XP Scenery Generator [WIP]

[Tom Knudsen]

Excellent news tony

[blacky75]

guys, the library exclusion LOOKS like working fine :-)

 

And, the fences are working too... I designed it fastly, just for test purpose... AAAAAND? ->

 

 

and the second type, still home designed:

 

 

 

Good job tony!

[Daikan]

And good job blacky75

 

I suppose those fences should work well with barrier=fence and barrier_type=chain_link or barrier_type=*wire tags.

[blacky75]

thnx

i used as tony told me: barrier=fence

Guess the rest should work... to test

 

Checked with tony: he adds that too into the xml, so, yes. I just have to fix some graphs to make look it nicer ;-)

Edited April 8, 2014 by blacky75

[tonywob]

I suppose those fences should work well with barrier=fence and barrier_type=chain_link or barrier_type=*wire tags.

 

Yep, we can just add them into the new or existing rules. Fences are just a special type of facade which is unclosed, so the only thing you need in your rule is the <closed>false</closed> option, so W2XP knows it's ok to use it. Blacky will work on some more textures for the walls, but they look quite good in X-Plane. I noticed lots of houses in Brandenburg have fences around them which look very good, but maybe a little over-the-top.

 

Additionally, I've randomised the rules slightly for fields. So some fields now have wire fence around it instead of trees, so it looks a bit more realistic. I also match this random rule up with cattle, so fields with cattle in also have fences around them

[Tom Knudsen]

Ok, so I've tried it and found it to be not for me (at this time)!

 

Reason:

 

While it has potentials there where to many things that ticles my neurotransmitters.

If I where to fly VFR with a Norwegian made scenery (as I did) I would crash the plane for sure, just because I would be to ocupied

taring my hair and have no free hands to steer the plane. ))

 

On the development side, my tips to things that need to be fixed/looked at
 

Texture wrapping

 

Repeted strings of objects

 

Misplaced textures

 

Just to name a few..

 

On the positive side, it did provide a lot of diversity and variations in the scenery and houses seemed to be more aligned with the roads (even though the roads where all over the place)

But the downside was that in order to achieve this, you had to use a very high settings in order for objects to be shown. Which again did plumit the FPS from 100 to about 33!

 

 

So good luck with the project, Ill be sure to watch the progress

 

 

 

 

[blacky75]

@Tom: You are incredible, you know that?! :-)

 

- Texture wrapping: You talk about facades, which roofs are wrongly mapped... if that's the case: this is an already known problem and is fixed in further version

 

- Object repeating: looks like you don't (won't?) understand: the program for this part works fine. So again: it grabs objects in a library... if you want diverse industry 3D building, we would be pleased of some of your input to avoid repetition.

 

- Misplaced textures: same as texture wrapping

 

From 100fps to 33? 100 is way overkill, and where the hell did you get 100fps, on the sahara without any details turned on??... Add some orthophotos ZL17, fly over a city like.... lets say Brussels (in Belgium, western of germany) rendered with World2Xplane, and only then you're allowed to complain about FPS drops, I'd be quite interrested on what results you got there ;-)

 

Now where you really could get helpful and make us advance, would be to understand exactly the Facade format, how it's working and mapping the textures (and no need to point us to site we surely already know about)... that would be really greatfull. I created a new texture for fences, didn't worked... so i took an existing png, and replaced its content, and that worked. Why?

 

So far you just get the errors we all know about, were it's not even an error, but a lack of 3D library ^^ So you could help even twice :-)

 

Thnks for your investigations :-)

Edited April 9, 2014 by blacky75

[tonywob]

While it has potentials there where to many things that ticles my neurotransmitters.

If I where to fly VFR with a Norwegian made scenery (as I did) I would crash the plane for sure, just because I would be to ocupied

taring my hair and have no free hands to steer the plane. ))

 

Not sure how to take this. If the scenery is that bad then I'm not sure either World2XPlane, or OSM2XP can help you out here.

