Introducing World2XPlane...

[Seank23 9]

Spain definitely isn't as interesting as Ireland in OSM land. Here's some shots:

 

First of all, Reus airport seems to be sitting in a 20m ditch, this must be an issue of the simHeaven photoscenery mesh:

 

 

 

 

Salou looks decent but there still seems to be something missing:

 

 

 

Loads of trees:

 

 

 

It does seem to just cover the terrain with trees here but that must be what is in OSM:

 

 

@User72: Have you noticed in your photoscenery an ugly low resolution area to the west of Weston EIWT? I've only noticed in the simHeaven scenery and it takes away from what would otherwise be very realistic.

 

Thanks.

[User72 28]

@SeanK23, I'm pretty sure I know what you are talking about, I think it's the result of out of date satellite imagery, I remember it being in the SimHeaven package I downloaded after I realised that the latest imagery available had done away with the really bad low res stuff that covered large swathes of the country for a long time. I had been hoping that the SH stuff would use that newer imagery but alas it did not. However, knowing now that there was a chance that better could be had I once again investigated G2XPL for the price of another small donation. I had investigated it a good while back but the imagery just wasn't available then. It is now! With the right settings input to the g2xpl.ini I was able to get the latest imagery for the whole country at Zoom 18

I can't overstate the difference this has made to my simming. That coupled with W2XP has given me the sim that I've been chasing for many years. I'm not trying to bash as I used the other sims for many years but there is just no comparison to be made now. I had to delete the others after spending a small fortune on them over the years because they just don't come close anymore. Not even in the same ballpark. World2XPlane, G2XPL and SkyMaxxPro (though 10.30 may negate the need for SkyMaxxPro) are the three things I cannot recommend highly enough!

[Humpty 751]

World2XP has changed the flying for me.  Europe looks magnificent with it. 

[tonywob 4,769]

Thanks for the shots Sean.

 

You've come across one of the major problems in Spain and also in France with OSM to X-Plane conversion, and that's the Corine data import for forests and farmland. The data used is low resolution, so whereas in Ireland or Germany, each individual field has been tagged as farmland, meadow, etc.. In Spain, all fields or forests have been joined together into one huge area, which doesn't exclude the villages, rivers, and roads which are inside them. This looks very unrealistic and simply floods the scenery with trees that shouldn't be there.

 

I don't know how to resolve this issue yet, as the data and method of mapping differs quite a lot from one country to the next. Germany is currently the best quality scenery in World2XPlane, because everything has been mapped just as World2XPlane needs it . I will create a tutorial later on my website about mapping farmland and how it should be done, as the treelines really add a third dimension to the scenery and are worth doing and are far easier than adding hundreds of buildings.

 

 

Have you noticed in your photoscenery an ugly low resolution area to the west of Weston EIWT? I've only noticed in the simHeaven scenery and it takes away from what would otherwise be very realistic.

 

Last time I tried the photoscenery for Ireland (Area around Dublin), it was really low quality and discolored and blurry. If they've improved it now, then I'll grab this area again

[User72 28]

Last time I tried the photoscenery for Ireland (Area around Dublin), it was really low quality and discolored and blurry. If they've improved it now, then I'll grab this area again

 

Unless SimHeaven have recut the tile it's still the same.

[Seank23 9]

@SeanK23, I'm pretty sure I know what you are talking about, I think it's the result of out of date satellite imagery, I remember it being in the SimHeaven package I downloaded after I realised that the latest imagery available had done away with the really bad low res stuff that covered large swathes of the country for a long time. I had been hoping that the SH stuff would use that newer imagery but alas it did not. However, knowing now that there was a chance that better could be had I once again investigated G2XPL for the price of another small donation. I had investigated it a good while back but the imagery just wasn't available then. It is now! With the right settings input to the g2xpl.ini I was able to get the latest imagery for the whole country at Zoom 18

I can't overstate the difference this has made to my simming. That coupled with W2XP has given me the sim that I've been chasing for many years. I'm not trying to bash as I used the other sims for many years but there is just no comparison to be made now. I had to delete the others after spending a small fortune on them over the years because they just don't come close anymore. Not even in the same ballpark. World2XPlane, G2XPL and SkyMaxxPro (though 10.30 may negate the need for SkyMaxxPro) are the three things I cannot recommend highly enough!

