OPEN BETA/COMMUNITY PROJECT: OSM World

[sascha 314]

Hi Mario,

 

I would like to test this too! I am always looking to improve my FS9 and I would be very interested indeed to see how it works with Evo. The somewhat lacklustre roads and coast data available has alway bugged me!

 

I also second Andreas's suggestion of starting with Asia for your second package - there is almost no LC available for it that I am aware of.

 

Regards,

Sascha

[AndyPaul 11]

I suspect your problem with EURW_22_Libobj_excl.bgl is one of scnery area priority. Since the OSM world 1 core is supposed to go BELOW all scenery areas including the defaule EURW (FS9/scenery/EURW) it will not exclude lib objects there! if you place it on top, SHAZAM! it kills everything! I am including this file because sometimes roads will cross airports, and they bring light poles with them (I have a little add-on that places cars too, so...). These are library objects that can be excluded only using the "All objects" option... Another solution was to exclude VTP scenery instead, and it worked, but you'd have no nice roads right besides the trminals, they will abruptly terminate a few distance away from the airport! please check your library priorities. I instead preferred exclusion rectangles that may also get rid of trees and buildings too close to the runway thresholds (FS9 vegetation is oversized for performance reasons).

 

Ah, thanks. That explains it and makes sense. I rearranged the scenery and it works now.

 

 

 

Also, I am glad you are testing this with FS9 Evo, As I have been tracking its development closely (and it is breathtaking).

 

It is indeed breathtaking for what we're used to in FS2004 before. Particuarly Autogen density and night lighting is fantastic.

 

 

 

There is a sort of base land class, in the OSM world core too! It makes sure that new areas that extend out to the sea (and therefore end up in the default water class) are instead covered by a mix of two types of forest in a noise pattern (NEVER use vast extents of sam-type class to avoid tiling). I may need to recheck if I covered all inland lakes there... some recent flights indicate I may have not!!

 

What I basically mean is the following (and please feel free to correct me if I write something dumb):

 

Your OSM World delivers landuse (city/urban) polygons that are very precise in where an urban area is and where there should not be any. It basically contains all the urban information we need to be able to more or less know where we are if we know an area (in combination with roads, rivers, ponds, railways, etc). In between the polygons there should be no  urban areas (and in Europe OSM is quite precise in that matter, and you even have small villages in your data).

 

Hence, in-between the polygons of OSM World there is empty space and this empty space is filled by the landclass (either the default crappy landclass of FS9 or an addon such as Landscape Germany). This land-classification contains both natural areas AND urban areas. The latter, the urban areas, however, are not needed anymore since the urban areas are defined by your OSM World polygons. But, both your urban polygons and the landclass mix and as a result you get urban areas were there should be none.

 

The solution would be to make a land classification that only contains information about where there are forests (does OSM World contain forest information?), where there are fields, etc but no urban classes. Your OSM World Polys would always override the landclass if needed. Of course, it wouldn't make sense to only use one class as it would be a repetition-nightmare and would look ugly. But, on the other hand, making a full landclassification that would include natural as well as urban classes is extremely time consuming, and compared to your polygons, would not realistic (in the sense of FS9) anymore (after trying OSM World). So, I will try to make a small area with only landclasses within the next week or so and will post some screenies. 

Hi Mario,

 

I would like to test this too! I am always looking to improve my FS9 and I would be very interested indeed to see how it works with Evo. The somewhat lacklustre roads and coast data available has alway bugged me!

 

I also second Andreas's suggestion of starting with Asia for your second package - there is almost no LC available for it that I am aware of.

 

Regards,

Sascha

 

Hehe, not unexpected! :-) Its no conventional landclass but vector landclass which makes it much better! Coming back to the story of the greenish Spain, a new land classification is needed and we have FS9.9.

[Mariopilot 9]

Hi Mario,

 

I would like to test this too! I am always looking to improve my FS9 and I would be very interested indeed to see how it works with Evo. The somewhat lacklustre roads and coast data available has alway bugged me!

 

I also second Andreas's suggestion of starting with Asia for your second package - there is almost no LC available for it that I am aware of.

 

Regards,

Sascha

 

Beta tester #4 you are welcome!! and what a tester did I get here!!

 

Andy,

 

If you know how to make a new landclass, go ahead! I tried to see time ago using GlobCover data, and just looking around it appeared to be a complicated task. You'd have to remove urbanization areas from it, possibly with some kind of algorithm that replaces it with the closest neighbor pixel...

