tonywob

Excellent Here you go Sent you a PM This one does roads, and is probably quite buggy Regards Tony

It isn't yet, still lots of stuff to work out and fix. If you have time to test then let me know ;-)

Status Update: It's been a while since I've written anything here, so here is a status update about the project and where we are going in the upcoming v0.3.0: Roads/Powerlines - Currently, I'm working on getting roads/railways and powerlines into the application. Initial results are good, but there are some challenges in regards to bridges and exclusions, etc. Also, we have some new types of powerlines (smaller ones with poles), gondolas/ski-lifts etc (From AlpilotX and Daikan). However, to use these along with X-Plane's roads may mean waiting until 10.30 of X-Plane. But there is a fallback option, and that's to create 2 sceneries. World2XPlane does a few tricks with roads to make them more realistic, here are a few things it currently does: If the road passes into a residential area (tagged in OSM). The road will be given a sidewalk and street lights. This adds extra realism to villages and towns. One-way, and lane numbers are respected from OSM as much as possible. So a 2-lane highway will be a two-lane highway. More realistic trunk/primary roads in Europe. Primary/Trunk roads in Europe often aren't large dual-carriageways (and if they are, they've been tagged as such). Most roads are now single carriage-way roads, which looks far more realistic. Tracks, forest roads .etc are all read but not placed into the scenery. This data is used to cut holes through forests and allows one to use hiking path through forests as a VFR tool :-). Additionally tracks through fields have small shrubs placed around them. Extra street light objects are added to roads in residential areas (or if tagged as lit in OSM), as they are simply too dark in X-Plane. It still needs a little work, as sometimes lights end up inside houses, but it makes such a huge difference to the night-time scenery that the effort will be worth-it.Clipping The data produced is now clipped more cleanly using road/vector data. This means that forests which have roads passing through them will be clipped out so there should no longer be trees on the roads. Additionally, trees/hedgerows running along roads are clipped back, and if an airport is correctly tagged in OSM, trees will be cut out of the airport. Buildings Blacky and Uwe have been working on buildings for our library, and some of these will make it into 0.3.0. Not only does performance go up, they also look much nicer. In small towns and villages, there are now hardly any facades in use, and in larger cities the use of objects has improved performance. Obstacles and noise Some new rules have been added for obstacles and random noise. e.g. There are now hay bales in fields, and it's possible to configure rule randomisation, so different rules run differently. This means that we can also change ratios of red/black roofs based based on the country, e.g. In Poland 80% red roofs, in Germany 40%, etc.. These changes of course come at a cost, and that's generation speed and memory usage. All of these will eventually need to be addressed. Once 0.3.0 is stable, I have a few ideas how to proceed for 0.4.0 - Intergration with G2XPL. I've briefly discussed with Robert (The author), and when time allows, we'll continue the work Benny started in OSM2XP regarding obtaining roof colours from photo scenery. Additionally, we could also detect field types, etc. This is a little tricky because of the quality of photoscenery, and seasons etc. But should produce more accurate scenery - An option to off-load work to the filesystem to reduce the memory needed, so that people with less memory can create sceneries. - Updating X-Plane's autogen to use our buildings regionally as well, so smart exclusions work better. - New textures for roads, more suitable for Europe. - Buffer rules. In English, this means that we can take a road or vector data and turn it into a polygon with a given distance. We can then use this polygon to do some interesting rules, such as lining both sides of a road with objects (trees, parked cars, fences, road signs), surrounding small lakes with trees and shrubs, placing fences around buildings, etc..

Absolutely super work Mr. Blacky :-).

Back in the days before I started working on World2XPlane and was experimenting with OSM2XP, I would spend 15 minutes a day (or sometimes a few times) with a cup of coffee, adding buildings, roads, forests and correcting items. I would grab a small square area near to an airport I used a lot and did lessons from, and began editing. After a few weeks I'd populated 2 large towns, the surrounding countryside, and almost the entire district (http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/53.4023/-3.0519, practically every single building and forest on the Northern part of this peninsular was done by me, and it looks amazing in OSM). I also populated my entire town in Poland in just over a few days and it wasn't much work at all. My effort in Poland seemed to have caused others to begin mapping surrounding areas, like a knock on effect. What was once two very empty areas in X-Plane, is now full of buildings, accurate roads and forests, and is great to fly in. The problem and point is, nobody else was going to do for me, not LR, Simheaven, etc. So we all have to get our hands dirty. I'm still finding time to contribute to OSM, even though I have a day job, I'm developing World2XPlane, learning a foreign language and a girlfriend ;-). So don't be discouraged if your area is empty, begin editing and it may cause a knock-on effect by others who will step-in and also help out. Remember also, that the changes you make not only benefit flight simulation, but benefit everyone. Because I also added house numbers (which isn't needed for X-Plane), some parts of the towns are now routable (door-to-door) in many free GPS applications. It's a win all round

Unfortunately it looks like there are very few buildings in the city http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/188022#map=15/39.9418/-75.1640, which is why the scenery is pretty empty.

