I'm not a huge fan of AI in search engines and I had to jump through hoops to stop Microsoft forcing their AI program Co-Pilot on me (If you have an MS 365 Home/Office subscription, you can avoid the new price increase by asking for the "classic" version without AI). But I guess this is more of a question to developers, route builders, traction builders and experts in AI. Are we at a point where AI can lift data from Google Earth 3D or Bing Maps 3D to assist with the generation of routes (obviously buildings would still need HD modelling)? Can it speed up the modelling or scripting element of building traction? I appreciate we're a way off from AI being good enough to produce a whole route that needs no further work, but I assume it's one of a number of options (such as scenery capture by drone) that are being looked at by DTG. They would be delighted to be able to release significantly more DLC without needing to double the size of their team for obvious business reasons.
Not a developer or anything of the sort, but I have dabbled in AI generators a bit. As you've said, it won't be good at building whole routes, but it can follow instructions as long as they're clear enough. Would certainly help automate the process a bit.
Until the rspcai is formed, then you won't be allowed to use it anymore! Looking at the way Ai is used to generate terrain on msfs, there would still need to be quite a lot of human intervention. So much intervention, wouldn't Ai be a bit pointless? I guess it could paint the terrain to an extent. Which would save a lot of time.
You can now use an AI to build you a 3D model. You only have to export it to use in UE and you're good to go. for those minor objects, like vans, trees, generic office buidings snd such, this eill save some dev time I'm sure. But we're a bit off from asking it to build you a complete route. Then again, you could train an AI on a bunch of cab ride videos and terrain data, so who knows....
Matt answered the question back in November. Source "Procedural Generation is an interesting topic, you can combine with deep learning, AI analysis of satellite imagery to determine what is where , and all kinds of absolutely cutting edge things and at some point it may indeed be possible. Flight Sim is using some of that technology but it falls apart when you get to ground level (which is fine, flight sims are not about driving down roads or tracks...). There are lots of issues aside from it being pretty cutting edge. Let's take the lively discussion about 1980's routes for a start. Your data sources like Open Street Maps are current - not historic. Even just going back a couple of years can render a data source problematic in some cases. Sure, you can get a lot of base detail but then you're back to hand crafting it again, and the further you go back the more you're doing to where you may as well start from scratch. I'd argue 1980's would sit in that category unless you're out in the fields. Even procedural generation needs a lot of hints and help. What type of fencing, what type of trees etc. You can't ever use automation for track laying and signalling - the data just isn't there, I know it looks like it on sites like openrailwaymap but it's just not good enough to actually build the railway out of. Junctions are missing, sidings are missing etc. I remember a long time ago, Rob, who laid the track for lots of our routes (still does) told me that he'd looked up on ORM and OSM to see how a certain yard looked to see if it could provide any insights - there was very little detail in there at all. He researched it all himself, figured out what needed to be where, and built the yard etc. Some months later he went back to look on ORM/OSM and lo and behold - someone's recreated his exact track plan in the site (including one or two errors he noticed later on after making it). When it comes to signalling, there's just no data available publicly for that. It's all done by hand, painstakingly figuring out what is needed, where, what it does and so forth. The volume / quality of data is also wildly inconsistent - one area we looked at had incredible amounts of detail right down to 3D building information. Another area - barely had roads and rivers in it. There is no magic button to building routes, unless you want them all looking generic and flat. I am confident it will come along eventually, and probably not *that* far in the future, in the form of a suite of different tools that make the process still very much hand crafted, but on a much larger scale than down to the individual trees and such. Matt."
