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It's been a while since I've posted any updates or news on World2XPlane, but I'm at work little by little. The latest feature I'm working on is autogen (which may seem like a step back for some). I've found the problem with OSM data, especially in places like the UK or Spain is the very patchy coverage. With this new feature, the entire country will be populated with realistic regional autogen. The trick is to make it as convincing as possible. Here are few screenies of the latest progress: Since I'm using autogen, I have exact control over how the buildings are rotated, placed, and more importantly I can include objects along with them. So trees will only appear in people's gardens, cars in driveways, and the buildings will perfectly align up with the roads. At the moment, I have only created a few autogen files for the UK (In fact there are only 4 types of buildings used in these shots), but even with just a mixture of 4 buildings the result is quite nice. There is also a peak of the new facades and placement engine I've created for highrise blocks in the screenshot below: The entire country is populated like shown in these screenshots, and when used in combination with third-party data such OS VectorData to populate forests which are missing in OSM, we end up with 100% coverage. I intend to make it blend with the existing real OSM objects, but this is still on my todo list. The autogen objects actually look superior to the OSM placed objects because they are all lined up and consistent, but hopefully I can work out a way of making the autogen engine actually use real data and/or blend in and not add autogen when there is real data (Think of smart exclusions without exclusions). Performance wise, I'm hoping it will be an improvement (but only if you take a well-populated OSM area and replace it with autogen). This is because there are fewer varieties of objects and hardware instancing comes into play. In areas that where previously empty, like the below screenshot, of course you will get a FPS hit (just as you would with the default X-Plane autogen). There is still much to do. Especially in the artwork department. I don't have the time to create regional objects for every country. Once I'm done with the UK, I may create some artwork for the US, but this as always is where I need help from others. Other features which are almost completed are: 1) Using multiple OSM files for the same scenery. e.g. You might just download 2 or 3 states, and generate them all together as one scenery. 2) Using different datasources (ESRI ShapeFiles) on its own or in combination with OSM data. I have managed to populate Wellington and Christchurch with every single building using this method. However, at the moment there is no user friendly way to do this. You will need to understand the basics of working with GIS data, projections, etc.. 3) I've also fixed numerous problems with roads, added a best-fit facade algorithm and also improved other reported issues, e.g. Banding of trees across fields or runways caused by a geometry bug.

Looks great, Colin

Any news?