 

 

 

On the development side, my tips to things that need to be fixed/looked at

 

Texture wrapping

 

Yep thank you. This is a known issue with the facade set that was distrubuted with 0.2.0. It has now been fixed and will be in v0.3.0.

 

 

 

Repeted strings of objects

 

Well Blacky replied pretty much like I would. The whole idea of the project, all the posts here and all the tutorials on my website is for people to join in and help out, so we have more models and repetition becomes less common. We would like your help, since nobody has yet taken any interest in doing Norway. Plus Norway is quite weak in terms of OSM data, so you'll have your work cut out.

 

 

 

Misplaced textures

 

Same as before

 

 

 

even though the roads where all over the place)

 

v0.2.0 doesn't do any roads, so your just seeing the very outdated default roads I guess. Again, nobody is going to fix this for you.

 

 

 

But the downside was that in order to achieve this, you had to use a very high settings in order for objects to be shown. Which again did plumit the FPS from 100 to about 33!

 

Sorry to sound sarcastic here, but words really fail me. I don't even think (IMO) that the human eye can see any difference above ~40fps. But if you are expecting 100fps, and this is a problem for you, not only is World2XPlane not for you, I don't even think X-Plane or in fact flight simulation in general is for you. Maybe in 6-7 years somebody will create a computer and graphics card that can achieve that in OSM populated cities. You seriously need to lower your expectations.

 

 

 

So good luck with the project, Ill be sure to watch the progress

 

Remember, that this isn't and will never be a ready-made project for non technical people just to run and to expect to magically work and transform their country. If you want results, you need to help out. As I've already pointed out, if the scenery in Norway disappoints you, you either need to help out or find something else, because nobody will do it for you. 

 

 

 

It does not bother me that one needs to have libraries installed in order to create a scenery, but it bothers me when all of these are not available for download.

 

Just to come back to your earlier point about libraries. Almost every application in some shape or form requires libraries. In fact, OSM2XP uses OpenSceneryX (Which one must download seperately). Just because you personally have a ban from the .org doesn't make the program useless because you can't download a library. As already pointed out, you can disable the library, and I've even added in a way of 0.3.0 to easily disable stuff. At some point such libraries won't be needed anymore as our own library grows, but until such a point, it will remain in the default. I've checked, and we use only 8 buildings from the FF library, and the objects are only used in Germany.

 

I'd like to repeat here in a few short points what the project is about:

 

1. World2XPlane is simply a program that can be used by developers to create scenery from OSM data. It's highly configurable and the default configuration is not hardcoded, but it works for most people. If you don't like the way it generates something, then the program has been designed from day 1 for you to change it.
2. This is a collaborative project. As pointed out very early on, no single person can possibly create models for every country and fix OSM errors. If you see such problems in the scenery, they will likely not be fixed unless you do it yourself. As well as tutorials on the website, there are plenty of people here who will help you out and point you in right direction.
3. Initially in the early stages, this project is for developers only, or people who will take the effort to troubleshoot their own issues, read the manual and tutorials. Most of our users in fact aren't developers, but understand how the program works and have been instrumental in helping out, reporting problems and helping the project grow. If the problem is a genuine bug in the program, then of course I'll fix it, but you need to check if it's a problem in OSM or something you can't fix yourself first.
4. Simheaven, etc. provide sceneries for people who don't want to generate their own scenery. Even then, we've had great feedback from users just using scenery, and even users fixing problems they find in the OSM data (That's what I mean by collaboration)

    

Edited April 9, 2014 by tonywob

[Tom Knudsen]

Think I restrain from answering @blacky75

 

To the rest I will gladly answer tony, as it seems you did not mistake my intent.

 

 

Yep thank you. This is a known issue with the facade set that was distrubuted with 0.2.0. It has now been fixed and will be in v0.3.0.

 

Wonderful news

 

 

Well Blacky replied pretty much like I would. The whole idea of the project, all the posts here and all the tutorials on my website is for people to join in and help out, so we have more models and repetition becomes less common.

