XP Scenery Generator [WIP]

[tonywob]

Hi Chris

 

Thank you very much for your post. I had a look at city engine a while ago, but not for X-Plane. I'm a big SimCity fan, and the topic was raised on the SimCity forums after the disappointing new version of SimCity. I'm looking at your screenshots and only wish we could get them into X-Plane.

 

I have an issue with texturing at the moment with my 3D city models from OSM. World2XPlane generates a 3D model, but as you can see in the screenshots, the texturing is not realistic at all. I'm trying to use repeating UV textures, but the problem is that I then can't have more than one repeating texture on the same sheet and then reuse the sheet in other models. The more textures I have, the slower X-Plane runs and the more memory it uses. So it's a puzzle I'm thinking hard about. The only way for me to create models that look similar to the facade models (texture wise) and use the minimum number of texture sheets is currently to produce two models, one for the roof and one for the building, which is ugly and will make frame rates worse. So, I'm also looking for any 3D experts who can advise on this :-). Additionally, I think the normals maybe wrong on the 3D models, as they reflect light differently than the surrounding facade models. There is still a lot of work to do on the OSM3D generation, but once done, it will give users a very easy way to approximately model city buildings without even opening a 3D editor.

 

With simple buildings inside cities, I think facades are still the way to go here. 3D models look fantastic in the suburbs or in villages, but in cities where the buildings are much more complicated, I fear it is impossible to generate enough reusable models to realistically map all of the buildings and not kill frame rates (especially the multipolygon ones). The facade format can do much more than what is currently being used in the OSM2XP or Simheaven facade sets. The X-Plane .fac v2 format supports many more options, but the only way to "sanely" edit these is using a 3D application such as Blender (as mroe pointed out here earlier). I'm really hoping somebody comes along and takes up this task, so we can greatly improve the look of the facades. 

 

There is of course also autogen which could be used to populate cities, so although they won't look like the the real city, they will still look like cities, and here a large library of 3D buildings is useful. 

 

However, please do submit as many buildings as possible, we will use them one way or the other, either in autogen or in footprint placement. Register yourself on github and send me a PM with your username, and I'll give you commit access to the models we currently have so you can see what is needed and how it works. Thanks again for your offer to help

[tonywob]

Just a warning to anyone using the second alpha, I left a rule enabled in the config file for my testing of 3D models which should be disabled (building:part=*).

 

In some areas, X-Plane will crash without warning or any errors because there are building parts in OSM with negative heights (which are perfectly valid, i.e. basements). Pilotbalu of Simheaven reported this for Bayern, but also it happens in New York as well. So if you are seeing this issue in your generated scenery, remove the rule or wait for alpha 3 which I'll get released later this evening.

[AngeloM]

A new experimental feature I've been working on is using 3D models instead of facades for bulidings inside OSM which have parts, textures, heights and colours. Previously, I used facades, but this caused some problems in that:...

Wow.

I missed this thread for a day and now I'm watching those screenshots, they're impressive!

Already got alpha 2, I'll try it with that rule enabled in order to check it.

[tonywob]

Branching out from Europe, I have given a US city a try (New York).  Despite weak data in the area, the 3D information here is quite good:

 

 

 

 

 

This is using my new building part generator, but with the correct textures applied, this could look quite nice.

 

[JohnMAXX]

Im going to tell you it looks great as is, but yes I can see some serious potential here.......

 

Thanks for your efforts!

[tonywob]

Thanks John. Of course, it would look better with seasonal textures, wink wink ;-). I'm hoping when your program is released we can work on a way of making the buildings seasonal

[MrIch]

The picturrs of NY look great is there any flickering or are these real 3d objects? Btw. there is a NY osm import project which will improve the osm quality even further!

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300 mit Tapatalk

[tonywob]

The picturrs of NY look great is there any flickering or are these real 3d objects? Btw. there is a NY osm import project which will improve the osm quality even further!

 

There is no flickering, as these are all real 3D objects,as can be seen by the textures. Do you have some more information about the import project, this will be fantastic if gets done. 

[MrIch]

Yes of course just check this https://github.com/osmlab/nycbuildings

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300 mit Tapatalk

[tonywob]

Yes of course just check this https://github.com/osmlab/nycbuildings

 

Thank you, this looks really interesting. I may use this before it makes it into OSM to generate NYC

[AngeloM]

Genèva (Switzerland) with Alpha 3:

 

 

[tonywob]

Thanks for the shots, it's looking good. I can spot a few Swiss regional buildings in there as well 

 

At the moment none of the objects have height restrictions in the CSV, but once we've entered them and enabled them, there shouldn't be quite so many high-rise Eastern European blocks everywhere

[czoog]

 

Branching out from Europe, I have given a US city a try (New York).  Despite weak data in the area, the 3D information here is quite good:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is using my new building part generator, but with the correct textures applied, this could look quite nice.

