tonywob

Skymaxx Pro still is one of the best addons I have for X-Plane, it makes such a difference compared to default clouds and it even gives better FPS. I've just picked up v4 and look forward to trying it this evening. So thanks to both John and Sundog for making this possible. Now.... I hope you guys find a way of getting Triton water into X-Plane, and I'm still waiting patiently for MaxxSeasons ;-)

Overreaction much, some people are just nuts. He's not doing xEnviro any favours either

Hmm, looks like it's not the only software I have that's broken under Sierra. Need to learn to wait next time. Guess it's back to default clouds for now

I upgraded to Mac OS Sierra over the weekend and now Skymaxx Pro will no longer show any clouds. I downloaded the 3.3 update, installed it, but when running I still get no clouds although the plugin is showing up. I tried installing an older version again and still no joy. The logs say my license is no longer valid. How can I get around this, all I did was install the OS update and I guess I've hit an activation limit. If so, please can you advice on what I can do Log says SkyMaxx Pro: Location set to lat -44.672495 lon 167.923270 alt 7.292562 SkyMaxx Pro license check failed. Clouds will be disabled. Thanks

http://world2xplane.com/2015/07/20/autogen/ I'll keep this page updated as I do new regions

For anyone interested, I've also uploaded Slovakia. I'll try and get Poland done later this week before finishing this region and moving onto the next (Probably Germany).

Thanks Souf for the feedback. I'm glad you like it.

Yes exactly, smart-exclusions are a killer and will increase processing time. The sim has to merge different sceneries together with complicated exclusions and so increases the loading times. I was hoping 10.40 would help, but it only seems to speed things up with simpler scenery. I'm trying to replace the smart-exclusions with autogen which does speed things up, but there is such a huge amount of data that it simply takes X-Plane a long time to process. Remember, it is loading a full 1x1 degree tile in one go (with thousands of buildings, object, forests) and then processing them. In Germany, there is lots of data, so it's just slow unfortunately I've tried various things to try and get round this, but at the moment everything I do doesn't seem to make much difference. Maybe one day I can work with Ben and see if he can help out, but it's very difficult to get hold of him.

Don't know to be honest, if they've used the same config then you won't notice much difference. The poor loading times are one of the reasons I want to do autogen. It does/should load a little faster in 10.40

Agreed with the number of libraries and no, I've purposely not included any third-party libraries because of previous issues. Sorry for the late response, I've been busy with real-life :-). Regarding xlabs, yep I was aware of their work, but to be honest, I'm not sure what they are intending on doing it with it. (XHT was originally supposed to be OSM2XP), Either way, I think it's a commercial project and not something they are intending on realising for free (or releasing the tools they use to make the scenery), but I could be wrong. Either way, the W2XP autogen is a very similar approach but on a larger scale. I did contact both XHT-Labs and Truscenery some time ago, and neither responded, which I can presume means they aren't interested in working together Regarding the new European project, I'm really surprised by this. Again, this is another case of developers not wanting to work together. I don't think we need yet another European library, and their efforts would be best directed working on the European Library which LyAvain did for Simheaven. I've simply given up trying to get other developers to work together, and I believe if all of these projects came together and coordinated, then we would have some amazing scenery, but this is unlikely ever to happen. Also, I really wish somebody would concentrate on the US or other areas, as Europe is already quite good in X-Plane. I'd really appreciate if you could do this just for Switzerland. I live quite close to Germany and have a good idea of how some areas should look. Additionally, even if you don't find any suitable models, if you could find typical pictures of buildings (e.g. In Google Street View), then I can use these to give the Swiss autogen a nice regional look. I'm currently doing Norway, which looks real nice when used with HD Mesh and the Kartverket data.

That's great :-). Can you PM me your email address and I'll get in touch and tell you how it works.

Yes, I did a similar thing for the UK, however the version for working with non-OSM data isn't publically released because it's difficult to use and requires scripting. However, if you tell me where I can get this data from and if it's compatible and not in several hundred different downloads then I will convert the lot into a scenery and upload it

Number 3 has smart exclusions as it has industrial buildings along a road. Anyway, It depends on how the exclusions are created (They have to be rectangular), it looks like it's worked fine to me apart from the industrial buildings. It's a config option which Simheaven used which defines the maximum area that can be blank before an exclusion is made.