I however am not keen to remove all urban depiction from the default landclass, as OSM may not cover certain areas (it is superb in some areas, some others are so-so). Also, this scenery uses only 3 types of textures. HiRise for large areas, Urban non-grid medium dry for the rest, and urban grid medium dry for industrial. I wanted to use urbann grid large dry for the industrial, bu7t it appears to crash FS9...

[AndyPaul 11]

Andy,

 

If you know how to make a new landclass, go ahead! I tried to see time ago using GlobCover data, and just looking around it appeared to be a complicated task. You'd have to remove urbanization areas from it, possibly with some kind of algorithm that replaces it with the closest neighbor pixel...

I however am not keen to remove all urban depiction from the default landclass, as OSM may not cover certain areas (it is superb in some areas, some others are so-so). Also, this scenery uses only 3 types of textures. HiRise for large areas, Urban non-grid medium dry for the rest, and urban grid medium dry for industrial. I wanted to use urbann grid large dry for the industrial, bu7t it appears to crash FS9...

I can see your point and its looks brilliant even with a landclass such as landscape germany, were urban areas are present. I will see what can be done with GlobCover and the Corine data. Should be no problem to remove the urban classes and replace them with something else.

 

Anyway, will report back after some flying!

 

Cheers,

Andreas

[Mariopilot 9]

Allright, Have fun flying around! Hopefully more testers will join in soon

[kiwiflyer45 123]

Hi Mario

I am currently re-installing FS9 and thus far the installation is a reasonably clean one. So I'd be glad to help with the test if you still need people

Cheers

Ian

[Mariopilot 9]

Hi Mario

I am currently re-installing FS9 and thus far the installation is a reasonably clean one. So I'd be glad to help with the test if you still need people

Cheers

Ian

 

Hi There! PM on your way, you are tester #5 out of a maximum of 20!

[AndyPaul 11]

Hey hey,

 

here's a quick report for the evening:

 

- Filename errors (non-issue):

• SWIZERLAND --> SWITZERLAND
• LUXEMBURG --> LUXEMBOURG

- Streams and Waterbodies overlap. This looks strange since (probably depending on water settings) a river can be seen through. If possible a water body should "kill" a river ;-). Here's a screenshot (hope it can be seen):

 

 

In TMF Viewer it becomes more clear:

 

 

 

- Overall, I get the impression that all rivers are too low / too deep within meshes? Is it possible to let the rivers follow the mesh?

- Reykjavik city is missing some polygons and hence is not complete. It seems that on OSM there are city polygons for the whole city. So maybe you forgot to process a specific city polygon from the OSM data or it wasn't included in the downloaded OSM data. The screenshot shows Reykjavik with custom landclass that does not contain urban landclass, so it really only shows city data of OSM World (Which was what I wanted). Screenies (No 1 with custom landclass and OSM world landuse polys, no 2 from openstreetmap.org):

 

 

 

 

 

Hope it helps!!

 

P.S. If you guys are interested in testing the landclass for iceland you are welcome to send me a PM for the link. It wil be freeware eventually and adress the issues of southern Europe. It was done with and for FS9 Evo but should work with any other texture set and will also work with OSM World (including a version without urban class for OSM enjoyment).

 

Cheers,

Andreas

[Mariopilot 9]

Guys, wwe are back and rolling!!

 

 Andy thanks for all. Indeed data is from Geofabrik... I will try and see how tedious is to process "buildings" layer too! If the buffering algorythm allows me to process these in a decent amount of time, then it could serve muche reliable urban polygon results!

[Mariopilot 9]

OK, given the fact that the depression caused by streamlines is way more visible with FS9Evo (and possibly other texture sets), here a brief description on how to assassinate the offset depth:

 

Just on top of your terrain.cfg

//Stream Lines
[Texture.1024] //  stream lines / unknown / perennial
Type=1
Size=4
ExcludeAutogen=1
MaskClassMap=3
Textures=RiverSU.bmp
offset=-10

[Texture.1025] // stream lines / unknown / non-perennial
Type=1
Size=4
ExcludeAutogen=1
MaskClassMap=3
Textures=RiverSU.bmp
offset=-10

change offset=0 for both the streamline entries (although OSM World Western Europe makes use only of texture.1024)

 

So far:

 

• I will reduce the width of the larger roads (will take TIME)
• I will attempt to process "buildings" to better the quality of the urban polygons. (If processing times are humanly possible, I'll do. Will take loads of time!)
• If a second coverage area will ever come to fruition, it will probably be south America... covering the entire planet by myself will result in everyone running P3d v5.0 by the time I am done... maybe a community effort is coming along!

