Couple of questions regarding OpenStreetMaps and OSM2XP

[BimmerCop 332]

Guys, I have a few dumb questions...

 

When in OSM's editor, if I make an outline and label it as a residential area, will XP automatically fill it with houses or do I still need to add house one by one as objects?

 

When exporting an .osm file from the OSM website, what data is exported? Roads, buildings, trees, etc?

 

When converting the .osm file with OSM2XP, what are the best options when it comes to excludes and staff?

 

Thanks for any help... I really want to tackle doing Chesterfield, Virginia, but have no clue what to do.

[Simmo W 24]

Alas you need to outline every single house and building.

 

Haven't used it for awhile, but I think you can't choose what it exports, but there are other tools that I can't recall the name of, that let you delete whole categories. Be careful if you are not sure, make sure you don't save back to the live OSM.

[greggerm 312]

When in OSM's editor, if I make an outline and label it as a residential area, will XP automatically fill it with houses or do I still need to add house one by one as objects?

 

You will still need to add them one by one.

 

For OSM2XP created scenery, as SimmoW says, OSM2XP only looks at roads, rails, and building data found in OSM. OSM2XP will only create buildings if a building has been defined in OpenStreetMap. OSM2XP will not autogenerate structures in residential tagged areas, and I do not believe the land use data which may be found in OSM will have any bearing on the type of building that OSM2XP creates.

 

Creating building data for a small town, nevermind a city, is quite a labor intensive job. Most major cities which have OSM building data had some sort of state or municipal database with the building data which was bulk imported into OSM. (This is why much of Europe has building data in OSM). Localities with user added buildings tend to have only major structures created... schools, churches, town halls, police and fire stations, stores... fewer individual houses. (I use and recommend JOSM for OSM editing)

 

On a sidenote - for "standard" X-Plane scenery.... It's my understanding that X-Plane disregards the land use data (industrial, residential) found in OpenStreetMaps and uses other data sources for this. As far as I know, OSM is only used for street, rail, and coastline/water/river data.

 

When exporting an .osm file from the OSM website, what data is exported? Roads, buildings, trees, etc?

 

I believe you will get all the data on the map from the region you've opted to export. The tools you use next, be it some sort of GIS app, OSM2XP, or whatever, would need to filter the data down.

 

Good luck!!

-Greg

[BimmerCop 332]

 

You will still need to add them one by one.

 

For OSM2XP created scenery, as SimmoW says, OSM2XP only looks at roads, rails, and building data found in OSM. OSM2XP will only create buildings if a building has been defined in OpenStreetMap. OSM2XP will not autogenerate structures in residential tagged areas, and I do not believe the land use data which may be found in OSM will have any bearing on the type of building that OSM2XP creates.

 

Creating building data for a small town, nevermind a city, is quite a labor intensive job. Most major cities which have OSM building data had some sort of state or municipal database with the building data which was bulk imported into OSM. (This is why much of Europe has building data in OSM). Localities with user added buildings tend to have only major structures created... schools, churches, town halls, police and fire stations, stores... fewer individual houses. (I use and recommend JOSM for OSM editing)

 

On a sidenote - for "standard" X-Plane scenery.... It's my understanding that X-Plane disregards the land use data (industrial, residential) found in OpenStreetMaps and uses other data sources for this. As far as I know, OSM is only used for street, rail, and coastline/water/river data.

 

 

 

I believe you will get all the data on the map from the region you've opted to export. The tools you use next, be it some sort of GIS app, OSM2XP, or whatever, would need to filter the data down.

 

Good luck!!

-Greg

 

Ok, so only buildings, roads, railroads and coast/water/river data is used by OSM. I was able to do the neighborhood where I live, with about 100 houses.

 

When I flew to it in XP, they don't resemble family homes! They look like regular buildings with 4 and 5 floors full of windows. When I outlined them in OSM, I made them as Buildings/Family House. Is there a way to make them look more like regular homes?

 

Yes, I installed JOSM and I love it.

 

Quick question, forests do get exported as well. Should I designate a huge area as forest, then inside that forest, outline the residential area? Will forest take precedence over residential areas and thus still show trees over buildings? I think yes, because one can't export residential areas, do XP will display the entire area as forest.