AJ, did you check there is actually data to generate?. Remember that the program only converts data from OpenStreetMaps, so if there isn't any data or sparse buildings (As unfortunately is the case in lots of the US), then the geneerated scenery will also be sparse. I'll generate Philadelphia and give it a try also, to see if it's an issue in the program, or just a lack of data Regards Tony

It depends how much scenery there is. If you find it too heavy then turn it down a notch or two. If you find there is little or no scenery, then you may need to regenerate with smart-exclusions (let me know, and I'll explain how). Also, if you haven't already, check this post http://world2xplane.com/2014/03/16/how-will-my-regioncountry-look-using-world2xplane/ Cheers Tony

Above your zzz_hd_global_scenery2 and below KPHL. Regards Tony

AJ, you need to download this http://simheaven.com/experimental/Special/world-models-master.zip, and extract it into your X-Plane/Custom Scenery folder. As any scenery generated using World2XPlane v0.2.0 or later will use it.

Sorry, to answer your question. Yes, place the philadelphia folder into your custom scenery folder. If you are waiting for beta 0.2.0, make sure you read the downloads page and grab the link for the building library as well.

Hi AJ, I'm just uploading beta 0.2.0, so give it about 10 minutes, and then update your version from the website. The issue you are getting is due to the way that website has split up the OSM data. It's done so in a bad way, removing required nodes and clipping the data very badly. I've changed the manual with a new site which is much better http://download.bbbike.org/osm/bbbike/, so give the OSM files here a go, and you'll find they are much better. Let me know how you get on. Tony

Yep didn't notice that, which is why I'll get the program to generate the command from the rules file, as there is a high chance of messing up and filtering out something which is in fact used.

A user over at avsim has just posted some stunning shots of the scenery from World2XPlane. These are best enjoyed full screen http://forum.avsim.net/topic/437054-osm-never-looked-better-lots-of-big-images-you-have-been-warned/

We're hopefully about to get some German buildings and some dark-roofed facades, which will make it look even better

Super, thanks Andras. Will add these onto my blog for people to use.

Thanks for the info Andras. Interestingly it also shows how many people have used building=yes, instead of building=residential,house etc. Over 90% of the tags are just generic

Just a quick tip for anyone converting scenery, have a look at osmfilter Using this filter command decreases the OSM filesize by half. I've just tried it on the UK using this command which strips out all the stuff we don't use. osmfilter england-latest.o5m --drop-tags="highway=turning_circle highway=crossing highway=give_way highway=mini_roundabout highway=junction traffic_sign=* railway=* operator=* ref=* adr_les=* barrier=* bridge=* tunnel=* access=* bicycle=* foot=* horse=* surface=* designation=* highway=primary highway=secondary highway=tertiary highway=motorway highway=service highway=footway highway=road highway=track addr:city= source= source_ref= created_by= addr:housenumber= addr:postcode= addr:post_code= addr:street= phone= amenity=school name= building:street= building:postcode= building:post_code= building:city= building:country= building:county= building:house_number= building:house_name=" --keep="highway=residential building=* amenity=place_of_worship man_made=lighthouse man_made=water_tower man_made=crane man_made=windmill landmark=windmill man_made=tower man_made=mast man_made=chimney landmark=chimney generator:source=wind natural=wood natural=scrub landuse=forest landuse=allotments natural=forest leisure=garden leisure=park landuse=cemetery" --drop="highway=primary highway=secondary highway=tertiary highway=motorway highway=service highway=footway highway=road highway=track amenity=school landuse=commercial landuse=residential amenity=parking landuse=retail landuse=farmland landuse=industrial natural=coast waterway=* natural=water waterway=*" --out-o5m > england.o5m It basically removes all tags from the OSM file which we don't use, and speeds up processing a lot. You then convert it back from o5m to pbf using osmconvert. It shrinks Germany down do 1.2GB, and it processes twice as quick :-) I'll play around with it a bit more and add instructions on the website Edit: I'll get the program to generate this command automatically using the rules file

@mroe Agreed, the program currently generates unique models for these objects along with the colours, so I think perhaps a shared texture for some of the colours would work, e.g. Red Brick, Brown Roof, etc.. I've tried various approaches in the past, and the current one I'm using seems to work best. I'm experimenting at the moment with some colour options to see what works. Regarding the CSV file, that's a good idea, and I can add it into the best-fit rule to prefer buildings which have matching roofs. I also think we should separate the colours out into a configurable file, so people can change them. This way, the colours aren't hard-coded and people can change them to their liking (and also easily add new colours). Just go of the filesize (compared to real size) I guess. e.g. Look at the difference between the file sizes for Spain vs Germany. Generally, you can get a good guess of how detailed a country is by simply opening up the map on openstreetmap.org and seeing how much white there is. The more white, the worse it will look

Agreed, it's not too bad. I think a quick solution is to use preset colours for red,green,yellow and blue as they seem the most common. The rest will probably just need fixing inside OSM I'll add this into the beta

It's very difficult, because not only have people used lots of different conventions for specifying colours, e.g. RGB, or things like "brown chocolate", they've also done it sometimes in their own language ;-)

Yeah, because someone in OSM chose those exact colours for the building. There are also some really funny bright red buildings in Berlin which look like lego bricks. At the moment, I'm not sure what to do about it, except limit the range of colours, or change the colours to more pastel colours. I'm open for ideas

OK, DSFTool is now working (it seems). I've increased the number of pools it allocates, and it's compiled Poland, Birmingham and London successfully

Netherlands looks fantastic, I think people will like it. It's extremely detailed, and well worth a try

Good news it that -2 52 does generate in 0.1.2 (unreleased), and so does London. I've done a hack where I split up residential zones and only apply trees to the ones with houses in, and very low density forests to ones without houses. It reduces the object count by about 40%. But Poland still crashes, and is related to houses and not trees