Bing helped Microsoft Flight Simulator build the world

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Bing gave Microsoft Flight Simulator a hand when it came to recreating the planet as we know it, and in return, the simulator team fixed their clouds. Somewhere in collaboration between the two development teams, the Microsoft Flight Simulator team noticed that some aspects of Bing’s world build were inconsistent and so have lent a hand fixing them.

IIn an interview at X019 with PCGamesN, Microsoft Flight Simulator head Jorg Neumann tells us about the development teams’ relationship, “those guys are awesome, they help with as much as they can and they listen to our problems and keep on helping and we actually give some stuff back to Bing.”

“We have machine learning algorithms in the cloud and we take all the satellite pictures because in our sim when you fly across the world, the world needs to look consistent. Bing doesn’t really need that, it’s nice for them but they don’t need it. But to us, you can’t have these strips of colours that are coming from the roof of an airplane overfly, so we fixed that. So what we call colour correction, we are giving back to Bing.”

Colour correction wasn’t the only thing the team gave back to Bing: apparently their clouds were a little off too. “The other thing is that there are clouds because it’s just satellites and the world is a cloudy place, so there are a lot of clouds in the pictures,” Neumann says, “so we fixed the clouds. We gave that back to Bing as well.”

The collaboration between the teams can only be good for both pieces of software and long may the beautiful relationship continue. The team behind the simulator is also working with veterans and scientists to make the game accessible to everyone, as well as possibly helping solve ‘pilot crisis’. Good vibes all-round – one might say they’re even sitting on cloud nine right about now.