That interface is called OpenStreetmap (OSM) .... thats what others above already recommended. There - of course - you do not edit the landclass data, but devise real building footprints (and a lot of other things - everything that can be mapped). That again will not help much with default autogen, but can be used for even more accurate OSM2XP or World2Xplane scenery (where you have really a lot more control over the style of your city).

 

For landclass data there will never be such interface (at least not from Laminar). The reason is, that your edits might be far to miniscule compared to the improvements we can have - from time to time - by getting new versions of the basic data released by the different institutions ... and in that case we might be inclined to rather "overwrite" all the tiny edits to get the overall improvements of the data. No, seriously, I think classic - raster - Landclass data is definitely nothing which should come in the realm of the community (there are enough big organizations spending years and lots of manpower on this kind of scientific analyzis etc.) ... Thats why I highly recommend to rather put all your efforts into OSM (by the way, you can devise landclass zones in OSM too ... even though we don't use it until now for default scenery, because its very very far from being halfway "complete") ... because the better OSM gets, the more it can be used to improve scenery 8even if for now its mostly via world2xplane - but which is a fantastic effort).

 

 

I'm just saying that there should be a relatively straightforward way to fix this stuff; I'd be more than happy to see a guide explaining how I can identify, for example, a neighborhood in XP, and set a different building type.

 

As alpilotx has already mentioned, this is exactly what OpenStreetMap is for. Using World2XPlane, you can recreate a city with every building in the correct place and approximately of the correct type. All the information you add, such as height, color, class, etc will be used. Of course, you have your work cut out if the town/city isn't mapped, but it's possible to do and many people have taken up this task.

 

For higher level mapping (i.e. Zones), the data in OSM just isn't good enough. e.g. Residential areas don't say what types of houses they have, but you could probably do a reasonable guess from the size and proximity from a city. I've used this same principle when trying to guess the heights of buildings (i.e. I use a combination of tags, such as how far from the city/town/village centre, how big the residential area) on guessing heights.

 

That being said, if such an interface existed, I doubt many people would actually use it. We've had OSM now for a few years in X-Plane now, and not many people take the time to fix issues or add buildings etc..

Thanks guys - great info.

 

I guess from my (very) limited knowledge in creating scenery, it seems logical that it would be done in a way that allowed easy modification without having to get "super technical" ...

 

I realize there's a lot more to it than that. I'll look into OSM and see what I can learn. If you have any references to read or tutorials that would allow me to understand what I'd need to do to make improvements, please advise.

 

cheers

Andrew

 

I'll look into OSM and see what I can learn. If you have any references to read or tutorials that would allow me to understand what I'd need to do to make improvements, please advise.

Well, Tonys website might be the best place to start with as he has already created quite a few great tutorials on exactly these topics:

• http://world2xplane.com/tutorials/

Excellent! Thanks guys!