XP Scenery Generator [WIP]

[Ironmaiden]

Thinking of trying out XPX and W2XP with Photoscenery under linux using everything maxed and see if it still crashes.  But the problem is Xsquawkbox is only 32 bit for Linux  but i am so tired of getting everything updated in Lubuntu and with my net speed at home it will be crawl. The crash usually happens in Amsterdam when connecting to Xsquawkbox. 

 

 Right now I got a crash at EHAM with Xsquawkbox but the two crashes were AMD GPU related (On the Desktop).

 

 Tried the same flight on the laptop (Which has NVIDIA GPU) and that was an XPX crash.  Funny.

[crisk73]

Tried the autogen-free scenery of nord europe by simheaven and still the same issue of missed loaded tile when entering germany; in other countries the tiles gets loaded but with some stuttering. I'm thinking my hardware is not enough for w2xp

[Caruso]

Cris, I've been looking through how we handle the density settings, and I found a bug with how it handles objects. Basically, I've accidentally told X-Plane that I want all objects visible no matter what, so I need to fix this, and get it into the next version. The density settings do work for facades however.

 

During the last days I have been trying different reendering settings in Xplane with the actual W2XP scenety installed to see how performance is affected by the settings. Now I understand why changing the object density didn't change the FPS a lot... I was already suspecting that lowering of object density only reduced  fassades but it is difficult to tell just by the looks of the rendered scenery.

 

Facades are reduced accordingly but this reduction can result in parts of a building being rendered and other parts not. It looks pretty weird when a part of a buildig disappears after I lower the object density setting. Can this be helped?

 

Another thing is that city centres (especially with orthfoto underlay) look strange with the object density reduced because then some of the (importanta) buildings are completely missing. Would it be possible to priorise buildings closer to a city center so that buildings in the outskirts would be left out first when one reduces the density settings?

 

The other renedering setting for number of roads and trees work correctly.

[Caruso]

Speaking of performance and crashing: I was able to try yesterdays DACHbeta4.1 scenery from simsheaven on the latest MacPro. All kernels were working like mad horses upon loading the scenery. Sometimes it loaded soemtimes it crashed. And the FPS were only slightly better then on my old iMac (top model of 2011 series). It looks as with the W2XP sceneries processor and bus speed is much more relevant than GPU speed. The FPS on my machine is definitively CPU bound.

[CaptCWGAllen]

Also, if you do take shots of Runcorn Bridge, Try and get it from the side, which maybe quite difficult. If you manage to get some shots of supermarkets, try and get them straight on, i.e. Front of the building, and optionally the side.

I'm also flying over to the UK next month, so I'll have my camera on the ready also to grab a few shots

Tony

I have put a front and side view of a Coop in this file http://1drv.ms/S2Bi2s

- unfortunately it was early morning so the side view has a bit of backlight. Will go to Tesco after 5pm on Sunday when it is closed.

Have also put shots of Runcorn Bridge in same folder. Only from the Runcorn side as it was rush hour and the tail back from the bridge was about 2 miles long and stationery Going back that way on Sunday so will get over to the Hale side. Very difficult to get side on without a boat! Also I never realised before that the pillars in the middle of the Mersey belong to the railway bridge not the road bridge. I assume you do not want photos of the rail bridge side but if you do I will do them no worries.

Any way hope they are useful -if not will need to borrow a boat!

cheers

Peter

Edited May 17, 2014 by CaptCWGAllen

[blacky75]

News ^^ For next W2XP version, new Industrial Textures/Facades will be done. Here a few from my test area....

 

 

[Ironmaiden]

News ^^ For next W2XP version, new Industrial Textures/Facades will be done. Here a few from my test area....

 

 

 

 

Nice , looking forward to the new versions of both.

[tonywob]

Any way hope they are useful -if not will need to borrow a boat!

 

Ha ha, thanks Peter these are great. I should be able to place the various parts together and use them. Don't worry about the railway bridge, I'll stick with just the road bridge to start with. Also, the supermarket shots are great as well, I should be able to create a few buildings with them.

 

Tony

[Caruso]

Below I post two example screenshots of the issue I posted yesterday (http://forums.x-pilot.com/topic/6388-xp-scenery-generator-wip/?p=74590)

 

Missing Facades with object setting=too many versus setting=extreme

https://www.dropbox.com/s/09g5evmjojq3lia/ObjSetToomany.png

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xgzbaig1185v8vq/ObjSetExtreme.png

 

Having the number of objects set to other than "extreme" results in

- parts of facade buildings being rendered and other parts not. It looks pretty weird when a part of a buildig disappears after I lower the object density setting. Can this be helped?
- significant parts of a town center are only rendered at maxed out object setting.