 

So the program has per definition no option for excluding facaded repetition based on number of objects? If I understand this correctly and I do apologies for asking but is it fare to say the software places objects just to fill out the OSM, and if the software does not find an uniq object it uses a random object or even a similar object to the nearest neighbour? (hope my question was understandable )

 

 

Sorry to sound sarcastic here, but words really fail me. I don't even think (IMO) that the human eye can see any difference above ~40fps. But if you are expecting 100fps, and this is a problem for you, not only is World2XPlane not for you, I don't even think X-Plane or in fact flight simulation in general is for you. Maybe in 6-7 years somebody will create a computer and graphics card that can achieve that in OSM populated cities. You seriously need to lower your expectations.

 

Not to start up an argument or even a discussion on frames, but I do agree on the eyes. However while the eye cannot see more than 30-40 frames or so, the notion of feeling/gaming experience is very noticable.

So you would in game notice a drop from 100 to about 33 and that is why my CPU is clocked @ 5.0Ghz and I have OC 4GB of memory on the GPU to, just to get that little extra performance.

Also it was kinda sad and harsh reading that flight simulation is not for me or anybody else for that matter, it is a game/hobby for everybody no matter the level of experience, age, engagement or interest. (just saying)

I do not believe I deserv to be wished excluded from this community just for thinking that.

 

My point was when it drops from indicated 100 down to 33 when turning from tons to extreme in order to see the objects in the package, that is just an indicator that the performance drop is huge!

 

 

 

 

Just because you personally have a ban from the .org doesn't make the program useless because you can't download a library.

 

Kinda does, when you think about it. However did mange to get that FF library and installed it togeather with R2, openscenery and world-mega. compiled and run without any errors, so nothing wrong with the program.

But I do not know why you all got on the defensive side, I just stated that this was not for me (yet, and I emphasize the word yet once again)

 

 

 

We would like your help, since nobody has yet taken any interest in doing Norway. Plus Norway is quite weak in terms of OSM data, so you'll have your work cut out.

 

Already on the case and have been for some months now. We are making every airports there is in Norway and along side that maintaining the openstreet map adding and editing sections of the country

to our best ability. However, that lack of "geotiffs or even workable picture services for Norway" inside Openstreetmap, affects the progress of determaining map features.

 

 

So good luck with the project, Ill be sure to watch the progress

 

Decided to quote my self here, hope it comes out as positive this time!

[tonywob]

So the program has per definition no option for excluding facaded repetition based on number of objects? If I understand this correctly and I do apologies for asking but is it fare to say the software places objects just to fill out the OSM, and if the software does not find an uniq object it uses a random object or even a similar object to the nearest neighbour? (hope my question was understandable )

 

Not quite no. Firstly, the factory you see isn't a facade, but an object. The program has a list of possible objects it can place, and we have hundreds of residential objects, but very few industrial. So in this particular case, it's found a matching industrial object from the OpenSceneryX library which fits the blueprint in OSM and placed it. However, since we have very few industrial objects, it can't randomise them and use different ones, because we simply don't have them. The problem is far less apparent with houses as we have more variety, but will still happen. The problem will likely be resolved if/once someone takes up the task of creating more industrial buildings. Facades are in fact randomised, but our goal is use real objects when possible as they look better. One could easily randomise the industrial rule, so it places some buildings, some facades to give more variety. Also, you do realise you can switch off objects if you don't want them? and basically just get an improved OSM2XP which does multipolygons. Please, spend the time reading the manual, I'm hoping it isn't that complicated.

 

Kinda does, when you think about it. However did mange to get that FF library and installed it togeather with R2, openscenery and world-mega. compiled and run without any errors, so nothing wrong with the program.
But I do not know why you all got on the defensive side, I just stated that this was not for me (yet, and I emphasize the word yet once again)

 

I'm not being defensive, and I'm not one to get upset or defensive from criticism, but the language you used was strong and demeaning to the program and our project.  You said "The program is useless", without understanding how it works, reading the documentation, etc. I understand your frustration with not being able to get files from the .org, and, as I said, I get an IP ban just because I'm in Poland. But your remark came across as strong, and comes from a lack of understanding of the application and how it works. As you've said "We can agree to disagree" ;-)

 

 

I do not believe I deserv to be wished excluded from this community just for thinking that.
 
