tonywob

Not sure what you mean? If you mean HDR lighting then no, that would absolutely kill performance completely.

OK thanks. It's almost certainly using more than 3, so looks like a bug. Thanks for reporting

Thanks, what doesn't make sense from the log file is why it is trying to process lots of tiles all at the same time. Did you change anything in your config file, or how many cores did you set inside the advanced tab in GUI? It should be set to 1 by default. It looks like it just tried to generate all of them in one go and went splat!

I've uploaded a UK scenery based on third-party data here http://world2xplane....o-scenery-v0-1/ to try out and play with. Instructions on how to install and the required libraries are included on the page. Please make sure you read the entire post carefully before downloading and trying it out. Have fun

I can't use photosceneries when there is no 3D on top of it. They look ok when you get high enough, but I like to fly low-and-slow and objects/autogen is a must.

Great. When you're back let me know. I still have some users testing out 0.7.1 and reporting bugs, so to save you time let me know when you're back and I'll send you the latest patched version for doing the scenery. The application is no longer available for download on the website. Also, if anyone here can help out and test some countries and report bugs then please let me know.

These are max all max settings (Except shadows which kills everything). I'll upload the UK file as soon as it's finished generating, but it might take a while on my rubbish internet

Here's a couple of pictures for the UK scenery (I've decided also to include Scotland in there, but no Northern Ireland as the data I have doesn't include it for some reason). If anyone has UK wide photo scenery e.g. (From G2XPL or Flight1'S VFR UK), they are in for a real treat. Every single building is shown, as well as forest/woodland (With the correct type of tree), as well as the usual stuff from OSM such as obstacles, wind farms. The data is merged with the information already in OSM, so you can still map your village in higher detail (e.g. Splitting up terraced buildings). But this solution gives us coverage of the entire country. I'm hunting down more data sources, and if anyone would like to see their country done and has some good data sources then let me know. (I'll do New Zealand next, as it has some good data for some of the major cities). Performance wise (In my screenshots you can see the FPS which dropped when I took a screenshot). But on my laptop (Macbook Pro 15" 2014 Model), it averages between 20-30fps on max settings (I have a limit on 30). Flying over large cities will obviously give a FPS hit, so some people might need to turn down the settings to keep things smooth.

Peter I don't know, I'm not even sure if Simheaven are doing scenery anymore or creating new ones. I will host the the UK scenery file generated from Ordnance Survey/NFD on my own website, but it's big, around 1GB, so will take ages to upload. Tony

LOL, you like to keep it blunt don't you Tom :-)

I'm now including the National Forestry database and also a species/habitat database which is much more detailed, but also indicates the type of woodland, i.e. Broadleaved, coniferous, shrub, mixed. I now have 5 different data sources running together to produce the scenery, and it's incredibly detailed and looks fantastic with photoscenery. However, OSM is still useful here as I've noticed it misses out some smaller areas.

Thanks John. What I meant is if there is a way I could place a sound file inside the airport and SoundMaxx would automatically play it when the user is in the vicinity of the airport. i.e. It would know which airport the user has loaded, scan the airport folder for some sort of file automatically (i.e. A .wav file) and then play it.

John, is/will there be a way to add custom sounds for different airfields (Maybe using a config inside the airport package). I'd love to be able to add ambient sound to some of my farmstrips (Similar to what ORBX do), but haven't found a platform independent way of doing so?

I generated the North of England using this data combined with OSM and the results were surprisingly good. Every single building in the entire country is there (from farms to entire towns), and it works really well, apart from the fact that things like terraced buildings are treated as one building, so you end up with an ugly facade instead of terraced houses. However, when you get above about 1500ft, the results are wonderful and it brings the scenery in the UK on par with that of the Netherlands and Germany. Of course, it's do detailed (and has facades) that the FPS take a beating. If I can find a way to make it use the autogen models I've done (e.g. Filling up a single long building with smaller terraced houses), then I think it will work out well.

Well, I've just got a first look at the data (released today) and to be frank, it's not very good. I was expecting more detail, more woodland etc detail than what is currently available, but it's disappointing to say the least. Some of it is usable and a little better than previous, but I'll have to hunt down other sources. As before, they've done the bare minimum to qualify it as having open data, and it's a disappointment for anyone who has been waiting on this. Autogen seems to be the way to go here.

