simulator Worksįour sets of techniques are used to map Microsoft Flight Simulator’s version of Earth. But to get an idea of how this might work, a look at how Microsoft Flight Simulator’s world is made is needed. The techniques used in Microsoft Flight Simulator could, and should, be used to level up this kind of immersive exercise. Rouvy and Zwift offer ways to make home cycling and running less boring Zwift