I've been playing round with the vector Ordnance Survey data for the UK to see if it can be used for X-Plane scenery generation. Initially, I've had some quite good but basic results, if you see the screenshots below (Click to Enlarge):

 

 

 

At the moment, the application I've written simply takes the OS vector data, and pulls out trees and buildings. It then generates a fake OSM file which can then be used with OSM2XP (I intend to bypass this stage and just produce a straight scenery package).

 

Firstly the good points:

• The entire UK, and every nook and cranny is covered. Anyone who has ever used ordnance survey maps will know how good they are.
• Just a 1x1 degree grid has more data in it than the entire UK from OpenStreetMap (The one I tried did anyway )

Now the bad points (or problems to solve)

• I'm not sure about the legality of it. The data is copyrighted, but can be downloaded from their website and used in applications, as long as it isn't redistributed without their permission.
• Unlike OpenStreetMap data, buildings aren't divided up into individual houses. In fact, the OSM data is far superior in this regard where it has coverage (Which is very patchy in the UK). Houses are grouped into one big building, sometimes the shapes being too large and complicated for OSM2XP to handle. Although all buildings and forests do show up in JOSM (The GUI editor for OSM), OSM2XP ignores them.
• I couldn't find any metadata to go with the buildings, so I don't know what each building group is. I can't really guess here, e.g. Saying that large buildings are industrial, small are houses Anyone with any suggestions on how to get round this?. N.B. There is information for churches and special buildings (e.g. Government, Police).
• The generated data is huge. The shapes are also too large in some cases for OSM2XP to handle, it seems to have a hard-coded limit to not generate buildings with one-side bigger than 100m. It has a preference, but it won't allow it to be switched off, or set higher than 100m. So lots of buildings don't convert or are ignored. Simply generating the scenery package instead of using OSM2XP and OSM files should help here.

What might be a better solution instead of trying to map individual buildings, is to insert the default X-Plane autogen inside them instead. It still doesn't solve the problem of what types of autogen to insert, and some sort of guesswork will have to happen here.

 

Very interesting work ! :Applause:

 

I don't see any solution if it's proprietary data. But I also see no reason why this is proprietary data. It belong to the UK government, so British citizens paid for this with taxes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_Survey

 

Will this change in the future ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_data

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data.gov.uk

Yes, I have studied OS data already too and have found all the - similar - shortcomings you have noticed. For this reason I have - for now - stopped further investigation of this data source.

 

And about this:

 

What might be a better solution instead of trying to map individual buildings, is to insert the default X-Plane autogen inside them instead. It still doesn't solve the problem of what types of autogen to insert, and some sort of guesswork will have to happen here.

It might give a bit improved results, but I doubt it will be too extreme (OK, maybe for really small hamlets), because the European landclass data is already quite good (well, good enough in most cases I would say) ... maybe even the best data I have, compared to most other regions (OK, NZ might be even better). You can study that data online:

http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/explore-interactive-maps/corine-landcover-2006

@alpilotx

 

I was originally under the impression that the shapefiles they provided matched what they show in the promo video (They show using ArcGIS to analyse individual buildings).  Unfortunately, and much to my dismay, I found out later that the actual vector data is at a lesser zoom level, and if you want the extreme detail (i.e. Building-level), they will only provide it in raster format, which is no good unfortunately. I'm sure high scale vector data is available "somewhere", but I doubt it's free.

 

I'll continue experimenting, but it's never going to look as good as the OpenstreetMap (when available) data. If anything, it's a programming exercise for me to get to grips with the X-Plane scenery system.  :-)

I'll continue experimenting, but it's never going to look as good as the OpenstreetMap (when available) data. If anything, it's a programming exercise for me to get to grips with the X-Plane scenery system.  :-)

Which I can always highly recommend, as this is the best way to learn-to-know the gory details :lol:

 

And yes, I had the same feeling, that there is still lots of data which they are withholding from the general public ...

You need the "OS Vectormap District" data to see the individual buildings.  I think you can get 1:10000 scale data to do this, the information in your screenshots looks like its derived from 1:50000 scale data.

 

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/opendata-products.html

 

As for legalities, to paraphrase:
 

The OS OpenData licence allows you to use the OS OpenData datasets in any way and for any purpose. We simply ask that you acknowledge us with "Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown Copyright and database right [year]".

 

More info here:
http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/help-and-support/os-opendata.html?q=afaq12#faq12

 

 

You need the "OS Vectormap District" data to see the individual buildings. I think you can get 1:10000 scale data to do this, the information in your screenshots looks like its derived from 1:50000 scale data.

 

Unfortunately not, I already have the OS Vectormap District, and it doesn't show individual buildings, but just groups of buildings. The individual buildings are on their "StreetView" product which by the looks of it is only available:

 

a) As a TIFF which is no good for processing.

b) Online only

c) Available for purchase for about £4-8 per sq. kilometer. This is the vector format I want, but it isn't available for free.

 

As for the license, at least I can redistribute whatever I manage to produce in the end :-)

Is it possible to somehow convert tiff shapes to vector data using tracing alorithms, or is this too expensive in terms of processing time?

Is it possible to somehow convert tiff shapes to vector data using tracing alorithms, or is this too expensive in terms of processing time?

 Having a look here http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendata/viewer/index.html and zooming in as far as possible, this is what their streetview TIFF data is like. I'm sure it could be traced using some sort of algorithm (e.g. Stripping out everything except the yellow color, and then drawing boxes around them) since all buildings are a single colour, it still however doesn't tell me what building is what, and you'll also notice terraced buildings aren't split further, unlike the data in OpenStreetMap. I'm going to send them an e-mail, and see what's possible with the maps, they seem to be quite receptive of promoting "interesting ways of using our data" :-)

Yes, tracing is definitely possible, but as Tony put it its still questionable how useful the result would be ... Its definitely better to try to get the original data instead (which in turn might be really useful, especially if there are a few classification tags attached to the objects).