You just have to remove all the <rule type="object"> rules for buildings. Search for residential.csv, industrial.csv, commercial.csv and delete them. It will then use facades

No idea sorry, there is still a lot to do for other countries such as Norway, Italy, Greece, Croatia, etc... Not forgetting the immense task of other countries outside of Europe.

Sorry for the dark shots, I have a low gamma setting on my laptop, but you can get the idea. Here is a village which is completely autogen, and although it doesn't line up to the buildings perfectly, it still looks better than having nothing here at all and to my eyes at least, it looks quite natural. Well if you have the time and patience, you can do that with facades. Facades can do all sorts, I've used them to do fences, docks, hedges, etc.. The v10 format allows strings of meshes to be created which can be used to make fancy fences, etc. However, over large areas performance is terrible. It is possible to do slanted roofs, but the problem is that the facade will then only work with very specific sizes, so we are back to square one in regards to needing thousands of objects "or walls". If you remember from the OSM2XP days, some roofs didn't close completely at the top, and this is because there doesn't seem to be a nice easy way to create a slant which varies based on building size (You simply define an angle and hope it meets at the top, which it won't if the object is too big, or small). I could script one huge facade with many different wall sizes for the roofs, but I'd imagine it would kill performance very quickly. Well, just to make things clear, I'm not replacing World2XPlane with autogen. You can simply keep using the OSM building-footprint approach. The autogen is being designed for people who don't use photoscenery (and since Simheaven removed the photoscenery, this has become very common), and for areas with bad data. I just happen to prefer how the autogen looks as opposed to the OSM approach. Remember, W2XP is configurable, so you can pretty much configure to work as you like.

Hi Daikan, nice to see you still around on the forum. In this regards, nothing will change. You can still generate the scenery as before (i.e. building-footprints), it's just that it's becoming virtually impossible to create enough objects (without killing performance and my sanity) to render something like the below: This is a town near to where I live, and I've visited here a few times in real life. Comparing this to the OSM approach, this looks much more believable at both street level, and hovering over at 200ft in a helicopter.. but as already stated, the buildings don't exactly match the ground textures (Here it is unnoticeable because you can't actually see the ground textures). Unfortunately the more plausible the scenery the less accurate it is, and vice versa :-). If anyone can think up a way to get the buildings to match up exactly and not require thousands of models then please let me know :-). Simheaven released a facade only scenery using W2XP, so this is already possible. It improves performance somewhat and the buildings are more accurate, but the problem is they look like lego bricks and not very realistic and it puts lots of people off immediately. Facades work really well for industrial buildings, but fail when trying to render anything which has a slanted roof, etc.. Plus, to get accurate looking facades, you'd still need hundreds of different wall definitions and configurations to make it somewhat believable. Well that's actually what it's already doing to some extent. Industrial zones and tall buildings are still shown as before, but groups of buildings are grouped together and turned into autogen. The biggest problem I found is how does W2XP know that there are simply no buildings in a particular area or if there are buildings in real life but there is a lack of data. Either way, it can still be configured to render autogen similar to smart exclusions (i.e. Only in places where there is no data).

The default ground textures can be remapped to other textures per region by using the library system in X-Plane, in theory anyone with some photoshop ability could redo some of the textures for Germany. Others have already done this such as XHT Labs and MaxxXP, but nobody has attempted to do it on a large scale. With the default mesh, it does match up the ground to the objects on top somewhat (e.g. Forests, etc). Residential areas do have their own textures, but it's that grey gravel type texture. It's also possible to decompile a DSF mesh, change the textures it uses at the mesh level (or overlay new ones), etc, this is what G2XPL does (although that's a simplification). What I think is needed are annotated textures (AKA Orbx), i.e. Textures which have objects placed on them to fit the textures such as trees, barns, etc.. But this isn't supported by X-Plane yet, although it's possible to do if you rebuild a DSF mesh yourself and have control over the ST coordinates of each triangle placed and have a large collection of artwork to give some variety. It could also be done with .pol files, but these are really slow when used over large areas.

