If I have well understood the Life project from Jeff the path of vehicles movement can only be created manually under 3DS Max for now. It is the manual side that bothers me (in addition to the license of the proprietary 3D software). In the long run, could these paths be created automatically, for example from the OSM route network?
Personally I would dream to have "vector" routes in AFS but unfortunately I do not think that is the idea of IPACS, right ?
It is true that orthophotos are nicer but only at high altitude. At low altitude (especially for helicopter pilots) it is generally ugly, even with a resolution of 50 cm / pixel. Whereas with vectorial routes we could have generic textures of very high definitions for asphalt on every road around the world (and not only on some detailled aiport area). In addition to having a path network directly exploitable to move land vehicles.
The ideal would be to have the best of both worlds:
- low altitude: use of vector roads with generic UHD textures
- high altitude: use of bitmap roads (orthophotos) only
The complexity would be to have a transition effect as smooth as possible when switching from one to the other. But that could be done with transparency.