Open street map is an incredible project, really.

Yep, I agree. The best part is that everyone can contribute and contributions are taken into account in "real time". So you can easly add your neighboroud and see it in the next round of the scenery.In the other hand, OSM is nothing close to the official/payware databases yet (i.e. you don't have every houses and sparse trees depicted). Hopefully it will improve to the point that free databases match their payware counterpart !

I will also make it open source soon, and will try to add support for other flight simulators than xplane.

That is an excellent news! Github ?

Will this work with XP10? Great stuff by the way.

Sure, it should also be prettier on xp10 as i will be able to use xplane 10 enhancements on facades objects (especially roof texture tiling).Global lightning should also make generated scenery look a lot better.

Yep, I agree. The best part is that everyone can contribute and contributions are taken into account in "real time". So you can easly add your neighboroud and see it in the next round of the scenery.In the other hand, OSM is nothing close to the official/payware databases yet (i.e. you don't have every houses and sparse trees depicted). Hopefully it will improve to the point that free databases match their payware counterpart !

Depends the place, for France every building is present , as we have acess to the public database of buildings, "cadastre" (and if a small place is empty you can import this cadastre into OSM in a few minutes).Forests in Europe are also good, as the corine land cover data was injected into openStreetMap.But for sure data coverage may be empty in a lot of place, like the United States.But yeah the good thing is that everyone can add data, and there are good tools to contribute, so it's easy to launch a small project on a forum and map your area of interest.And the best part is that by adding data you're helping other people that are using this data too.About data coverage,i'm also providing complete xplane files (.dsf) for people who do not want to bother with the tool itself.For now it's just an online folder , but i'm working on a new web application based on gmap to display data coverage and acess to the files.It was on hold for a few months as i was working on other things, but i will finish it soon.Here's a little screen, showing the whole planet files.If a little square is drawn, it means that for this 1/1 lat/long square, there's at least some forests/buildings/objects to create a scene.Another one in Europe, showing the density of objects:

That is an excellent news! Github ?

Dunno, i was going for google code as a lot of people have gmail accounts (so adding issues is easy), i still have a lot of code to clean before so i have time to think about that ^^

ok, may not MS Flight related. These are to show the XP10 new method to render the "plausible" world vs FS traditional landclass method. Which scenery philophy is better?

I think the best and most realistic scenery at the moment has to be without doubt the hand annotated, variable seasons Orbx photoreal/high detail scenery sets blended into larger landclass scenery with matching generic texture sets.I can't see XP10 coming close to this methodology until the datasets are very much more detailed and complex. This is not to say that it won't happen, but certainly I don't believe it will happen for at least a year or so.

The problem with using only 3D objects (like X-Plane) is that our computers are still not powerful enough to display an entire city in full 3D. The "fake" 2D city texture in FSX help create the illusion of a dense, populated city, even with autogen turned down low.The result is that X-Plane 10 is very green. Even with maxed out settings, cities aren't nearly dense enough, and it only gets worse as you turn down scenery settings to get an acceptable framerate. Also, with the low draw distance, cities "pop in" close to the viewer. In the distance, there's no sign at all of human activity.

Edited January 31, 201214 yr by JimmiG

I think the best and most realistic scenery at the moment has to be without doubt the hand annotated, variable seasons Orbx photoreal/high detail scenery sets blended into larger landclass scenery with matching generic texture sets.I can't see XP10 coming close to this methodology until the datasets are very much more detailed and complex. This is not to say that it won't happen, but certainly I don't believe it will happen for at least a year or so.

I agree completely, except that it will likely take a whole lot longer than a year. If there are performance challenges with the sparse rendering XP-10 has now, now much worse will it be if and/or when all those huge park sized back yards are filled in with buildings. ORBX hand annotated is very plausable, but honestly, XP10 isn't, not even close, to my eyes anyway.Kind regards,

getting things to look exatly like they are takes not only alot of data but also alot of time and that translates into expensive cost to the end user . i myself im testing a rendering of manhattan that till today it took 4 years to complete and its 2.5 GIGS of data and its only manhattan .Now imagine how much time ,data,money would take to render the world .

ok, may not MS Flight related. These are to show the XP10 new method to render the "plausible" world vs FS traditional landclass method. Which scenery philophy is better?

Thanks for posting pix, Oliver. I'll take the FSX shots over the XP ones. I tried XP10 and thought the detail at KSEA was impressive. However, once off the ground, I wasn't convinced. Again, good comparisons. Thanks.

I agree completely, except that it will likely take a whole lot longer than a year. If there are performance challenges with the sparse rendering XP-10 has now, now much worse will it be if and/or when all those huge park sized back yards are filled in with buildings. ORBX hand annotated is very plausable, but honestly, XP10 isn't, not even close, to my eyes anyway.Kind regards,

+1 - It takes a lot of time to 'hand-draw' the world and ORBX has put a lot of man hours into what they have so far.

I agree completely, except that it will likely take a whole lot longer than a year. If there are performance challenges with the sparse rendering XP-10 has now, now much worse will it be if and/or when all those huge park sized back yards are filled in with buildings. ORBX hand annotated is very plausable, but honestly, XP10 isn't, not even close, to my eyes anyway.Kind regards,

I do understand where you're coming from but I believe if the engine is right, then some clever devs will make it happen, and sooner than later. I'm interested in the source of those performance challenges you mention. I have the scenery turned up as high as I can and do see some occasional hiccups, but I don't believe it's that bad. I reckon with some optimisation, the performance will improve.It all depends if we see an Orbx appear on the XP side of things. I would like to see someone with a bit of time on their hands to show just how far that engine can be pushed.In the mean time I will go back to my Orbx world. I do most of my flying in the bush and here in Oz, that means that I have pretty good frame rates most of the time anyway :)Cheers and all the best.

I do understand where you're coming from but I believe if the engine is right, then some clever devs will make it happen, and sooner than later. I'm interested in the source of those performance challenges you mention. I have the scenery turned up as high as I can and do see some occasional hiccups, but I don't believe it's that bad. I reckon with some optimisation, the performance will improve.It all depends if we see an Orbx appear on the XP side of things. I would like to see someone with a bit of time on their hands to show just how far that engine can be pushed.In the mean time I will go back to my Orbx world. I do most of my flying in the bush and here in Oz, that means that I have pretty good frame rates most of the time anyway :)Cheers and all the best.

I agree, and BTW, it is good to see you Baxter! :(