My point was when it drops from indicated 100 down to 33 when turning from tons to extreme in order to see the objects in the package, that is just an indicator that the performance drop is huge!

 

Nobody is excluding you from the community. But let me explain why I said this. On my computer I never/rarely get above 20-25fps, and it doesn't stop me simming, developing and enjoying the flight simulator. What I wanted to say is that you can't expect good performance with thousands of buildings, trees and complicated scenery, and if this bothers you, then I'm afraid this type of scenery is not for you. No accessible computer that I know of today can show the centre of Berlin with a framerate above 30+, so if this is important to you, then again, this scenery isn't for you. The only time I have ever got above 50fps is over the Pacific Ocean. 

 

This problem is well known. Highly detailed scenery with trees, fences, fire hydrants, etc.. is great for helicopter pilots, but not so much for someone who does VFR at 2-3000 feet. So, you are free to start switching stuff off to improve performance. There is also talk at Simheaven of providing two sceneries (high-end and low-end).

 

Already on the case and have been for some months now. We are making every airports there is in Norway and along side that maintaining the openstreet map adding and editing sections of the country
to our best ability. However, that lack of "geotiffs or even workable picture services for Norway" inside Openstreetmap, affects the progress of determaining map features.

 

So that's great. I found the data in Norway quite poor in comparison to say Germany or France. But, it would be a nice area to have well populated, it's just a pity there isn't a big OSM community there. I would be happy for you to help, contribute buildings and I'm happy you are fixing the data in OSM.

[Ironmaiden]

Tom,

 

Honestly I don't think above 25-30 fps matters to the eye in the real world, I think the eye needs a minimum of 24-25 fps to see clean motion but i am no scientist . virtual world is just different , the reason we run behind more fps is the kind of objects the CPU and GPU has to render, even if you get a 50 fps but if the CPU / GPU needs to render something there your fps is gone, that is what I feel.

 

I even fly at 15-19 fps and enjoy it, yes it hurts the eyes after some time. If you don't like the FPS hit than you should stick to osm2xp. I have not noticed a fps hit with W2XP. and my rendering settings are almost maxed out but I am limited due to the GPU on  both my machines.  

 

 Try KBFI and see what fps hit are you getting and that airport is really well made and guess what it uses R2 library IIRC. That is in Seattle. The KBFI is free from .org but I guess you are not able to access .org , why not contact the admin ? 

Edited April 9, 2014 by Ironmaiden

[Tom Knudsen]

 

Tom,

 

Honestly I don't think above 25-30 fps matters to the eye in the real world, I think the eye needs a minimum of 24-25 fps to see clean motion but i am no scientist .

 

You might want to read up on the topic then, I for one did during my college years.

However, there is an int. article on the matter here you might want to start with

 

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_5.html

 

Or test this your self

 

 

One way to demonstrate that the human eye can actually detect differences above 30FPS is to use a small program called FPS Compare (11KB) by Andreas Gustafsson (used here with his permission). To use it, simply extract and launch the FPSCompare.exe file. Make sure to read the instructions in the Readme.txt file, and note that this utility is still in beta form. You may need to force VSync to Off in your graphics card's control panel for it to work properly, but if it doesn't work properly for you, you can try the more basic version of it from here: FPS Compare (old) (106KB).

FPS Compare shows the same scene rendered side by side in a split-screen arrangement, but each side is running at a different frame rate. When launching the new FPS Compare program, I recommend pressing F2 to change the scene to one more familiar to gaming. Now by staring at the middle of your screen, you should be able to detect that the portion on the left (at ~60FPS) appears smoother than the portion on the right (at ~30FPS). Even if the difference is not major to your eyes, many people do notice that there is at least some difference - something which refutes the fact that human eyes cannot notice differences in smoothness at an FPS over 30.

 

ibid..