 

This mean I will need to painstakingly outline areas where I want trees.

 

Ton of work!

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[greggerm 312]

Ok, so only buildings, roads, railroads and coast/water/river data is used by OSM. I was able to do the neighborhood where I live, with about 100 houses.

 

Careful note:

 

OSM2XP will use buildings, roads, rails, and forest found in OpenStreetMaps. OSM2XP will NOT use coast/water/river data found in OpenStreetMaps.

 

The master X-Plane scenery creation process by Andras will use road, rail, coast/water/river found in OpenStreetMaps, but none of the building or forest data in OpenStreetMaps. This is why we're impatiently waiting for Laminar Research to do a worldwide OSM data update for the entire sim... or at least North America... because the water data was terribly bad in OSM when XP10's scenery was created.

 

I'm not sure how the layering would work - if forests would override houses or vice versa.

 

Keep in mind, we X-Plane users are GUESTS in the OpenStreetMap world - do not ever edit OSM data (*and send it live to the OSM servers) outside of their specifications and standards to get good looking output in X-Plane. Adding forests just to achieve trees in X-Plane might be outside the scope of the OSM standards for the use of the forest tag, to take great care to not upload any of those adjustments to the master OSM database.

 

It IS a ton of work! Especially considering you can spend a week adding buildings to OSM, and cover an area that you can fly through in 60 seconds.

 

-Greg

[BimmerCop 332]

 

Careful note:

 

OSM2XP will use buildings, roads, rails, and forest found in OpenStreetMaps. OSM2XP will NOT use coast/water/river data found in OpenStreetMaps.

 

The master X-Plane scenery creation process by Andras will use road, rail, coast/water/river found in OpenStreetMaps, but none of the building or forest data in OpenStreetMaps. This is why we're impatiently waiting for Laminar Research to do a worldwide OSM data update for the entire sim... or at least North America... because the water data was terribly bad in OSM when XP10's scenery was created.

 

I'm not sure how the layering would work - if forests would override houses or vice versa.

 

Keep in mind, we X-Plane users are GUESTS in the OpenStreetMap world - do not ever edit OSM data (*and send it live to the OSM servers) outside of their specifications and standards to get good looking output in X-Plane. Adding forests just to achieve trees in X-Plane might be outside the scope of the OSM standards for the use of the forest tag, to take great care to not upload any of those adjustments to the master OSM database.

 

It IS a ton of work! Especially considering you can spend a week adding buildings to OSM, and cover an area that you can fly through in 60 seconds.

 

-Greg

 

 

I lucked out!!! I was able to get a hold of the .shp file that is used by our department's mapping system, which has EVERY STRUCTURE/BUILDING in my County! After running it through OSM2XP, it said it generated 100,000 buildings! Hahaha I did a quick loop to test it out and it's a thing of beauty to see every building in my County displayed in the right place, above 60cm photoreal scenery. Just awesome!

 

My contact in my department ia going to try and see if she can find someone in Richmond City and Henrico County, which are my two adjacent counties and all 3 make up the area covered by our Aviation Unit.

 

If I can get a hold of Richmond's and Henrico's .shp data, I will be able to practice flying to almost a perfect recreation of my local area.! This is sweeeeeet!!!

 

Btw, is there an app I can use to open the .shp file and edit some of the buildings?

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

 

 

 

[Simmo W 24]

That's Kewl! Make sure you share the outputs! Here and at the org or xpilot. Pm me when u share and we'll notify our readers at xsimreviews! It's worth persevering eh!

[BimmerCop 332]

That's Kewl! Make sure you share the outputs! Here and at the org or xpilot. Pm me when u share and we'll notify our readers at xsimreviews! It's worth persevering eh!

 

Of course!!! Let me first figure out how can I edit that .shp file so I can fix a few anomolies. I'm ecstatic!!! As soon as it's ready, I will publish it. I hope I can get a hold of Richmond's and Henrico's... That's well over 900 square miles of EVERY BUILDING being displayed. =) Finger's crossed!

