Scenery and OpenStreetMap (OSM) FAQ

[jcomm 5,890]

Thank you PilotBalu!

 

Great work that of yours! Thx to Andras and you, and of course thos who keep contributing with detailed sceneries for airports all around the World, X-Plane 10 is looking SIMPLY AMAZING!!!

[gheeD 62]

Tony, do you know if it is possible to use own orthophotos as a base layer to add buildings in a town? I have a orthophoto with geotiffs for accurate placement in x-plane for my addon scenery, but I planned just have orthophoto layer flat, and have osm do the buildings in the town close by. Sadly the satellite images are so blurry in this remote location that i cant draw the town buildings, but with orthophoto that would be easy. So would it be possible to maybe in JOSM use my own orthophoto as background image to draw buildings around the town? That way i could export it for my scenery project as a seperate addon layer and perhaps when simheavens osm catches up to my edits people can disable my layer since simheaven will duplicate it.

[tonywob 4,768]

Indeed you can, have a look at this JOSM plugin http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM/Plugins/PicLayer

[gheeD 62]

Thanks, it looked very promising until the limitations:

Limitations

• no support for (Geo)TIFF
• no georeferencing based on reference points or coordinates (only positioning with the mouse)

 

But oh well. I'll try my best with just dragging and scaling it into scale and hope for the best 

[gheeD 62]

Here's few edits i've made so far; maybe for some peer-reviewing  :lol:

 

http://www.openstreetmap.org/history#map=16/67.4124/26.6039

 

Orthophoto is working pretty okay for editing, i'll have to export the data into sim and see how well it actually lines up with geodata-accurate photoscenery background.

[tonywob 4,768]

Orthophoto is working pretty okay for editing, i'll have to export the data into sim and see how well it actually lines up with geodata-accurate photoscenery background.

 

Good job :-), it's always good to see people adding buildings to OSM.

 

Just one recommendation, orthogonalise your buildings, e.g. http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/260757267. This makes it look neater in OSM, but also is easier on the renderer and works with sloped roofs. In JOSM, I think it's Shift+Q (although I don't remember fully).

 

Edit: Also, have you checked their aren't any additional "open" WMS sources for aerial data in this area. In JOSM for Poland we have bing, but geoportal.pl offers higher resolution aerial photography which has come in useful. It's worth a google search, because governments normally offer this service.

[gheeD 62]

I have no idea. the finnish NLS data which I use for the orthophoto (they have free orthophoto available to download, pretty much like USGS for USA i believe). There is some talk on OSM forums finnish-section about the usage of the enormous amount of NLS data, but I have no clue. I believe there is/was some problems in regards to copyright of the data but looks like there is no WMS service for the NLS data, sadly. There is some small local area wms data for a national park looks like but that doesnt help sadly. 

 

I don't mind if there's no WMS data, since this way of showing the orthophoto background layer works okay. I'll correct the buildings  ^_^

 

edit:After further investigating looks like the correct copyright for the NLS data is added finally on 19th of december and now some people who are planning on importing the data into osm can start working on it (what data exactly? roads etc. or even buildings etc.? i have no idea) but anyways i think i still can/should continue work like i am atm so the town when approaching the airfield would look atleast a bit more real and lifelike :Smile:

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

I don't mind if there's no WMS data, since this way of showing the orthophoto background layer works okay. I'll correct the buildings

 

Your own photographs are probably just as good since you'll find that no particular WMS service is aligned perfectly anyway. There is quite a large difference in the Bing photography compared to geoportal.pl's. Also, orthophotos aren't perfect, as it doesn't take into account the parallax effect, so buildings at different heights would be off compared to lower altitude, not to mention the angle the shot was taken.

 

Also, on Bing, there is often a large difference (by several meters) using the various zoom levels. When I'm mapping using Bing, I often use a secondary layer to align the orthophotos for the area I'm doing. 

[gheeD 62]

They arent MY photos, but downloaded from the finnish NLS service here http://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/file_download_service in the same way as USGS service for USA i believe. So it's all in same perspective. I just draw the building areas in JOSM and set the tags after looking at streetview for reference. I tried to align the orthophoto according to the gpx data like the tip in JOSM suggests to do with aerial imagery 

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

They arent MY photos, but downloaded from the finnish NLS service here http://www.maanmitta...ownload_service in the same way as USGS service for USA i believe

 

When I was doing maps for the UK where I used to live, I found that even the government sources were often quite badly misaligned. I used the national mapping authority (Ordnance Survey) to align the aerial photography I used. Although I found out later than these weren't WGS84 aligned, so it's impossible to get it right :-). Even going outside and placing a GPS on your front garden was difficult, because without very professional quality equipment and a lot of time, even an accurate GPS position is impossible. It could take several hours to get a reading that is accurate to the nearest meter.

 

If you're mapping just for OSM, then a building misaligned by 1-2 metres is nothing and doesn't detract from the usefullness of the map. In a flight simulator it's barely noticable, but sometimes you'll get buildings going into roads (However, even roads aren't properly aligned).

[gheeD 62]

Surely these sources can be inaccurate. But they are the best source of accuracy that i can get my hands on that is automated, so you don't have to spend countless of hours to try to align the photos correctly. especially good for FS and x-plane since you have the coordinates, just put it in WED and draw the airport based on the orthophoto. 100% of the tries (few on the finnish fs forum have tried these orthophotos for fsx developing) were deadly accurate, much better than any earlier sources. I trust that the geodata in my orthophotos is good aswell.

 

If i could use same technique in JOSM as in WED (aka just import the orthophoto with geodata attached for coordinates) i wouldn't doubt the accuracy. But with handplaced reference photos it's hard for me to trust i can get it accurately. But like you said few meters is nothing.. But i'm a perfectionist when it comes to these things  :lol:

[ted360 0]

Quick question guys - does LR update OSM data in their patches (roads, buildings, forests)? Or will the scenery change only after downloading from simHeaven for example? Just been wondering if the scenery changed from v10.0 to 10.25....

BTW - now when I know how those OSM sceneries from simHeaven work, I'm updating OSM map like crazy, mainly adjusting building height

[alpilotx 505]

Nope, there has not been an official data update in the default Global Scenery of XP10. It would also be quite heavy on  bandwidth, as all that data is bundled together in the base mesh ...

 

If you want to have new OSM data, then you might use my HD Mesh Scenery v2 (or if you want the same, but with phototextures then Simheaven - the latter is derived from the former).

 

Laminar is also planning to release a few DSF updates, but - to my knowledge - they only want to address a few very bad DSFs (only a handful) but not do  a complete Global Scenery refresh (would mean too much downlaod traffic - you remember, it cam on a quite a few DVDs).

 

But what has changed - and a lot -between 10.00 and 10.25 is artwork. A lot of ground textures (the colorful stuff which "gets painted" on the base mesh) have been replaced / updated and also autogen and other parts of the sim.

[ted360 0]

Thank you for the quick answer. I'd love to use HD Mesh Scenery v2 but I only have 4Gigs of RAM and I suppose it would kill my system

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

I'm updating OSM map like crazy, mainly adjusting building height

 

Hi Ted, as well as height, if it's using a building=yes tag, change it to something more descriptive, e.g. building=house, building=terrace, building=apartments etc. This will help OSM2XP decide what texture to use, so at least a house will look like a house, etc. Unfortunately so many of the buildings in OSM are generically tagged, so at the moment it's mostly best guess.