 

 

Yeah, I think I'll give G2XPL a try, especially for the Dublin area as this is the area I fly in most. Have you noticed any performance issues using ZL18 as opposed to ZL17 or 16?

 

 

 

You've come across one of the major problems in Spain and also in France with OSM to X-Plane conversion, and that's the Corine data import for forests and farmland. The data used is low resolution, so whereas in Ireland or Germany, each individual field has been tagged as farmland, meadow, etc.. In Spain, all fields or forests have been joined together into one huge area, which doesn't exclude the villages, rivers, and roads which are inside them. This looks very unrealistic and simply floods the scenery with trees that shouldn't be there.

 

I suppose I'll just have to make do if that's the case, it still looks better than default.

 

I've got one question: Can World2XPlane populate areas where the buildings in OSM have a different footprint or dimensions to any of the models in the library? For example, would it be able to place a landmark (eg. Effle Tower) if it is not modeled in the library?

 

Thanks.

[User72 28]

Yeah, I think I'll give G2XPL a try, especially for the Dublin area as this is the area I fly in most. Have you noticed any performance issues using ZL18 as opposed to ZL17 or 16?

 

Systems vary as will mileage but I can't say I noticed any difference other than between default and ZL 18. I get around 25fps with my settings shown below. I have also used a plugin very similar to MaxxFX which does wonders for the sim even taking care of raleigh scattering but I think an argument broke out between the two devs and led to the one I used being no longer available. The upshot of which is that MaxxFX is probably a really good investment for the price, I'll certainly be getting it shortly.

 

 

If you need a hand with g2xpl, drop me a pm and I'll get you started. I also use nVidia control panel to augment the antialiasing and anisotropic filtering settings of the sim. I use the highest settings available in the control panel and it helps a lot too. I'm still experimenting. My shadow settings are as they are because of a bug in the latest nVidia drivers which causes red lines to appear all around objects not because they impact fps. Water reflection I find has a big impact and looks better on low anyway tbh. My total texture size is actually higher than seen but it was still rising when I took the screenie and I ran out of patience.

[blacky75 63]

Yeah, I think I'll give G2XPL a try, especially for the Dublin area as this is the area I fly in most. Have you noticed any performance issues using ZL18 as opposed to ZL17 or 16?

If you do so, don't forget to put into xplane, AltpilotX HD Mesh v2 DSF into ;-) Or you'll get the original DSF with the sat pics ;-)

[Seank23 9]

 

 

Systems vary as will mileage but I can't say I noticed any difference other than between default and ZL 18. I get around 25fps with my settings shown below. I have also used a plugin very similar to MaxxFX which does wonders for the sim even taking care of raleigh scattering but I think an argument broke out between the two devs and led to the one I used being no longer available. The upshot of which is that MaxxFX is probably a really good investment for the price, I'll certainly be getting it shortly.

 

I should be fine, got a 770 like yourself. I use a plugin called BLU-fx if that's what your talking about, it's very similar to MaxxFX and I would really recommend it.

 

 

 

If you do so, don't forget to put into xplane, AltpilotX HD Mesh v2 DSF into ;-) Or you'll get the original DSF with the sat pics ;-)

 

Definitely, I'll download the British Isles chunk later.

[deetee 164]

Sorry if this has been asked before, but when using the World2XPlane sceneries, do I need to disable the reguilar OSM Europe or just make sure they are above it in the scenery ini file?

 

Many thanks.

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

Sorry if this has been asked before, but when using the World2XPlane sceneries, do I need to disable the reguilar OSM Europe or just make sure they are above it in the scenery ini file?