[Muskoka 104]

There's a few sites out there where you can get .shp data, not at my sim computer. OSM2XP Ben pointed me in the right direction a year ago. The only thing I found in my area is that the "building" footprints sometimes covered a whole city block. Where there were maybe 10-15 separate buildings on a street, in Xplane it looked like a shopping mall because it was all joined together, not Xplanes fault, it was the data. Would take me way too much editing.

 

If you have good clean accurate data your lucky, have at it, and good luck. Don't forget to sleep , you are a cop.

 

This is the site where I was getting my .shp data, http://koordinates.com/

 

Here's the stats report for one I did last August in Ontario, 202,158 buildings. Problem for me was half of it needed to be edited, :huh: needless to say I didn't bother using it.

 

 

 

Where are you guys getting your .shp data, not you Efrain, your lucky. Maybe you know of somewhere better, more accurate?

 

Glen

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

OSM data like it, and now just need to create photo-real scenery for Arizona for X-plane 10.

[BimmerCop 332]

AMAZING!!!!!

 

I now have gotten a hold of OSM data for Chesterfield County and Richmond City. It is unreal being able to fly at 1,500' and seeing EVERY SINGLE HOUSE/BUILDING and to boot, all is being displayed over 1m resolution photoreal Bing scenery.

 

Night time flying is in another level. The sense of reality is just amazing.

 

Now if I can get Henrico County, I will have the entire Richmond Metro area fully covered. :-)

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[captain420 3,099]

BimmerCop please post pictures. I'm anxious to see how this looks. I am very interested in doing the same for the Houston and surrounding areas. How does one aquire .shp files for their area? I would love to do what you've done and avoid using OSM2XP/OSM since it makes residential homes look like office buildings. I've been using the OSM Autogen from simheaven.de and thought that was pretty decent, but if your method is better, then I rather go that route.

 

Also you said you are using photo real scenery from bing? How is that possible? Please share your techniques. Us X-Plane users should unite and create amazing scenery for the entire world. 

[greggerm 312]

In recent weeks, someone uploaded the shape files for all of Massachusetts into OSM as well - looks like nearly every building in the STATE is now represented in OSM... right down to backyard sheds in some cases.

 

Pretty impressive stuff, if you need Massachusetts OSM2XP scenery...

[carrotroot 77]

 

 

Pretty impressive stuff, if you need Massachusetts OSM2XP scenery...

 

Wow! I grew up in the South Shore near Braintree, MA and my old home is there right down to the shed in the backyard. Crazy stuff.

[hesynergy 67]

On 2/5/2013 at 3:23 PM, BimmerCop said:

 

I lucked out!!! I was able to get a hold of the .shp file that is used by our department's mapping system, which has EVERY STRUCTURE/BUILDING in my County! After running it through OSM2XP, it said it generated 100,000 buildings! ...

 

Btw, is there an app I can use to open the .shp file and edit some of the buildings?

...

 

 

 

 

How did you get the houses and roads into X-Plane? Ortho4XP or OSM2XP?

… I appended/edited some OSM roads to my existing ORTHO4XP patch file which contained   altitude/slope  polygons...Then activated Ortho4XP. X-Plane revealed none of the roads that I had added, but DID show the altitude/slope  polygons… I suspect that I needed to create a new layer in JOSM...have you any experience in;

1. Combining WED 1.6(I had previously covered part of an OSM road with a Taxi-way but then realized that I lost my OSM road and thus the traffic on that road), AND JOSM AND Ortho4XP?
2. Combining HD_mesh_V3 with those listed in 1.above...?
a.  Per ALPILOTX, meshes are mutually exclusive - you need to choose by priority,or deletion/moving, which ones you want to use...his OR Ortho4XP.

b. While JOSM Altitude polygons and slopes are picked up by Ortho4XP as "Patches"(if properly named and formatted), do I presume correctly that we need to put our Ortho4XP tiles above HD_mesh_V3, or move HD_mesh_V3 folder out of the custom scenery folder if we intend to use Ortho4XP?

Thanks, 
Chas

Edited March 7, 2017 by hesynergy