Hi Jamie No I'm afraid not, and the reason is that I don't have enough artwork for it. I only have a few buildings for the UK, and whilst it looks nice, I also need industrial and commercial doing (and that's just one small country). However, I also intend to post a UK based scenery using third-party data which will be detailed for the entire country (Not using OSM). However, due to the complexity of the process required to work with other data sources, I am only going to publish the sceneries and not the tools used to create it. Again, if somebody wants to help out with the artwork I'd really appreciate the help. Once the autogen artwork becomes available, then people will be able to generate regions theirselves instead of using smart-exclusions. Tony

It already does, each 3D model has a LOD which determines which parts are drawn from distances. So, a house model will say that it should no longer be drawn when it is 13km from the viewer, etc.. I'm not sure if height is a factor though, but either way it's not something W2XP can control. This increased visibility thing in 10.40 is generally not going to be good for this type of scenery, and once I get a beta I'll see how it goes (at heights where this is useful, W2XP is pretty useless anyway). Yes, you can map in as much detail as you like. The issue is that most roads are done with GPX tracks recorded at set intervals, so the road is not smooth. People who map from satellite imagery also generally don't map in high detail. Another factor is that X-Plane's roads are too wide and only work well in the US style grid system, so small curved streets etc don't map too well.

Thank you :-). Autogen will never be as clever as real data placement, so it's always worth mapping areas you know well. If you find the autogen looks incorrect, then this solution at least allows it to be easily fixed by just adding the correct buildings into OSM. Additionally, besides buildings which is the bulk of the work on OSM, forests, rivers, roads etc all still need doing. So please do continue mapping ;-)

It's not too bad if the data is already projected correctly. Example, for New Zealand, the building shape files where already WGS84, so I only had to point World2XPlane at that as an additional data source and say they are buildings and it all worked fine.

Yes as always . But there is still a lot to do before the autogen stuff looks decent. It needs more variety of building shapes and sizes (and they have to fit together naturally). It's not simply a case of creating a model in Blender/Sketchup and plonking it into world-models. The buildings have to be grouped, aligned, etc. I also want it to look good without photoscenery, which is why the buildings have simple overlays for the garden and path. It also needs to be a bit cleverer on how it places buildings, e.g. Using a hotspot map of towns/cities and villages to work out which groups/styles of buildings to use, etc.. Not to mention the enormous task of getting autogen for other countries (and since nobody wants to help out, I don't think I'll ever get it done to a high quality). Also, the other major features I've added regarding additional data sources will probably not be testable by most normal users (nor would I want to make them generally available due to the support and documentation I'd have to write and provide). If you understand the basics of working with GIS data (and using something like qGIS), and you also understand how to do things like reproject map data (if it isn't in WGS84) and find attributes yourself then you can make use of other data. I suspect in this case, most of the advanced mixed scenery will be ready made for people to simply download and use by myself or others who are clued up on this sort of thing, as an example for the UK I had to a) Download the OSM data as before Download about 30 groups of shapefile data for OS VectorData. c) Open up qGIS and find how what data I have in the shapefiles and how they are attributed, e.g. How do I know what is a forest, etc.. d) Write configuration files for World2XPlane so it knows how to read it. e) Write a configuration for World2XPlane to reproject the shapefile from OSGB36 to WGS84 (Which is what X-Plane uses) As you can see, it isn't the easiest of things. However the rest of World2XPlane will continue to work as before and has bug fixes, etc..

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.

It's possible to add autogen based on roads and residential zones to fill out blank areas. The issue is that it's so slow to generate. I was working on it for 0.6.0 but left it unfinished. Hopefully, I'll get back to looking into it.

No, W2XP uses OSM, so if you want to the town to appear in OSM, you'd need to begin adding it into OSM (Which is very easy).

Thanks Jim, your support is very much appreciated

Thanks Caruso, I will do. There's no promise when they'll get done though. I was hoping for some more time over Christmas, so let's see . At the moment I'm trying to fix the powerlines which are misbehaving, and then I'll probably push out another minor release.