 

Edit:

added correct links

Edited May 17, 2014 by Caruso

[tonywob]

Thanks for the info and shots. I'm still trying to find a good way to control what's visible at different density settings. X-Plane will let me specify at what level an object must be visible, e.g. I can say that a particular model of house should always be visible at Extreme,  but when you go below the extreme setting, I'm not sure how X-Plane is working out what to show or not.

 

Also, the half building is happening because in order for me to show multipolygon (i.e. Buildings with inner court yards), I have to split the building into 2. It looks like X-Plane is choosing something at random to hide, and it happens to be half of the building

[tonywob]

Have also put shots of Runcorn Bridge in same folder. Only from the Runcorn side as it was rush hour and the tail back from the bridge was about 2 miles long and stationery

 

Peter, I've added in Runcorn Bridge, as shown in the shots below. Looks much more realistic now (This is an important VFR check point and landmark on approach to EGGP). T

 

 

It's hard to get it to align correctly with X-Plane's roads, but it almost works. I used the colours from the texture you provided, but I haven't yet textured everything and it is all simply one colour at the moment.

 

Also, the new version has hard surface piers, as shown in the docks here. Piers are also important VFR reference points, especially on the coast of the UK, so these are good to have

 

[CaptCWGAllen]

Hi Tony,

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant - don't know how you did it so fast. Thank you - makes such a difference to the realism - I feel another donation coming on!

cheers

Peter

[Ironmaiden]

@Tony,

 

 Are you using HDR in those snaps ? 

 

It looks too bright.  

[tonywob]

Are you using HDR in those snaps ?

 

No, I'm using the 60s filter effect for groovy 1960s effects

 

[Ironmaiden]

No, I'm using the 60s filter effect for groovy 1960s effects

 

 

 

 

LOL k.

 

 Hey give me that bridge.

[tonywob]

That bridge isn't generated by World2XPlane (It's too hard to place it automatically). It's something I added to my home airport because I hate it not being there in X-Plane. It's such an important visual reference point in the area, that it's needed. Also, it's missing in FTX England as well on FSX/P3D. Once I've got it working properly, I still need to apply part of Peter's textures (who did the photos for me), then I'll release it here and on Avsim.

[Ironmaiden]

That bridge isn't generated by World2XPlane (It's too hard to place it automatically). It's something I added to my home airport because I hate it not being there in X-Plane. It's such an important visual reference point in the area, that it's needed. Also, it's missing in FTX England as well on FSX/P3D. Once I've got it working properly, I still need to apply part of Peter's textures (who did the photos for me), then I'll release it here and on Avsim.

 

Awww.

 

So it should be enabled by W2XP next version ?   

[tonywob]

So it should be enabled by W2XP next version ?

 

Did you read what I just said? That bridge isn't generated by World2XPlane (It's too hard to place it automatically)

[Ironmaiden]

Did you read what I just said? That bridge isn't generated by World2XPlane (It's too hard to place it automatically)

 

 

LOL actually i did read it .

[Ironmaiden]

Please take a flight from LSGL but in a GA like a Cub or a Cessna .  

 

 I am right now jumping around airports in Switzerland.

 

Thun - is stunning.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Switzerland      Going by this list   

Edited May 18, 2014 by Ironmaiden

[Caruso]

Hi Tony. Sometimes one just posts observations and suggetsions for improvements so it's time again to say "thank you very much" for how you are developing this project. It has changed my flightsim experience completely and I really love it )

 

Nevertheless there is one thing that would add a lot to the realism of the scenery look in the area I live (Switzerland) and probably in the whole of Europe. The look of historic city centers. The placement of the buildings is already pretty excellent. I could imagine some improvement in the look, which is mostly too modern at the time. If it can be done I don't know. Let me explain my idea:

 

1. Correct shape

Very often the Buildings in historic city centers are build one next to each other to form something like a rectangular apartment block witn inner court yard. W2XP has two ways to calculate this.

A) In most cases the buildings of such a block are created as single houses next to each other. W2XP is using objects. This looks rather odd and only occasionally like a block.

In some cases it creates a multy poligon facade. This is the case if the building has been createtd in osm as one single building. In this case the shape is correct but not the look of the facade.

