tonywob

Thanks Peter, that's a nice video and I really like the scenery in the Netherlands as it's very complete and well populated :smile: BTW, Ill regenerate/reupload the UK next week when I get time (along with with Runcorn Bridge) and upload it for you somewhere (maybe on Simheaven). So, all your recent changes to OSM should also appear here. I added some more farmland and farm bulidings around the Welsh border, but when I get back I will try and model some more buildings and landmarks to the area.

Hi Peter, it just requires you to regenerate the UK when your changes have been uploaded (normally you need to wait a day before they will appear on geofabrik.de). i.e. You download the UK from there and regenerate.

I applaud you, it's really great that people are doing this. Indeed, it's a huge task trying to do this on your own. The entire area (Liverpool, Runcorn, Wirral, Chester) including North Wales has seen a large increase in editing recently (and it seems optimised for World2XPlane), and I'm hoping more and more people join in. Here's a few things I do, and recommend for best results in World2XPlane 1) Using OS OpenData layer, trace the water areas in the middle of fields and tag them as (natural=water, water=pond). World2XPlane will place a few little small trees or shrubs around these, and it looks very realistic and matches the photoscenery perfectly 2) Trace the blue-lines on OS OpenData as (waterway=drain, unless it's a stream). Often field boundaries are separated by drains, and these are accurately mapped in OS OpenData. World2XPlane will use these drains for placing small shrubs, hedgerows. 3) Tag each field using Bing as (landuse=farmland, or as a meadow). Don't group lots of fields together and do one big farm area (try to map each field), as although it's not incorrect to do so, you won't see any benefit from it. World2XPlane will use the boundaries of the farmland and meadow for adding hedgerows. I've broken a few of these large farm areas up into smaller areas for better results, so if there is already farm areas mapped, try and split the farm areas up per field. 4) Mapping towns is a real pain with thousands of buildings, but if you decide to do this, break the houses up, e.g. Don't map an entire terrace of 20 houses as one big building, use the "terracer" tool in JOSM to break the building up into 20 houses. You will get nice rows of terraced houses this way, and not a big industrial building. 5) Using either OS OpenData or Bing maps, trace buildings standing on their own, e.g. On a farm, or industrial areas. This, when used in combination with 1,2,3 above makes the countryside look fantastic, and isn't that much effort. 6) Trace the outlines of villages and small towns with landuse=residential if they haven't been already. We use this obviously for residential roads and residential trees, however we will be making more use of this tag in the future for other things, and I've noticed many villages are completely missing.

It all depends on whether the scenery contains minor power lines or ski lifts (Which isn't going to be a problem in the North West :smile:). If one of the tiles references one of these road definitions, then no roads will be displayed at all.

Thanks Peter I'm over in the UK at the moment, and will take the opportunity next week to grab some shots of some buildings (I've already done a picture of the Travelodge I was in). I noticed somebody has mapped all of the industrial estates around Runcorn as one huge building, so I had to correct them in OSM, so hopefully this area looks better now, and the approach into EGGP much more realistic. Yes, the B&Q is visible, as is Tesco and Halfords and also I think even the petrol station is there :-). It's great flying around and actually picking out real buildings knowing what they are :smile: The UK also loads very quick for me, 2mins maximum normally. Germany takes much longer, but there is much more data there. Also, everyone please remember that 0.5.0 scenery only works on X-Plane 10.30+, if you want to use 10.25, you'll either need to download older scenery, or generate scenery using the config file from 0.4.0.

Extract it to your custom scenery folder, as with the R2 and other libraries, shown here http://world2xplane.com/scenery/

You need to install the world-models library, https://github.com/tonywob/world-models/archive/master.zip

You're right, that was due to negative heights, and it was fixed, but looks like something else is now causing it to crash. The problem seems to be that certain facades in the library don't like going over about 300/400m in height, although it's completely random. I submitted a bug report to Ben about this, as it's really really difficult to find out what the problem is, as X-Plane just crashes without warning. I've had to put a hard-restriction on the height of buildings in 0.5.0 (out soon), as people had incorrectly tagged some buildings in Switzerland using their elevation instead of height, which also caused X-Plane to crash. I'll give New York a try again this evening and see if I can find the culprit and forward it to Ben (It's horrible to try and find the problem, and often involves removing bits of the scenery until it loads). We really need better error messages in X-Plane to troubleshoot issues like this.

That makes two of us , badly need a better comp.

v0.5.0 Update It's been a slow month, but work continues slowly on v0.5.0. Unfortunately, I've been quite busy with real-life work, but making slow but steady progress: 1) New farm buildings, as shown below. Both myself and Blacky have added some farm buildings, so rural areas look "more rural". I've also tweaked a few things, so that, for example, a tractor is placed in parking areas on farmyards to add a bit of life to the scenery. 2) I've created some more regional artwork for the UK, so less red-roofed Eastern European buildings, and more darker-roofed UK styled buildings. 3) Blacky has created a new facade set shown below for industrial areas. These looks more industrial than the bright blue buildings from the OSM2XP set, and also have nicer looking roofs. A German user Tom has also submitted some great and efficient models for industrial tanks and water towers plotted around the scenery 4) I've done some working on the code used to generate hedgerows around fields. I'm working on giving it more variety and a more natural/random look. There is still some work to do here, but scenery looks better now and performs a little better to.

Hi Peter Yes, you can select the config-hd.xml file instead of the config.xml when generating your scenery. If you click on the Advanced tab, and in the config box, browse for Resources/config-hd.xml in your World2XPlane directory, then this will include the street lights. Also, I think Simheaven hosts 2 versions of every scenery file, the HD one includes the street lights, the SD one doesn't Tony

It's almost possible , but just changing the LOD inside the the config.xml is not enough anymore, as World2XPlane uses "smart-lods", i.e. various LODs for different heights and areas for the facades, e.g. It will give a very small building a small LOD, and a taller one a larger LOD. This isn't configurable, so I need to get round to adding the rules for which LOD to use into the config file so it can be changed. I agree though, I may have been a little too stingy with the LODs for tall buildings

We're already working on this, updating and creating farm and proper industrial buildings. So things will improve over time

Hi All. I just want to take the opportunity to thank all contributors and testers for World2XPlane, without all your help and support, the project would not have been possible. I've added a list of people here: http://world2xplane.com/aboutcontributions, and we are always looking for new users and contributions Thanks Tony

Thanks, yes, I've seen that. If you can, could you search out the library paths for all the European buildings and Ikea, and send them to me, it would really help me and save time. I found I couldn't reference the objects directly, but had to use a virtual path to the US scenery objects, which change regionally.

I'll have a look at adding them. If they're selectable in WED, then I'm guessing it's fine to use. They also have an Ikea, which I remember from the X-Plane 9 days (It was everywhere). It might be making a resurrection shortly, if i can find the reference to it

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Thanks Soufiane, I wonder if this is caused by the exclusions, I suspect this is the case. I don't generally use smart exclusions, and I don't have this problem, but I've noticed if I use scenery with smart exclusions enabled, e.g. From simheaven, it can double/triple the loading times. Did you generate Germany yourself, i.e. do you use smart exclusions?