[Ironmaiden]

you are still comparing real vs virtual and IMO they are different , a virtual world will also make you dizzy . well as I said i am not technically qualified as to what fps an eye needs to see clean / clear / smooth / jerk less  motion.

 

Do realize we are playing with real time object creation. in a real world they already exist. here it is the computer world which needs to create it every time the same or maybe different objects and scenarios hence we run after having more fps that means that  your comp needs to be super quick. As I said this is my opinion. You are free to comment though.

 

 Simply put it, you don't like the scenery or the tool you are free not to use it. no offence or anything intended towards you. I come from FSX and i know that fps is essential , there FSX is a good example.

 

 why not try a flight around the heaviest area having OSM data using W2XP and keep the settings to the max and see what you are achieving , every computer will behave differently even though they may have a similar config. 

 

Seriously just try it and fly around , take some flights around zurich / geneva and see how it feels and if you haven't flown in Switzerland in XPX with the HD Mesh and the photo scenery and W2XP then let me tell you that you are missing something, its beautiful, or better yet fly from Schiphol towards Seppe South West as Netherlands is pretty heavy on the comp.

 

One thing I would like to say this is what i wanted in a simulator the real world objects or object placements and here it is. Don't go too much on the object models and textures as I think in the future they will start getting matured enough. But still they look very very nice.

 

Fly man.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Ironmaiden

[blacky75]

here some shots from Belgium, around Brussels :-)

 

   

   

[Ironmaiden]

here some shots from Belgium, around Brussels :-)

 

   

   

 

 

Don't know what to say

[Souf]

here some shots from Belgium, around Brussels :-)

 

A nice diversity of buildings 

Edited April 12, 2014 by Souf

[blacky75]

yep.... I start recon some of mine... slowly but surely :-)

[mtaxp]

I'm following this tool and it's really coming nicely!

However,I saw that you are planning to generate street lights in next releases.

Acordding to my last experience with those street lights in OSM2XP (it takes them from the OpenSceneryX library) they are a HUGE fps killers,while that default XP10 ones are really much easier on performance and IMO looks better.

I managed to force XP10 to place street lights nearby the streets inside the cities and small villages,all those streets were really dark and now they are greatly lit,looks awesome,and with no performance hit at all,and the effect is even nicer than the OpenSceneryX's street lights.

 

Nevertheless,if you'll decide to genrate street lights with WORLD2XP I hope that there is gonna be a choice to not do that.

[tonywob]

Nevertheless,if you'll decide to genrate street lights with WORLD2XP I hope that there is gonna be a choice to not do that.

 

Of course there's a choice. Just remove the rule from the config file 

 

I haven't seen much of a performane hit at all using the lights, and I don't have a very powerful computer. You can easily change the density of the lights, and also control where they are placed. 

 

Also, just to add, it uses X-Plane's default lights, and not the ones from OpenSceneryX

Edited April 13, 2014 by tonywob

[tonywob]

I was hoping to get v0.3.0 released this weekend, however some more issues have cropped up with roads which will delay the release slightly. However, whilst being testing by some users, I've also added some new "safe" options which can enrich the scenery:

 

Object Height Rewrite. If you have an object, such as a flag or antenna, and it's not in a library. World2XPlane can be told to rewrite the object and change it's elevation. This is used to place flags on top of buildings or antennas. I'm sure some people can get creative with this, and also in future versions, I can also add an option to resize the object.

N.B. The flags will also animate and match the wind if you have the sandybarbour flag plugin installed.

 

Polygon Buffering. This option allows you to enlarge or shrink an OSM polygon, or turn a line into a polygon, and then use the buffered polygon for rules. I've already create a few examples, such as placing small trees around a pond and along a stream.

 

Multithreaded Generation. The application can now be told to generate several tiles at the same time. You can see big improvements in the generation speed, especially when used with an SSD or RAM Disk. This option hasn't been fully tested yet, so will be disabled in the release, but you can enable it if you wish to try it out.

