Of course, X-Plane doesn't mimic this perfectly ... but at least there are real phenomenon which it tries to copy in a remotely "plausible" way ...

 

Cul-de-sacs are fine, it's the straight main roads which can go for several kilometers which look unrealistic, as well as the green "parks".   

 

here is a crude drawing of the problem

 

 

the houses should be spaced much further apart and set much further back from the road. 

 

 

 

also this is very strange ... there is either a density issue here or the wrong building is being placed (it could be a recreation complex, hospital, or mall but not this pattern).

 

 

In most places I've lived blocks like these have a lot of small residences in side them connected by alleyways ... maybe if the zoning algo were tweaked it could achieve something along these lines? 

 

Hi Carrot,

 

Now there are - I think - two things you should consider.

 

First ... interestingly, when I look for example at Boston in OpenStreetmap ... well, I still see a lot of data, which makes many place look quite similar to what my Google Maps examples show. Just look here (and zoom a little around):

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/42.3133/-71.2411

And yes, you don't need to argue ... I see that there are (in the same OSM area :smile: )  places which look more like your idea ... so, its a mixed bag ... and the guys behind the autogen (which I have not so much to do with) went - until now - the way they did it. Of course, one way to get closer to your "idea" might be to include those tiny alleys (because the entire autogen is mostly driven by the existing road network). Sometimes this is also a problem with the OSM data itself ... when the small roads are missing (or they are tagged so narrow, that we omit them ...).

 

Second ... please also remember what Ben said in his blog entry: http://developer.x-plane.com/2013/10/10-25-beta-1-released/

Namely that in the current DSFs the urban zoning is not always correct / optimal, as it sometimes tends to zone place too sparse (low residential) etc. ... Some of this has been fixed (well ... at least changed) and will be reflected in newer DSFs (either some re-cuts from Laminar or my upcoming HD Mesh Scenery v2). So, at least some regions might look better with new DSFs ... (there is also a slight possibility, that newer DSFs will work better in cities because of newer OSM data).

If improvements should be toward zoning and regionalization of autogen art assets do not need to be high poly buildings at this point and slow improvements in code would help zoning.  Do not need alleys at this point you need different building and housing stock the tedious adding of fire hydrants and alleys is pointless. 

 

interestingly, when I look for example at Boston in OpenStreetmap ... well, I still see a lot of data, which makes many place look quite similar to what my Google Maps examples show. Just look here (and zoom a little around):

http://www.openstree...2.3133/-71.2411

 

 

Hey, I know that area ... I grew up about 2 towns east of Needham :lol:  Sorry didn't mean to nitpick, I'm just really eager to see the changes you guys have been working on these past several months. Especially with the cities. 

 

I think jcomm had posted this earlier, but I'm hoping X-Plane's autogen eventually reaches something along these lines:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kxCpW9lDYA

Hi Carrot,

 

Now there are - I think - two things you should consider.

 

First ... interestingly, when I look for example at Boston in OpenStreetmap ... well, I still see a lot of data, which makes many place look quite similar to what my Google Maps examples show. Just look here (and zoom a little around):

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/42.3133/-71.2411

And yes, you don't need to argue ... I see that there are (in the same OSM area :smile: ) places which look more like your idea ... so, its a mixed bag ... and the guys behind the autogen (which I have not so much to do with) went - until now - the way they did it. Of course, one way to get closer to your "idea" might be to include those tiny alleys (because the entire autogen is mostly driven by the existing road network). Sometimes this is also a problem with the OSM data itself ... when the small roads are missing (or they are tagged so narrow, that we omit them ...).

 

Second ... please also remember what Ben said in his blog entry: http://developer.x-plane.com/2013/10/10-25-beta-1-released/

Namely that in the current DSFs the urban zoning is not always correct / optimal, as it sometimes tends to zone place too sparse (low residential) etc. ... Some of this has been fixed (well ... at least changed) and will be reflected in newer DSFs (either some re-cuts from Laminar or my upcoming HD Mesh Scenery v2). So, at least some regions might look better with new DSFs ... (there is also a slight possibility, that newer DSFs will work better in cities because of newer OSM data).

I don't think the alleys are an issue, it's the empty space behind the buildings. The houses should be set further back from the road, with bigger back yards. You could even add a guest house to fill in the gap, or some junk cars, etc... The commercial buildings usually have big parking lots that surround them, this would help fill in the gaps as well!

I wonder if LR ever considered crowdsourcing Autogen art. We have the airports and...

 

Wait, I think I might have the answer to my own question. The airports must only use legobricks, i.e. LR's own assets. Custom artwork might create some copyright issues.

 

Ah well... it was a nice idea when I first thought of it.

Well, like everything in X-Plane 10, the autogen is "open" too (so, there are no technical reasons why 3rd parties could not "play" with it).

 

It even has some first docs here:

http://developer.x-plane.com/?article=x-plane-10-autogen-scenery-file-format

 

But you will realize - and this answers some of the questions here - that automagically placing objects in a way, that they look good, don't wildly overlap with others, are halfway sanely placed, align well with other objects / roads, look plausible etc. is much more complicated than to verbally formulate what you imagine B) (which is the reason, why not everything is already super perfect ... even if someone is working on it since years ... and still continues to improve it!).

 

In the German Aerosoft forum there were already a few users, who dared to hack a little bit around in the autogen definitions and could thus replace some objects with more "European" looking ones :

http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/68287-europaeische-autogen-gebaeude/

 

So, a lot is possible  (and the autogen system is extremely powerful ... with good content ... which is not simply falling from the sky :wink:)

Well, I was referring more to people designing autogen objects, like houses, office building, shopping centers, etc.,  to add to the variety and then submitting it to LR for inclusion as part of the default autogen. While one would like an ethos of  "Doing it for the community" to be in play, there's always the one chance that someone would have a change of heart after submitting their work and then try to sue for royalties. It's a worst case scenario, but one I would think LR would try to avoid out of prudence.

 

It's been said officially that the airports submitted to Robin Peel must only use the WED lego bricks objects so people don't have to download a cornucopia of scenery library objects to get things to work, but I wouldn't be surprised if another deciding factor was to avoid anything like the above happening.

Add autogen housing stock like 1890s era like 5 or 6 houses and one or two factory types. Get autogen houses 1950s start to get beginnings of mass produced housing. Have autogen by region, climate, historical era. Xplane should keep art asessts for autogen in the future to build library of different buildings in time. Xplane autogen if done correctly could easily blow past Orbx and fsx, but would require writing code to allow zoning data based on historical regional patterns. It won't happen tommorow or two years from now, but in 5 to 10 years from now. Evolutionary process of incremental improvements. 10.3 or 10.6 do not see it being all much different than 10.2. Xplane has great potiental just requires pateince on all parts can't build Rome in a day.

One info - I write this every now or then, but it often gets buried. X-Plane does already have a neat regionalization system built in, which allows anybody to assign different (reginalized) art assets (of any types: textures, objects, autogen .... everything which you manage via library.txt!) at the granularity of 1x1 degree.

 

Look at this documentation: http://scenery.x-plane.com/library.php?doc=libspec.php

 

And especially read what REGION_BITMAP can do B) (if you want examples, there are already some small special regions used in "1000 world terrain" ... there you can even find those region bitmaps in the /maps folder ... and see in the main library.txt how they are used)

Thank you for this tip. This is great.

The left and right brakes are inverted on 10.25b!