I've been working on a project to try and pretty up the scenery inside X-Plane using the vast amounts of information inside OpenStreetMaps (OSM), and would like to share previews with the community here at avsim. Although we already have tools such as OSM2XP, it doesn't support a few things that are needed to generate truly plausible looking scenery.

 

My new program (which I haven't named yet) will take an OSM file (e.g. From geofabrik.de) and generate scenery using an extensive list of highly-configurable rules. 

 

Complex Buildings/Forests

 

Currently it's not possible using OSM2XP to generate buildings and forests with holes inside them, or buildings and forests which are parts of groups (relations), this led to large empty areas where there should be trees and buildings.

 

 

The application will break up complicated buildings into smaller components so that X-Plane can render them. Now supported are buildings with many holes inside them, as well as complicated forests spanning over large areas. The application also correctly clips buildings and forests so that they fit in the X-Plane tile.

 

Building Colours, Material and Size

 

Building colour, material and size information is taken from OSM if available. The application will create a unique texture matching the roof and wall colour and material, e.g. Gray concrete, blue glass, etc.

 

It will also respect the building size, and generate skyscrapers and complicated buildings based on tags inside OSM.

 

 

This makes a huge difference inside cities, and gives more variety to the buildings. 

 

Highly configurable object placement rules

 

As well as placing facades, the object can also place real objects. As well as inserting things like smoke chimneys, wind farms, it will also add house models that match a specific footprint. e.g. If you have a building which has a footprint of 10x15, the application will place the object into the footprint and rotate it to fit, as shown in the below screenshots.

 

 

These shots show that real objects have been placed instead of using facades which look much nicer. These examples are using buildings from the R2 library.

 

 

Highly configurable rules

 

The rule generation is highly configurable, and can use lists of complicated filters to decide what to do with the information inside OSM. e.g. You can change the types of trees in a forest based on its type or size, or place random cattle in a field as shown below:

 

 

The rules will allow you to work with location and geometry information, e.g. You can tell the program to place a fuel-tank model when it finds a circular building inside OSM. It can also change buildings based on its GPS coordinates, i.e. Regional buildings.

 

The project is still in a very early stage, and if people have any requests for filters or features then please let me know, and hopefully I can get them into the application. I'm also looking for people who can create models and facades which can be included to add more variety to the scenery.

 

Technical details, and more shots are available here http://forums.x-pilot.com/topic/6388-xp-scenery-generator-wip/ and here http://forum.avsim.net/topic/429445-speed-up-and-further-development-for-osm2xp/

 

I'll keep this thread updated with new features and scenery generations as I continue. 

Sounds very promising. Thanks.

It sounds excellent, good luck!

Good luck, that surely looks very promising!

Looks Great Tony!

nice work man.

Tony always comes up with good stuff and this will be no exception.  Tony, we appreciate the time you have taken to enlighten many of us about scenery, libraries, placement and general help.

Something like this is going to be what it takes to build the world accurately.

No one dev team can do it, the scope of accurately modeling the entire planet is too big.

It will take a true global community effort using these kinds of tools to make it happen.

 

I think the past 60 days is going to be remembered as the turning point in time toward X-Plane from MSFS based sims.

We are living, and in Tony's, LM's and other gifted individuals cases-making history as the ones who made it possible.

 

Thank you Tony!

 

 

I think the past 60 days is going to be remembered as the turning point in time toward X-Plane from MSFS based sims.
We are living, and in Tony's, LM's and other gifted individuals cases-making history as the ones who made it possible.

 

Wow!  Very nice looking, and a long over-due improvement, Tony!  Kudos and appreciation!  X-Plane just keeps on improving.. and it's fun to be part of this historic evolution.

Way to go Tony, one small step for man, one giant leap for X-Plane.

Great work! I especially like the possiblity to use real objects instead of facades. Just imagine the potential ...

This tool has amazing potential. Thanks for all of the hard work that you have undoubtedly put into it--I can't wait to see what it's capable of come release. Looks like I need to get to work building my home areas on OSM!

Thank you everyone for the kind words. At the moment I'm fighting with bad data inside OSM, and I'm not sure whether I should be trying to find ways around it, or simply ignore it.

 

e.g. There are some forests around Berlin which are self-intersecting, e.g. http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/31383

 

However, it's taking a lot of effort to try and get this shape into the application without destroying its shape/form too much. I've tried various algorithms such as concave/convex hulls, and even deleting the nodes which are intersecting, but the results are distorting the shape too much and make the forest leak over into the village :-) (Nothing is ever simple) 

Tony I did a blender thing with google warehouse, ok there are no textures but there is something in blender to assign it, you can try that,

Thank you everyone for the kind words. At the moment I'm fighting with bad data inside OSM, and I'm not sure whether I should be trying to find ways around it, or simply ignore it.

 

e.g. There are some forests around Berlin which are self-intersecting, e.g. http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/31383

 

However, it's taking a lot of effort to try and get this shape into the application without destroying its shape/form too much. I've tried various algorithms such as concave/convex hulls, and even deleting the nodes which are intersecting, but the results are distorting the shape too much and make the forest leak over into the village :-) (Nothing is ever simple) 

 

Your project looks unvaluable but IMO you should not waste time coping with bad data. They should be fixed in OSM not by your converter.

The ability to place real obj instead of facade will prove a visual must for rural area where usually there are few objects and FPS are not heavily affected by number of buildings.