Now it's progressed to tile generation it is using all 4, but low memory usage. Anyway, it's working so no biggie, just wondered if the previous version was a bit quicker.

Development Update
 
I've received one or two emails recently asking me what's going on with W2XP, and when is the next version out :-), so here's an update of what I'm currently working on and I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts about this.
 
One of the problems with W2XP's approach to scenery is the lack of regional artwork and the sheer huge number of objects required to give a region a unique look (Cities being virtually impossible). The solution to this problem I believe is to simply stop trying to find any old random building to fit in a building footprint, and instead use whatever data is available to create autogen (Using roads, existing buildings, landclass, etc).

This gives the following advantages over the current approach:

- Less artwork required to give a region a unique look.
- Less requirement on detailed data. It will work with patchy data, as well as detailed data. Using whatever information it can and filling in the gaps.
- Future support for remapping ground textures for those who don't use photoscenery
- No need to recompile an entire scenery when new artwork is added.
- Faster loading times and better FPS in cities.
- Buildings that follow angled roads and face the road correctly.
- Much more realistic looking villages (No more lego brick facades ruining the appearance)
- Farms, industrial areas etc will work as before if the building data is available, as these generally look good using facades.
- No need for smart exclusions.

Of course, it has some disadvantages

- Buildings won't fit exactly to the footprint on the ground, it will be very much an approximation. If you know an area very well and are looking for your house, you maybe disappointed.
- If the data is bad, e.g. Someone has tagged a primary road stretching for many KMs as a residential road (this happens a lot), then there will be houses along this road where there aren't in real life. This can be solved somewhat by using third-party data (e.g. For Europe we have the corine landclass data, Norway has the kartverket data, etc..).
 
Here are some screenshots taken around Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic showing how the buildings change.

Central European Region









German Villages







European Cities





Spanish Villages






 
All models used have varied LOD information. Up close (if you fancy a drive around or low-and-slow in a heli), the buildings will be detailed. Further away, all the detail is not rendered to make it perform better. 

Because of the way the scenery works, it's possible to swap out individual blocks/buildings to regional varieties. e.g. Once some buildings for Norway are available, these can replace some of the generic European buildings. Additionally, in order to give cities some uniqueness, buildings over a certain size (or height) will still be rendered the old way.
 
There are some other tricks it does, e.g.
 
- It looks for names or areas/roads in cities/towns such as "Old Town/Altstadt/Stary Rynek" and will switch the building styles accordingly. Historic city centre areas will look historic.
- It will use population tags if available to determine how big a city/town is and will adjust the size of the centre accordingly.

I wish I was half as talented as you are Sir! :im Not Worthy:

Fantastic screenshots!  :o

 

Just curious:

 

Will we be able to switch off the "gap filling" part of world2xplane, so we do not get "randomly" placed buildings and trees on photo scenery textures?

 

If you are still looking for people to test your new version, feel free to add me to that list.

Will we be able to switch off the "gap filling" part of world2xplane, so we do not get "randomly" placed buildings and trees on photo scenery textures?

 

No, because that's not how autogen works. How would World2XPlane know the difference between lack of data or there being no buildings at all in real life? It's a safe bet to say that if a road is residential, it will have houses on it, etc.. There is simply no way round this, you either have the autogen, improve your datasource or you don't use autogen :smile:

 

Besides that, nothing else will change, there will still be scenery with autogen, and without, etc.. (i.e. It's configurable)

 

 

I wish I was half as talented as you are Sir!

 

Ha ha thanks. It's not talent, just lots of patience ;-)

I just re-downloaded everything and I think I've done everything I need to, but starting a generation for US-West (I know, another big file...) I get a generation failed message and this log note:

 

java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: java.lang.AssertionError: data were not fully read, check your serializer 

at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerGet(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(Unknown Source)

at com.world2xplane.Parser.OSMProcess.buildScenery(OSMProcess.java:440)

at com.world2xplane.Parser.OSMProcess.process(OSMProcess.java:313)

at com.world2xplane.Parser.OSMProcess.process(OSMProcess.java:82)

at com.world2xplane.World2XPlane.run(World2XPlane.java:119)

at com.world2xplane.GUI.Worker.run(Worker.java:79)

Caused by: java.lang.AssertionError: data were not fully read, check your serializer 

at org.mapdb.Store.deserialize(Store.java:299)

at org.mapdb.StoreDirect.get2(StoreDirect.java:475)

at org.mapdb.StoreDirect.get(StoreDirect.java:428)

at org.mapdb.Caches$HashTable.get(Caches.java:246)

at org.mapdb.EngineWrapper.get(EngineWrapper.java:58)

at org.mapdb.HTreeMap.getInner(HTreeMap.java:458)

at org.mapdb.HTreeMap.get(HTreeMap.java:397)

at com.world2xplane.DataStore.JDBMStore.getRelationInfo(JDBMStore.java:158)

at com.world2xplane.Parser.OSMPBFTileProcessor.readWayInfo(OSMPBFTileProcessor.java:147)

at com.world2xplane.Parser.OSMPBFTileProcessor.parseWays(OSMPBFTileProcessor.java:198)

at org.openstreetmap.osmosis.osmbinary.BinaryParser.parse(BinaryParser.java:121)

at org.openstreetmap.osmosis.osmbinary.BinaryParser.handleBlock(BinaryParser.java:68)

at org.openstreetmap.osmosis.osmbinary.file.FileBlock.process(FileBlock.java:135)

at org.openstreetmap.osmosis.osmbinary.file.BlockInputStream.process(BlockInputStream.java:34)

at com.world2xplane.Parser.OSMProcess$Worker.call(OSMProcess.java:360)

at com.world2xplane.Parser.OSMProcess$Worker.call(OSMProcess.java:340)

at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)

at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)

at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

 

I think I must have missed something but not sure what. Any help you can give much appreciated.

hey there.... can anyone explain me why W2XP is dead?! Just can't find anything about, anywhere :( HEEEELP (my zip was broken, lost data, including W2XP!)

 

TIA

Get it all from SimHeaven.com

First off, Thank you Tony for this past development of this product.
Having purchased X-Plane 11 and attempting to better the scenery in the USA.
I just learned how to update the OSM data using smart-exclusion to fill in the areas that have no osm data.

1. Does anyone know how to modify the config-hd file to use the same default houses that XP-11's auto-gen uses.
   (really only the houses need to match... I found some earlier posts talking about trees / forests)
    
2. Or if there is a way to just not populate the residential home data within the PBF I'd prefer to leave xp11 to auto gen that.
   
   Above the plane is showing OSM generated homes.
   Below the plane shows the XP autogen homes I like.
   
   https://goo.gl/photos/FEZnB2NpFzABDbw38

any feedback is appreciated.

bill