X-Plane 10, Landscapes of the world (125 screenshots)

[alpilotx]

If you say you are a cartographer, then how can you say things like:

Can't Laminar just export THEIR water and shoreline database from 9

... do you imply, that in V9, Laminar had their own database? So, you think, that before V10, we at Lamianr have made our own geographic data? Well, I suppose you are vaguely familiar with the size of planet earth ....

So. What did V9 have? V9 had other data sources, yes. On the vector side (from where shorelines, lakes, rivers came), there was either the TIGER data (more or less completely imported in OSM by their community - UPDATE: Ben sets this straight in his Blog: only TIGER roads went into OSM but not the water ) for the USA, or VMAP0 for the rest of the world. And especially with VMAP0 (let me help: http://en.wikipedia....ero_.28VMAP0.29), if you are a little bit familiar with it ... well, you can't wish that back. Yes, maybe it had a few more rivers (well, not more ... but other), but thats maybe the only thing which was "better" in a few places ... For everything else, well, its a relic of the past which we are happy to leave.

OSM is vastly better - especially outside the USA - than VMAP0 ... The only "problem" with OSM is, that it is community driven (by the "masses") and as such, isn't a consistent data set everywhere. But at least its free (we can use it without the need to make X-Plane more expensive by ... say a few hundred dollars), and it is open! Open means, that everybody can improve it (and their community is doing so just as we are speaking). And it gives us a single source to work with ... because merging different geographic source (especially vector data), is - believe me - a big PITA, and can introduce more ugly features than it fixes missing features (we were thinking about this - and abandoned it)!

So, there was a decision, which had to be made. And it is OSM, and it will remain OSM, because we believe, that OSM will grow and improve (and it is already much better than what we ever had ... even with the few little problems which we now have, and you brought up).

AND Laminar will continue to better use what is there. We are not finished with OSM, and there is a lot of data in there which we could/should incorporate in future global scenery releases. The best example being the rivers ... in the current V10 global scenery, we don't use line water (only coastlines or polygon water) features. That means: rivers made of line segments ... usually the smaller streams. But its on our todo list ... (which not only means, we need to add them to the scenery, but also implementing new features in XP10 to render them).

Finally, I invite you (if you didn't already) to read an interview done with me a few weeks ago over there:

http://xplane10.word...n-mr-x-terrain/

There I describe a lot of - technical - things about the scenery, and also have a few thoughts on OSM

Edited December 17, 2011 by alpilotx

[alpilotx]

Aah, much better. Ben Supnik made his own write up on exactly the same - the water - topic on his Blog. So, head over, and read what he has to say (luckilyx, its not 100% different from what I am saying )

http://www.x-plane.com/blog/2011/12/where-is-my-water-the-roadmap-for-osm-and-vectors/