 

 

2. Correct texture

Osm has a tag called "construction_date". I am wondering if W2XP could use this tag to control which objects/textures are used. Supposed people tag the buildings in osm and supposed there exist according tectures and objects.

 

While I checked out diffrent cities in found out that x-plane generates correct looking buidlings in many areas where there is not much osm data, some areas in Barcelona for example.

I browsed x-plane's default scenery library to see where these objects come from and found some example objects that would suit the style (lib/g10/US/urban_high/uh10x29  ...uh 15x15 ...uh15x22_5 ...uh15x22_5_L ...uh22_5x30 ...uh22_5x30v4 ...uh22_5x30v6 ...uh40x40). I am not sure about the influence of the europe library.

So basically the questions is if it could be ever possible with a future build of W2XP to control the look of the buildings accoring to their construction date? For us users it would be quite easy to add the construction_date tag to let's say the 50 most important buildings of our favourit flying area.

I could imagine three different categories: 1400 to 1700 for medieval looking buildings, 1800 to 1930 for victorian looking buildings, no date for modern looking buildings.

 

Here are some example screenshots:

 

Google pic of original block of houses

top https://www.dropbox.com/s/qwyy726ev940k94/Bruchquartier.tiff

front https://www.dropbox.com/s/d74rqe8ho2j6rrb/Bruchquartier%20front.tiff

 

W2XP scenery of the same area

https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7p1x3tro1sxoqs/Bruchstrasse%20W2XP.png

 

Autogen buidlings in Barcelona

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y5j1mbuetntno8c/Barcelona.png

[tonywob]

Hi Caruso

 

I of course welcome feedback and any suggestions you have, so please always do share ideas or your observations.

 

City centres have always been a sore point for me, and it's quite difficult to get them correct. Facades do work better than placing real objects, but facades don't look very realistic. Whilst it's possible to create much nicer facades from real photographs, it's quite a bit of work, and at the moment, I have only Blacky helping out on artwork by doing industrial buildings (Which look much better and more drab now, as they should). I fully intend to get round to doing some better city facades, but lack of artwork/free photographs means I'm a bit stuck until someone can join in and help out. I've asked a few times, but we really need royalty free photographs of buildings we can use to make objects and facades.

 

Also, those buildings you see in Barcelona are the European buildings from XP9 I believe. It uses X-Plane's library system to change the buildings, and I'm not sure we are allowed to use them directly inside World2XPlane scenery, and I don't think they are shared as library buildings, so I can't use them directly.

 

Regarding the construction_date tag. Yes, we could easily switch facade sets, or objects based on this, again it all comes down to the artwork/facades. World2XPlane already supports this tag (in fact it supports any tag in OSM). In v0.4.1, I added tagging support to 3D objects, so you can, for example, group buildings as old, or new, red roof or black roof, and change rules based on tag combinations.

 

Again, if anyone can contribute photographs of buildings or can help create models of facades, then please get in touch.

[tonywob]

Please take a flight from LSGL but in a GA like a Cub or a Cessna .

I am right now jumping around airports in Switzerland.

Thun - is stunning.

http://en.wikipedia...._in_Switzerland Going by this list

 

Switzerland is a very nice place to fly and its data is improving quite fast. I also like using AeroflyFS which is based in Switzerland. It's not so much detailed with bulidings, but it more than makes up for that with the high quality photo scenery and physics.

Edited May 18, 2014 by tonywob

[Ironmaiden]

Switzerland is a very nice place to fly and its data is improving quite fast. I also like using AeroflyFS which is based in Switzerland. It's not so much detailed with bulidings, but it more than makes up for that with the high quality photo scenery and physics.

 

 

Oh man its great to fly there.

 

LSGL contains W2xp data very well , see on the right side of the runway just downhill awesome., the buildings are perfect there.

 

AeroflyFS , yes the videos look fantastic. Don't know about the physics and stuff as I don't have it.

 

BTW check your PM i have a small test recording using Camstudio and used Freemake to convert it to .mp4.

[Caruso]

lso, those buildings you see in Barcelona are the European buildings from XP9 I believe. It uses X-Plane's library system to change the buildings, and I'm not sure we are allowed to use them directly inside World2XPlane scenery, and I don't think they are shared as library buildings, so I can't use them directly.

 

My guess would be that we are allowed to use them - at least as long it is a freeware sceenery we generate. Lego brick airports are noting else: sceneries that are made using x-plane's objects, facades and textures and that are shared with the comunity.