 

Well you should probably disable OSM Europe, as X-Plane has to load it and the World2XPlane scenery to process exclusions. So I'd suggest disabling it if you're not using it. It will helping a lot with loading times and memory also.

[deetee 164]

Thanks Tony, so far so good with the beta 4 stuff.

I'm not using photoscenery with it, but Urban Maxx helps a bit in towns.

But... feeling the frame hit a little - down into the low 20s taking off from LOWI with Objects set to "tons".

 

Edit - that's about 10 fps lower than the regular OSM Europe on my system.

(using the Carenado Tomahawk as my test plane)

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

But... feeling the frame hit a little - down into the low 20s taking off from LOWI with Objects set to "tons".

 

Do you know if this is the Austria scenery using the new SD config? I have the same problem at LOWI, and using the SD config file wins back some frames.

 

 

I'm not using photoscenery with it, but Urban Maxx helps a bit in towns.

 

Also, I find photoscenery will outperform textured scenery nearly every time. In some cases, I see a 5-6fps improvement by using photoscenery. Not sure why this is the case, so your results may differ from mine.

[deetee 164]

Redownloaded Austria and now in the high 20s.

 

EGPF my usual test airport went from 16 to 18 fps with the latest beta4sd.

After dropping World Detail Distance down a notch from Very High to High, I know have 22 fps at Glasgow, so a little compromise has to be made in cities which I guess is to be expected!

[alpilotx 505]

Also, I find photoscenery will outperform textured scenery nearly every time. In some cases, I see a 5-6fps improvement by using photoscenery. Not sure why this is the case, so your results may differ from mine.

Ooh ... I can tell you. And yes it is quite technical, but there is a "good" reason for that.

 

The problem is, that a landscape with generic textures (what default Global Scenery uses, or what HD Mesh Scnery v2 uses) needs a lot of overlapping of textures, to get smooth and natural transitions between the hundreds of different generic textures. Otherwise you would see all the triangle structure of the base mesh (as along the edges, the textures would change abruptly). If I am correct (and please prove me wrong) FlightGear still has (and shows) this problem of hard transitions between different textures (at least lot of FlightGear screenshots show that) ...

 

Now, what is the solution (at least in X-Plane)? It is overdraw .... or simply put, where ever there is a transition between different terrain types, the base mesh has 2-3 overlapping triangles (depending on how many terrain types meet along the edges) instead of only one. One of the is flagged as "physical", the rest are the "overlays" .... And now X-Plane can let the textures transition into each other by using some shader magic, alpha masks in the textures (which  define kind of a "natural" structure ... so its not just a plain, smooth transition!), and different transitions ramps (which define how softly or hardly the transition should happen).

 

Compared to this, a photo scenery does not need all this magic with the (a very big number of) overlapping triangles, because the textures applied (yes, the big "picture" covering a 1x1 degree DSF tile is of course supplied via thousands of small, rectangular texture patches) here do not have the transition problems (they are all unique, tiny patches representing the real world already) .... its like in a photo-puzzle, where you put together the right tiles, and they form a natural picture (and from some distance, you don't see the seam / edges of the tiles).

 

So, as you can see, the scenery with generic textures has the "disadvantage" of needing more magic (and quit a bit of triangle overhead!) to achieve its halfway natural look. And that magic - with much more triangles to draw, and much more shader action needed - costs some FPS. But its advantage is, that its still much smaller than a photoscenery (as it doesn't need billions of unique texture tiles ... instead it synthesizes the world from "only" a few hundred generic textures B) ) ... I like to say, that the generic texture approach if kind of a "lossy compression" of reality :lol: !

 

There is some documentation of the basic mesh (with the physical mesh, overlay mesh, alpha tricks etc.) here:

• http://wiki.x-plane.com/Understanding_and_Building_DSF_Meshes

And you can see this structure via my "x-ray" tool, which helps in visualizing existing DSF mesh (photo scenery or generic mesh etc.):

• XP10 DSF-to-GML v2 script (but this is really only for hard core techies, who know what they are doing! But here are some screenshots, showing the mesh structure visualization)