[AndyPaul 11]

OK, given the fact that the depression caused by streamlines is way more visible with FS9Evo (and possibly other texture sets), here a brief description on how to assassinate the offset depth:

 

Just on top of your terrain.cfg

 

//Stream Lines
[Texture.1024] //  stream lines / unknown / perennial
Type=1
Size=4
ExcludeAutogen=1
MaskClassMap=3
Textures=RiverSU.bmp
offset=-10

[Texture.1025] // stream lines / unknown / non-perennial
Type=1
Size=4
ExcludeAutogen=1
MaskClassMap=3
Textures=RiverSU.bmp
offset=-10

change offset=0 for both the streamline entries (although OSM World Western Europe makes use only of texture.1024)

 

So far:

 

• I will reduce the width of the larger roads (will take TIME)
• I will attempt to process "buildings" to better the quality of the urban polygons. (If processing times are humanly possible, I'll do. Will take loads of time!)
• If a second coverage area will ever come to fruition, it will probably be south America... covering the entire planet by myself will result in everyone running P3d v5.0 by the time I am done... maybe a community effort is coming along!

Thanks for the info on the streamlines, I will play around with it.

 

I think the width of the roads is just fine and kind of like it. Much easier too follow during VFR flight.

 

I think you should only attempt reprocessing with buildings if it really makes sense. My observations were only from Iceland and with a special landclass. Most of the users will have a normal landclass and will not notice it. :-)

 

I am all for South America; for Asia, Middle East and Eastern Europe a community effort should be organizable.

 

Cheers,

Andreas

[Mariopilot 9]

A few experiments with the landuse polygons vs. buildings reveals it can be done, but the effort will be tremendous. processing iceland, that comes with 8MB worth of building polys is doable, but france ships with 2GB! I will need a cluster of mega-servers to process that in reasonable amounts of time! I am running my GIS data through QGIS, which is fine, but is no professional software... I think it does not take any advantage of multi-core...

 

South America is a doable area (for me), North America and Canada seem suicidal, Oceania maybe, Asia is largely empty probably... Eastern Europe may be no.3 in the list...

I will see the commercial success of this, but I can envision myself compiling a how-to guide and setting up a team to process the data! You do not need a single payware program! Just lots of patience once you figure out the process!

[sascha 314]

 

 

A few experiments with the landuse polygons vs. buildings reveals it can be done

 

Mario, could you please explain how the landuse polygons work?

[Mariopilot 9]

Mario, could you please explain how the landuse polygons work?

FS9 scenery land class is normally stored in a HUGE bitmap (worldlc.bgl). This approach allows for squares of approx. 1Km where a given texture type is defined. FS9 then generates a sort of fractal intersection between adjacent different classes. It looks plausible and OK, but it is limited to that 1 Km resolution.

 

Then there is VTP (Vectored Terrain Polygons). Generally you use this to define things like airport skirting polygons, or apply a custom texture to them. A VTP vertex can be placed with an accuracy of about 4.5m in FS9. This is roughly the space occupied by a single pixel on the ground. The trick here is that VTP polygons can be assigned any of the land classes used by FS (although some seem to crash it). These polygons simply adhere to the ground like a decal, the AutoGEN being identical to what you will get by using the texture from landclass BGL.

 

To avoid compiler issues with geometries becoming corrupt when snapped to this resolution,  OSM World uses about 10m resolution. OSM data includes land use polygons, I extracted the "residential" and "industrial" type, leaving the rest out, as "Forest" can be lots of things depending on region!

To date, OSM world does not include any texture of its own. I experimented using residential roads and vector autogen to place rows of buildings, but it did not work out ( FSDeveloper thread ).

[AndyPaul 11]

A few experiments with the landuse polygons vs. buildings reveals it can be done, but the effort will be tremendous. processing iceland, that comes with 8MB worth of building polys is doable, but france ships with 2GB! I will need a cluster of mega-servers to process that in reasonable amounts of time! I am running my GIS data through QGIS, which is fine, but is no professional software... I think it does not take any advantage of multi-core...

 

South America is a doable area (for me), North America and Canada seem suicidal, Oceania maybe, Asia is largely empty probably... Eastern Europe may be no.3 in the list...

I will see the commercial success of this, but I can envision myself compiling a how-to guide and setting up a team to process the data! You do not need a single payware program! Just lots of patience once you figure out the process!

If you would write a little guide/how-to, there might be a few people who would jump onboard, me included. I have QGIS setup so I would be ready to start (with Asia or something down there). Some plugins are multithreaded in QGIS, some unfortunatetly not, the core of QGIS is not I believe, which is a pity.

 

How do actually define the width of the roads? Is that during the compiling process?