Development Update I've received one or two emails recently asking me what's going on with W2XP, and when is the next version out :-), so here's an update of what I'm currently working on and I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts about this. One of the problems with W2XP's approach to scenery is the lack of regional artwork and the sheer huge number of objects required to give a region a unique look (Cities being virtually impossible). The solution to this problem I believe is to simply stop trying to find any old random building to fit in a building footprint, and instead use whatever data is available to create autogen (Using roads, existing buildings, landclass, etc). This gives the following advantages over the current approach: - Less artwork required to give a region a unique look. - Less requirement on detailed data. It will work with patchy data, as well as detailed data. Using whatever information it can and filling in the gaps. - Future support for remapping ground textures for those who don't use photoscenery - No need to recompile an entire scenery when new artwork is added. - Faster loading times and better FPS in cities. - Buildings that follow angled roads and face the road correctly. - Much more realistic looking villages (No more lego brick facades ruining the appearance) - Farms, industrial areas etc will work as before if the building data is available, as these generally look good using facades. - No need for smart exclusions. Of course, it has some disadvantages - Buildings won't fit exactly to the footprint on the ground, it will be very much an approximation. If you know an area very well and are looking for your house, you maybe disappointed. - If the data is bad, e.g. Someone has tagged a primary road stretching for many KMs as a residential road (this happens a lot), then there will be houses along this road where there aren't in real life. This can be solved somewhat by using third-party data (e.g. For Europe we have the corine landclass data, Norway has the kartverket data, etc..). Here are some screenshots taken around Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic showing how the buildings change. Central European Region German Villages European Cities Spanish Villages All models used have varied LOD information. Up close (if you fancy a drive around or low-and-slow in a heli), the buildings will be detailed. Further away, all the detail is not rendered to make it perform better. Because of the way the scenery works, it's possible to swap out individual blocks/buildings to regional varieties. e.g. Once some buildings for Norway are available, these can replace some of the generic European buildings. Additionally, in order to give cities some uniqueness, buildings over a certain size (or height) will still be rendered the old way. There are some other tricks it does, e.g. - It looks for names or areas/roads in cities/towns such as "Old Town/Altstadt/Stary Rynek" and will switch the building styles accordingly. Historic city centre areas will look historic. - It will use population tags if available to determine how big a city/town is and will adjust the size of the centre accordingly.

Thanks for the screenshots and comparisons. I think it looks good and recognisable from Google Earth, but it could really do with some regional buildings (The European style set looks out of place here, but then again so does X-Plane's default autogen). Now, all we need is some ground textures ;-)

No not at all, the scenery should look the same for everyone. I'll give the area a try later myself and see what's going on. Smart exclusions aren't perfect (As exclusion zones are rectangular), but I've never seen it this messed up. Yes unfortunately, none of the default airports have any exclusions at all.

I can explain the trees over the airports, and that's because in most cases World2XPlane doesn't know an airport is there and so just creates trees. The authors of the airports should be creating exclusion zones as well, and most don't for some reason (which will break compatiblity with other addons and future updates). You can create an exclusion zone yourself in WED and it's pretty straight forward. For GB Pro 0.2 which I'm working on, I'm going to use an external data source for airports, so hopefully this won't happen. I'm not sure though what's happening in the other screenshots, have you tried the version without smart-exclusions? It seems like the exclusions just aren't working or something else is going on. It looks like you've installed them correctly.

Thanks Chistiano for taking the effort to find the buildings :-), I'll see if I can work out what's causing the flickering.

Any chance you could find one of the flickering buildings for me inside OpenStreetMap, and then I can check. I'm aware of the problem and it seems to be due to something in the data, but I'd thought it had mostly been fixed.

Some have night textures and others don't (The majority do). Thanks for the info. You are, however, the second person now to report the problem shown in your log with W2XP using all cores irrespective of the setting and then crashing. So the mystery continues, I've been unable to reproduce it so far unfortunately.