Thanks. Girls are allowed to be geeks as well. :-) besides, Barbie pink and I are not friends. I'm quite literally a lot darker than that.

I know. You're more at home in the mosh pit at a New Model Army gig.

Great Blog entry Jessica.

 

The only part which I might "criticize" a little bit is the "Plausible Deniability" section. In that you credit too many aspects of the Global Scenery to OSM ...

 

Its true, that roads, railroads, powerlines and all water features are from OSM (plus a few park in urbanized areas). But thats all! No building information or forests are taken from OSM in the current form of the Global Scenery. All the info about how the cities should / could look (urban density, industry), or where and what type of forests should be is taken from landclass data. This landclass data has different quality, depending on the region where you are. Europe has maybe the best such data available, and the USA (+ Alaska) is very good too (and of course, also New Zealand). The rest of the planet uses a bit lower resolution data, which is not always super accurate but still not the worst stuff (cities  and especially smaller towns / villages might sometimes not perfectly represented).

 

By the way, you can find some more technical background info on the Global Scenery in this quite old interview I made some time ago:

http://xsimreviews.com/2011/12/10/developer-interview-andras-fabian-mr-x-terrain/

Thanks Andreas, My understanding of OSM is a little short in a few areas. I'll make the corrections tomorrow.

No problem .... I just like to point it out, so I reduce the "misunderstanding" out there (there are still enough misconceptions in many heads ... which are not their fault, but to improve the situation, I like to set it straight when possible).

 

And if you have questions (but please, only about scenery ), let me know.