Azure, AI, digital twin technology, the ultimate restoration of the flying world

The experience in the game is easy to be true and easy to be false.

Over the years, "Flight Simulator" has become a classic in the hearts of flight game players. Recently, Microsoft CEO announced that "Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020" has officially landed on Xbox Series X/S. Xbox Game Pass (XGP) subscribers can play for free.

The work will run on the xbox x/s platform at 4K 30 frames, while supporting some flight peripherals. The new version of the game runs based on Microsoft Cloud Azure, providing players with a flying world that is infinitely close to reality.

How did all this happen? At the gravitational singularity Metaverse Summit, Sherri Xiao, the director of Microsoft's global black belt game industry in Asia, gave a detailed explanation.

The first is the digital twin technology, which truly restores the physical world to the game; the second is artificial intelligence, which allows historical data and real data to fit together almost perfectly; and the second is on Azure, which supports these two technologies. Computing, storage and network capabilities.

Sherri Xiao said that Microsoft's expectation for Azure is that it can calculate and think, can handle the nodes deployed in the center, and can also perform very strong edge computing, reaching every corner.

She said: "What you see in "Flight Simulator" will feel impossible, but it's really real."

following is the full text of the speech by Sherri Xiao, the Asian director of Microsoft's global black belt game industry, with slight editing:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, the topic of my speech today is "Cloud Computing Power Penetrates the Virtual Flying World".
I want to ask everyone, has anyone played the game "Flight Simulator"? What version have you played? I feel that when I come to give a "Flight Simulator" speech, I feel that everything is just right.
It is now our Microsoft global staff meeting. This is the first time our company CEO has set up a game platform. We have been operating this game on Earth for nearly 40 years. The first login of this game was in 1982, and a new version was released in 2004. The person in charge of this game said that when you have nothing new, do not release a sequel.
It has been 17 years before and after Microsoft released this game. But this release is different from previous releases. The difference is that on July 27th, this game is the first login to Xbox, which has an epoch-making significance.
Since this heavy game relies heavily on the power of the PC, we need to spend a lot of computing power to put this game on the player's desktop. Today we can use a very simple terminal to experience the game "Flight Simulator" on our host.
In the video you have seen, the data used exceeds 2.5PG, and the map data comes from Bing, covering more than 37,000 airports. The airport we simulated is exactly the same as the earth.
If you see Shanghai Hongqiao Airport here, it is simulated and not real. However, all aircraft, runways, ground, and flight conditions are the same as reality. We turn real objects into virtual worlds.
In fact, the game "Flight Simulator" is a microcosm of our simulation of the real earth. When you play this game in the future, the real experience is the earth. In it, there are also more than 20,000 cities, 1.5 billion buildings, 117 million lakes, and 2 trillion trees. Every time a tree is added to the earth, we are adding it to the game.
Can these be achieved if only relying on a closed development environment? In fact, these objects can't be done without backstage support. In addition, every pilot on the earth has already started to play this game when he was in flight school, so this game is to accompany everyone to grow, and we use the world's most advanced science and technology in every part.
In fact, when we simulate the world of flying, the core technology we use is digital twin technology. Of course, in the entire back-end technology, there is much more than that.
We call the whole supporting game development the Game Stack. It is divided into three parts. The first part is development tools, the second part is game services and data analysis, and the third part is platform support. Next, these games will be released through the Windows Store, so we are stringing together the end-to-end tool chain for game development.
Microsoft Technology
How does the #Microsoft Flight Simulator with more than 2.5PB of data achieve a realistic and smooth player experience? #Microsoft大事件ChinaJoy Cloud Technology Revealed!
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1KL4y1e7Yi/?aid=&cid=&page=1
When I first saw this game, I wondered why the only game in the world today can combine virtuality and reality so perfectly? The most fundamental thing is in the back-end, and the back-end supports the cloud computing that the whole world is changing, which is called Smart Cloud Azure at Microsoft.
My personal understanding is that there are many clouds in the world, and different companies are making different clouds. Microsoft defines the cloud to hope that Azure is not just computing, but thinking. We hope that it can reach every corner. In addition to the central deployment node, we also need to have very strong edge computing, so that we can solve the new game development model, which is fast and accurate, and can help us recover costs.
The volume of our data center is increasing every day. If you want to experience flying around the world, you must collect data from all over the world. If our deployment is only concentrated at a certain point, or certain areas, this is completely impossible. We have also laid a lot of optical fibers under the sea to support the interconnection of data centers. This is the cloud computing device that many Chinese game companies are now using.
As you can see, there are actually two lines running. The first line is the existing and historical data. The following is real-time data. The above data is that we collected all the information related to the aircraft itself a second ago, including paths and objects. We use the global computing power of the smart cloud to form a more realistic environment through rendering and store it in our terminal devices. This storage is also spread all over the world.
The following is our real-time content, including climate, environment, etc. We will collect space data from satellites, cloud image status, whether it is raining or snowing, etc. Through intelligent cloud processing, as real-time content and stored content are merged together, what you see when flying is a combination of historical and real data.
This is the digital twin. Every building on the earth, including the Pudong Kerry Center, is in the smart cloud. There is also a digital twin in our map. What we have to do is not only to see this building, but also to see the cars on the road, how many cars pass by, how many trees there are, how many flowers there are, and so on. We will map this information to the system in real time.
What is our purpose for doing this? For all companies to succeed, it is impossible for one person to make a game and a platform to succeed. Our real dream is to be able to help all game developers realize their dreams. This is our ultimate goal of making intelligent cloud, artificial intelligence, and digital twins.
We have a 4C concept as a whole. The first is Cloud, which is the smart cloud we just mentioned. On an icy and snowy grassland, there are 1 million reindeer walking by. It usually takes months or even a year to gather these objects together in our simulations.
Now we can do these things in a day on the cloud. This scene can be reused, today is a reindeer, tomorrow is a cattle and sheep, even beyond the boundaries of the game.
We have truly broken the boundaries of the industry. These objects are built on the intelligent cloud, not only by Microsoft ourselves, but also by our partners and us. These results can be used by every developer.
Another Community, we are divided into Developer Community and Player Community. These two communities will use the developer community more for developers. For players, because now we have more players self-produced content, it will be reflected on our smart cloud through the community, which can be used by other players and developers.
This is the ecological environment we really built. It turns out that Xbox is a game, Azure is a smart cloud, and GitHub is a development tool. What we have to do now is to integrate them. This integration is not only based on Microsoft, this integration is with our partners.
They can quickly use our development results. Just now you saw that all AI-related content was made by our partners in France. All the applications and services they make now can in fact be used by any other Used by Microsoft partners.
What you have just seen is Microsoft Mesh, which can truly support all mixed reality, and then materialize these scenes. For example, it can bring me and everyone in Shanghai today, a certain place in the United States, and a place in Africa, and really pull us together. Whether it is AI or Mesh behind this, in fact, its real foundation is the big cloud behind us, the intelligent cloud behind us. Only with this cloud can we truly develop upward.
This Mesh tells us that what we feel is that I am here and you are at this moment. Everyone is doing one thing together. At the same time, we can do one thing together through the smart cloud in different places. At the same time, this piece is a cross-border interconnection. It is not limited to games, simulations, and medical diagnosis. In fact, it can help us do anything. This is a new breakthrough in our mixed reality.
We are turning personal experience into everyone's experience. All the things done in "Flight Simulator" are realized by our very powerful intelligent cloud in the background.
I still end today's speech with a sentence from the developer of Flight Simulator: "Everything you see in Flight Simulator will feel impossible, but it is really true."