[blacky75]

the multithread, for info.... Rendering Belgium takes around an hour... the multithread (8 cores for me) and a RamDisk (used 30Gb), made me rendering Belgium within 9 minutes!!!

Edited April 13, 2014 by blacky75

[Caruso]

To veryone contributing to this fantastic project: thank you very much! Of course especially tonywob but also Pilotbalu for generating and uploading the w2xp beta sceneries. I feel I'd like to contribute and that is whiy I started to edit some of the OSM data of the area where I live. Also I downloaded switzerland_beta2 und switzerland_beta3.1 from simheaven and tested/compared these while flying in the area of central switzerland. This is what I found:

 

Visually beta3 is a big leap forward. I especially like the streets with walkways and parked cars and also the general appearence of the streets at night. The fences, walls and playgrounds add to the plausibility of the scenery. I also like that there are less blue facades and the wrong textures on some of the flat roofs have been corrected. I don't like at all that in beta3 there is a lot fast food restaurants all over the place. I suppose they appear everywhere a building has been tagged in OSM as a restaurant. But they look wrong in this area. And according to this post they are very high in polygons using up a lot of fps. With beta2 I could fly at an acceptable FPS between 18-25 (world detail distance very high). But with beta3 my FPS drops to 14-20 (with world detail distance set to just low). Plus I get drops down to  FPS 1-3 when I quickliy change the direction on view. it seems my setup (iMac 27" 3.4 GHz intel Cor i7, 12 GB RAM 1333 MHz DDR3, AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB) can't handle beta3 in combination with HD-Mesh 2 and Simheaven Photoscenery ZL 17. I hope a future release of w2xp will possibly be performance friendlier again.

 

Anyway: w2xp is a great project that ads enourmously to the plausibility of (european) scenery! Thany you for this

[tonywob]

Hi Caruso

 

Thank you very much for the feedback.

 

I don't like at all that in beta3 there is a lot fast food restaurants all over the place. I suppose they appear everywhere a building has been tagged in OSM as a restaurant. But they look wrong in this area

 

Yep, agreed. I'll remove these completely, as far too many are appearing, and I hadn't realised just how many faces each one has (To be fair, the author did warn me they are just conversions from Google Warehouse ). I will also add LODs to the fences, tractors and stuff so they don't eat up unnecessary FPS

 

With beta2 I could fly at an acceptable FPS between 18-25 (world detail distance very high). But with beta3 my FPS drops to 14-20 (with world detail distance set to just low)

 

I'm really not sure what this could be. I also have a Mac which is much lower specced that yours, and I get higher than that. In fact with beta 3 I get higher FPS in Berlin city centre than I did in Beta 2. Maybe removing all the Burger Kings and Pizza Huts will help

 

Plus I get drops down to  FPS 1-3 when I quickliy change the direction on view

 

Do you use texture compression? I had the same until I enabled this. Unless you have the video ram to support this, I suggest you enable it.

 

Performance is always going to be an issue, and there was talk of adding a HD version and an SD version of the sceneries. i.e. One for heli pilots who fly low and slow, and the other for people who fly above 2/3000 feet. However, remember, you can also always just generate Switzerland yourself when 0.3.1 is out, and disable the things you don't want to suit your computer better.

 

Also, if anyone can or knows of anyone who can help optimise our models then please let me know. Most of the models have been done in Sketchup which is very inefficient, and if anyone has Blender knowledge or knows how to simplify the houses then please let us know. I don't have much experience with 3D models, nor do I have the time to go through each model and reduce the triangle count, so any help here would be greatly appreciated. The post (in German) offered some interesting feedback, and gives us something to work on.

[tonywob]

World2XPlane v0.3.1 is now available for download from http://www.world2xplane.com

 

Highlights in this release are road generation, more buildings, clipping, and multithreaded generation. More information can be found on the blog.

 

The software is of course still in beta, and still lacks a friendly GUI. Simheaven is in the process of upgrading the current beta 0.2 scenery to 0.3, for people who prefer to use ready-made scenery

[Tom Knudsen]

Nice