 

Hi Tony,

 

This looks very promising.  Is this made with Facades, or buildings, or is this the OSM 3d buldings?  As far as NYC GIS data goes, the city makes quite a good bit of data available for free.  You can see some very nice GIS datasets here: https://nycopendata.socrata.com/browse?tags=doitt+gis

 

I've used this information to make a model of all of NYC's buildings (simple for now, but I could texture it fairly easily), roads and terrain in Infraworks (another tool I use at work, see images)  I processed the data a bit to add building height information to each footprint, the result is a shapefile will every footprint in the city with it's height.  I use that parameter to extrude the buildings.  They also have a nice road centerline shapefile will roads lane info and elevation data! Perhaps this is useful?

 

Also I am going to look into facades a bit more as soon as I get some free time.

[tonywob]

This looks very promising.  Is this made with Facades, or buildings, or is this the OSM 3d buldings?

 

 

The program creates 3D X-Plane obj models from the basic polygon data inside OSM, such as building height, roof height/shape, material, colour and building parts. The 3D information is basic, but can be used to reproduce convincing enough shapes for some landmarks. A great example is the OSM buildings in Warsaw or in Berlin. Problem is that there isn't enough of it, and most of the city is pretty bare. 

 

I hope to eventually get round to supporting other data sources in addition to OSM, and then with a little bit of configuration, these shapefiles should be able to be used to generate 3D cities as shown in your screenshot (which looks fantastic BTW).

 

I'm hoping people will start adding 3D information into OSM, as an example, earlier today I added 4 3D buildings into OSM for Liverpool, UK, and then generated the area as shown here:

 

 

 

It didn't take me long at all, and is very easy to do once you know the building heights (I used Wikipedia). For each building, I split them up into smaller parts, and gave each part a height, colour and roof shape. Each building you see took me about 5 minutes. I'll keep working on the rest of the city when I have time, but even just a few 3D buildings really make cities identifiable:

 

[dradecki]

Wow, very very impressive.

[Daikan]

Here are a couple of side-by-side shots of my latest Swiss scenery (done with Alpha 3 + default rules + latest world models + ZL16 orthophoto + HD mesh v2) along with the real thing:
 
HiRes
HiRes
HiRes
HiRes
 
From these one can probably get a good idea of the current level of plausibility in a region that's reasonably covered in OSM.
 
PS: A few objects are from my scenery Switzerland 3D Warehouse Objects for +47+008 1.0 (for example the Prime Tower can be seen in the last shot).

Edited March 3, 2014 by Daikan

[SouthPawPaul]

Those are some great comparison shots. It's a shame they're not bigger. Any chance you can upload some bigger versions of the comparison shots somewhere?

[Daikan]

Those are some great comparison shots. It's a shame they're not bigger. Any chance you can upload some bigger versions of the comparison shots somewhere?

 

Edited my post to include HiRes versions.

[tonywob]

Super shots and thank you for posting, they look quite close to reality, and of course, it motivates me to keep going :-)

 

With the 3D object generation I'm working on, it should add a bit more reality to some of the cities. I tried 3D generation in Zurich, and there are only a few buildings which have 3D information, but it should be incredibly easy to edit OSM and add more (The prime tower would be easy to add, as it isn't too complicated). As in the above shots of Liverpool, I added some quite complex buildings quite easily using basic 3D tagging.

 

Anyway, here is what I'm currently working on in the 4th alpha, which I'll have released probably by the weekend (no promises).

 

- 3D object generation for building parts (Still requires some work, some buildings have strange textures, artifacts, etc, so it won't be enabled in the config by default). I've been working on optimising these objects, such as removing invisible faces (i.e. Inside the building or the floor). I've added onion and dome shaped roofs which makes some landmarks look quite nice, however I haven't yet worked out how to do gabled roofs (It's much more complex and is probably also why facades with gabled roofs don't work too well). I think I've found a solution, but it will require some time to implement (and there aren't that many 3D buildings with gabled roofs)

 

- Elimating "facades inside facades" for relations. This is a big cause of flickering objects/cities, and is especially important when using 3D objects. This isn't always possible, but so far results have seen a big improvement, especially in my testing area Berlin. If flickering objects still appear, then the data might need to be corrected inside OSM (and there is a lot of bad data).

 

- Configurable Texture compression. The application will run through all library files (i.e. Those not inside X-Plane), and will create DDS textures inside the generated scenery folder. X-Plane will automatically pick up and use a DDS texture if available (and texture compression is enabled), and really helps with memory usage and loading speed. I've seen a minor improvement in Berlin. High memory usage is a big cause of stuttering which I'm trying to optimise.

