tonywob

Wouldn't they charge/ban you if you used up too much bandwidth? After generating Austria/Germany/Switzerland, the uncompressed scenery was 1.2GB, and compressed using bzip, was 500MB. Most of the space is actually taken up by the custom textures for the 3D model parts. I had a fly around the scenery, and there are a lot of them in Germany. It makes for some interesting scenery, but it really needs optimising as loading times suffered. Before distributing the scenery on the website, I think I first need to do the following: Compress all generated textures to DDS. (It already does this, but leaves the PNG files for people who aren't using compression).The models/textures are sorted into tiles and we could save lots of space by sharing textures across tiles (It did this in Alpha 5, but I was using a global list of objects/textures and it overflowed ).I left lots of debugging files in the scenery folder which can be removed.Don't generate roofs for buildings that have another building on top of them (This will be difficult, as most building parts aren't in relations yet).I've also tried combining textures together into sheets, but because I use UV wrapping, it's not possible to do so.

It's finished generating finally, but it's 512MB zipped, so there is nowhere I can host this, sorry. For the next version I have a few ideas on how to shrink the file size, but these sceneries are going to be large, due to the sheer amount of objects and data used.

It's currently 75% the way through generating, and the size is almost 900MB, so I'll see how small it will zip up, but I doubt I'll be able to host it anywhere (It would take hours to upload alone). I'm pretty sure, and I hope, that when the application is a bit more stable, people will begin creating scenery packages with it, e.g. Like the ones on Simheaven. As I said very early on, I believe most people won't use the application directly, but will instead use scenery generated by the program. BTW, for anyone interested, I'm working on some tutorials for creating 3D models http://world2xplane.com/tutorials/. I'm hoping people can follow along with the tutorials and begin contributing to the library.

I'll do my best. The generated file is going to be quite large, so I may not be allowed to place it on the blog, and I think dropbox won't allow it. Also, I just wanted to mention as I've forgotton on the blog. You will need the R2 library and FF library for some of the buildings.

I've pushed up v0.0.6, which "should" fix this problem. I'm currently generating Germany/Switzerland/Austria combined, and so far so good. Tony

I'd made a design mistake when originally creating the program. When storing an index to objects used in the scenery, I used a short integer which has a maximum value of 32768. Since adding custom objects, this number is now too small, and if more than this number are generated (could also be lights) for the entire scenery, the number overflows. I'll post an update in the next few hours which a) Treats generated objects differently, they'll only ever be used in one tile. Increase the number to an full integer, so there can 2 million possible values. If you had this many objects in one tile, X-Plane probably wouldn't run anyway The generator actually wouldn't have failed, but would have create some very very weird scenery Tony

Thank you Souf. You've just found a very serious bug, stop the generation, it won't work. I'll remove the alpha from the website Tony

I've uploaded Alpha 5, as alpha 4 had a bug which prevented Spain from being generated. Please see the changelog on the downloads page for details

Hi Manni, World2XPlane doesn't generate roads, railways or powerlines (yet), so it's something I can't control. The ones you are seeing are from other scenery you have installed. Regards Tony

@Souf Thank you for trying out the app. I'm not sure what you mean in regards to processing/intergrating small houses. It already does this (ignoring really small buildings under 3m2), so you shouldn't need to do anything except just run it on an area. You'll also need to check the area you are generating actually contains buildings, many areas in OSM are still empy unfortunately. Let me know how it goes

Thank you for having a look at the site. It will indeed be very useful for third-party freeware airport developers as they can quickly populate surrounding villages or towns with buildings and trees (including their own models). I'm guessing it's also much easier to add buildings into OSM than it is to use WED, and then everyone benefits from it, not just flight simmers. It does have a very basic GUI, which just lets you tick a few boxes and click Start. It serves the purpose, but what would be nice would be a proper GUI for editing rules, obtaining areas, etc.. Nobody has offered to help yet, and it's lower on the list of priorities. The alpha released yesterday has a few problems already reported which I'm working on - Which is why it's still alpha I'm going to stop adding more features now and stablise/refine what we currently have.

Thanks, that would explain it. I've had lots of problems with performance on that site recently, and was become frustrating at times to use. I hope they resolve the problem, as there is a large friendly FSX community over there (just waiting to become X-Plane converts)

I have a small article posted over at aerosoft news http://asn-xp.aerosoft.com/?p=8512. I've also contacted xsimreviews.com, if anyone has any other suggestions for sites them please let me know. BTW, Does anyone know what's happened to avsim.com? It's been dead for a few days now. I had a few people I was in touch with there, for whom unfortunately I don't have their email addresses.

Thank you John I've posted a link back to your site also. Skymaxx Pro has been used in almost all of my screenshots, and has become one of my essential addons for X-Plane, as well as a great tool for posting eye-candy screenshots.

Exposure is exactly what this project needs to grow, especially the 3D objects library. The more users we have contributing and using the scenery, the better. World2Xplane is only one part of the equation, we also need lots more regional 3D buildings, OSM mapping and artwork for this to work. If you can spread the word and get people involved, then please do so. In the long run, this is for the benefit of everyone who uses X-Plane and wants to see something more than US scenery across the world. A community crowd-sourcing effort is the only way we are going to fix the scenery in X-Plane. I'm adding articles to the blog on how to begin mapping in OSM. I will also add some basic tutorials on creating 3D models for the library over the next few days when I get some time. Very much appreciated. I've noticed a lot of hits to the site from this site already, so you have done a great job I would like to post this over at x-plane.org, but firstly my IP address is blocked, and secondly, any mention of x-pilot.com will probably result in a ban. Such division the community is precisely what we don't need

Alpha 4 is now available for download from the website http://www.world2xplane.com

Thank you so much, I've just added you in as well :-)

Basic blog is up (http://world2xplane.com). The software will also be hosted here. The DNS might not be live for everyone yet, and go easy on me, I'm not very good at web-development

Thank you PilotBalu. France is also one of my favourites, but without regional buildings it doesn't look too much like France (yet). I did try Calais (as I have the photoscenery installed and it's one of my favourite regions in FSX using FranceVFR), and it's very well populated, but the data is imported data and lacks lots of information which make the German stuff shine, e.g. Height tags, colours and even building types. Also, the landclass information I presume was imported from corine, as it's very low resolution, e.g. Residential areas swallow up several towns and aren't actually divided up into industrial and commercial zones. This means most buildings come out as residential, and there isn't a nice separation like there is elsewhere. I also remember Paris, even with OSM2XP was an absolute killer on framerates, but I'll happily give it a try, if my poor computer can handle it Thank you Colin. I'll release alpha 4 to everyone over the weekend.

A quick correction, that unknown building in the first shot is actually this one (I just discovered roofs can have negative heights, so I implemented it and regenerated). Now it looks correct

Here are a few pictures taken in Nürnberg, Germany using alpha 4 (not yet released). The Germans really know how to map, and most of Germany looks this good (and it's improving everyday). I'm not sure what this building is, but it's using OSM 3D. There is still some work to do on texturing, and it's hit and miss, some look really good, some need some work. I've also added some advanced options to configure heights of buildings. I enabled height restrictions, but strangely enough there are no longer any highrise blocks around. I actually like this, but I'm not sure if it's realistic or not. The blocks only show up if there is height information (or maybe there is a bug I need to fix).

Thank you very much for making the video, I look forward to seeing more videos.

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.

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: Tag the type of building, e.g. house, retail, industrial. Tag the height of the building if known, using either "height=??m" or "building:levels=?". 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. 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: 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. 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 Add VFR type objects such as wind farms, chimneys, even advertising billboards if you want to.

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.