A sad thing about Open street map is that building coverage is very bad outside of Europe.But there are a few places with very good coverage, one being Boston.You can read a bit of info about how they collected the data here : http://www.mass.gov/mgis/lidarbuildingfp2d.htmand here's a map of the building coverage: http://www.mass.gov/mgis/lidarbuildingfp2d_av.jpgI added height information on some skyscrapers then generated the scenery, the result is far from perfect (red roofs textures are more suited to south of France than Boston), but it's plausible in its way :)

That's a lot better. Is this freeware and do the users have to make these additions themselves?

Yes.Yes.

Yes!

Yes it's freeware.Users won't have to make these additions themselves, the additional height info i added on those skyscrapers are commited in the osm database.You still have to generate the scenery yourself, you will need osm2xp (http://osm2xp.com/?q=downloads) , and the osm file for Massachusetts : http://download.geof...husetts.osm.pbfIt's not yet fully compatible with XP10, there are two bugs, one that is easily fixed -sloped houses sink in the ground if they are only 1 level tall-, and one more problematic, roof textures have graphical artefacts.I mailed Ben Supnik about the second problem, he will work on it.If you want tomorrow i can post zipped files of the generated scenery, for xp9 and xp10.

Yes! Great demo Benny, u may have found a prime use for your tool, CBD mass modelling. Where is the height info stored in osm?Now, all these work on the facade principle right? I'll definitely take a close look at the texture file, see what I can do. All other projects on hold, sort of..

Hi Simmon,Height information is added to a building polygon, you can use height in meters or levels, like "building:height=150" , "building:levels=30".exemples of buildings in Boston:http://www.openstree...e/way/139979881http://www.openstree...se/way/29650687And yes, it's still using facades, btw i'm working on the next update that will let users generate a facade set description file, something that will describe each facade file, so the generator can guess the best facade file to use (for now it';s kind of hardcoded in the application) , here's a screen :

Benny-I look forward to your work-looks great. I proposed it in another thread, but since google buildings already has a good deal of the urban areas of the world with realistic accurately placed 3d buildings, and my understanding is there is no copyright problem if and individual downloads them for their personal use-would it not be possible for a developer to create a program to pull them off, translate into xplane format, and place them into xplane 10? Kinda like tileproxy did for photo scenery?

Well the problem with Google earth buildings is that i don't think that there's an api to request them , they are files stored in google 3D model warehouse, and you must download them by hand.Plus the convertion from sketchup to xplane isn't simple, as most of sketchup models are made of several textures files, it's a problem for a xplane convertion.In my opinion , if we want to have good looking 3D objects of specific buildings in xplane, here's what could to be done:-Make a team of 3D modellers, that make buildings in sketchup using google earth textures (it's really easy and fast), and publish them in the google warehouse.-the team make all of these buildings with xplane conversion in mind, so they only use one texture file.-On a regular basis the team convert all of these buildings to xplane .obj file format, and put them somewhere.I think , as those files would be downloadable in the google 3D warehouse, it's not a problem to publish somewhere a convertion to another file format if you are the proprietary/creator of those files, but i can be totaly wrong.At the end the community use something to place those 3D objects at the right place (osm2xp can do that but it needs a bit of work), or someone/some team release dsf files for these objects.

sorry to rain on a parade of happiness, but I fly in and out of KBOS in real life all the time, and other than the water placement, and tall city buildings the rest looks horrid...we don't have sub divisions here, and those houses are Southern or Western style (like LA region) with orange roofs! We don't have those here and the realism to me (just me now) is shot to heck.

Textures can be easily changed, i pointed in my first post that they are more suited to south of France with those red roofs.

Peter, if you saw the "default" XP10 scenery in Boston, you would be praising all that was holy as it relates to the screenshots above. There's room for texturing improvements, but Benny has acknowledged this. OpenSource Maps are apparently "bigger" in Europe, where Benny is from, and where the development of the tool was targeted - hence the regional flavor.My concern is that the XP10 development team will see the OSM2XP project and put zero effort into FIXING the generation of urban areas in default XP10 because "we can do it ourselves" as a community now - just like their apparent stance on airport buildings (Let the community do it!). I don't expect Laminar to match what this tool can do, but I certainly didn't expect to see urban areas in the condition they are in right now.Benny - I'll be watching the development of OSM2XP - the tool looks quite valuable to improving the immersion factor of the XPlane scenery.-Greg

we don't have sub divisions here

Uploaded with ImageShack.usTaken from Google Earth, and is 5 miles from Logan International. If that isn't a subdivision then what is it? I'll admit the roof tops do look out of place, but that can easily be changed. Wow people, what do you expect for $80. I own this as well as FSX and have been flight simming for many years. I also have thousands of dollars invested in FSX to make it look half decent and allow me to fly the addons I want. Those screenshots look great, and show the posibilities of XPX, nothing more, nothing less.Glen

There are densely packed houses there, I know this area just southwest of KBOS on the 4R approach, yet not the same Texas or Florida style subdivision homes that are featured in X-Plane. In real life, this is not a good area, high crime and a lot of slums etc... the worst part of Boston. My main point is there are no Orange roof cookie cutter homes anywhere in the northeast... again, something you would see in Maryland and southwards....

Ok so after 5 minutes on photoshop to change residential roof color, here's a new batch of screenshots of Boston.It's not perfectly realist, never said that, but you have precise building location and nearly every building drawed, at minimal fps impact (xplane facades are used instead of 3D objects, it's more fps friendly).And remember, it's a free alternative, don't expect commercial grade texture art, i do what i can on my spare time.Some more pictureshttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_021.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_022.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_023.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_024.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_025.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_026.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_027.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_028.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_029.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_030.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_031.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_032.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_033.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_034.jpghttp://images.osm2xp.com/boston/Boston_035.jpg