 

- Configurable areas. You can now put your own shapefiles or "simple CSV" files into the rules engine and use these as areas. e.g. You can add a box to a CSV and tell it that it's Southern Europe for example, or place a shapefile of some country's county boundaries and use these. 

 

- Height restrictions on 3D objects. Currently, the engine is placing too many blocks into villages because the footprint fits. If min-height/max-height is defined in the CSV, then the restrictions can be enforced, making villages more realistic.

 

- Regions for rules. Currently regions are only applied to our CSV files for buildings,e.g. German houses in Germany, etc. I will enable regions for every single type of rule. For example, this can be used to change the forests and "random residential trees" in Spain to more mediterrean style trees, and can also be used to change the facade set.

[jonrd463]

Here are a couple of side-by-side shots of my latest Swiss scenery (done with Alpha 3 + default rules + latest world models + ZL16 orthophoto + HD mesh v2) along with the real thing:

 

bubikon_sbs_s.jpg HiRes

oberengstringen_sbs_s.jpg HiRes

zurich_1_sbs_s.jpg HiRes

zurich_2_sbs_s.jpg HiRes

 

From these one can probably get a good idea of the current level of plausibility in a region that's reasonably covered in OSM.

 

PS: A few objects are from my scenery Switzerland 3D Warehouse Objects for +47+008 1.0 (for example the Prime Tower can be seen in the last shot).

 

WOW! Oh my sweet baby Jesus, those look amazing! You really ought to post those in the Avsim screenshots forum. I want to see some virtual heads explode.

[blacky75]

*JUMPED IN*

 

Found this topic, just because I were searching some other answers in other forums... Hell that's getting crazy nice here!!!!

 

As this (AMAZING-!!!) project is mainly based on OSM data (hope I got it well understood), is it possible to give us all tag information/formatting the software will use, so we can start to work directly on OSM data? I'm pretty sure that well organised, every one could really hard-contribute for a maximum, as it's mostly about correct-data to use...

 

I'd start tonight (belgium parts) to modify OSM data properly just to fit as real as it gets, if the list ist somewhere :-)

 

KEEP ON THAT AmAZING WORK!!! :-)

 

Hmmmm..... could I generate a part, and make a little video of it?????

Edited March 5, 2014 by blacky75

[tonywob]

Hi blacky75

 

There is no direct answer I can give you about which tags it uses (as there are lots), but basically it uses everything possible, and far more than OSM2XP. However, it's all completely configurable. Here are a few tips to get good buildings I can give you:

 

1. Tag the type of building, e.g. house, retail, industrial. 
2. Tag the height of the building if known, using either "height=??m" or "building:levels=?".
3. If it hasn't already, tag the underlying landclass, i.e. "landuse=residential, landuse=industrial, landuse=commercial". These are very important for the application to know the styling of buildings, where to put residential trees,etc. Also, if buildings are generically tagged, i.e. building=yes, World2XPlane will use the the landuse tag to guess the building. This tag is super important for getting realistic looking zones and villages.
4. For really fancy buildings and if you have the patience, have a look at all the tags here http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Simple_3D_Buildings. It's possible to create many landmarks (i.e. Have a look at how Berlin has been done).

Other things which really add to the scenery are:

 

1. Farmland fields with landuse=farmland. These will be surrounded by hedges and small trees, and look very nice on top of photo scenery. Also, it puts the odd random tractor or cattle into the fields.
2. Tag forests, and if you know the type of forest, add this also. e.g. landuse=forest,wood=coniferous/deciduous/mixed. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:landuse%3Dforest
3. Add VFR type objects such as wind farms, chimneys, even advertising billboards if you want to.

[blacky75]

Excellent tonywob, thnx for the answer, I'll now have some OSM data to fill in, 3D is best!!!!! :-)

[tonywob]

Just a quick tip, don't overdo the 3D tags if you don't need to. i.e. There is no need to tag the colours and material of individual houses, as this will mean that objects from the 3D library won't be used and a basic 3D model will be generated instead (and it won't look as good). 3D information works really well for tall buildings, e.g. A glass office block, or some kind of local landmark, e.g. A church, an observatory, etc..

 

As an example, I didn't like the shops in one of the town centres, so I added 3D information to those as it made the buildings look correct. e.g. I added a domed roof to one of the buildings, and also for the shopping centre, I added the pyramid style roofs on the 4 corners. Now it looks much more like the real building. 

[blacky75]

thnx for the tips!!! Damn, should go to sleep, 1:48 am right now ^^ My wife will hate you :-)