Wow Tom that looks absolutely fantastic. What a great community we have in X Plane.

 

cheers

Peter

I work on OSM data on days off. I picking out small towns in upper Midwest adding water tower label, and pointing out where gas stations go. Done corrections on roads, ponds, lakes, added farms, houses. To me it's long term project as it will take years to fill it out. FSX is great too, but Xplane is for long haul.

 

 

So anything you want to appear inside an airport (i.e. The entire perimeter), should be done in WED. Anything outside the airport perimeter can be done inside OSM.

 

That is a BIG help.

 

So a couple of hours ago I made my first contribution to OSM. I just added a caravan park in England near to where I used to live. We all have to start somewhere!

The OSM walkthrough/tutorial is very informative. I use Photoshop/3ds Max on and off so OSM comes fairly naturally and I love the concept of OSM. Really great stuff.

 

Is there a list of things that need improving in OSM somewhere, or is it just a case of getting in there and looking?

 

 

I work on OSM data on days off. I picking out small towns in upper Midwest adding water tower label, and pointing out where gas stations go. Done corrections on roads, ponds, lakes, added farms, houses. To me it's long term project as it will take years to fill it out. FSX is great too, but Xplane is for long haul.

 

Not to mention that you've also contributed 3D models of houses to the world-models folder :smile:. It very well might take a few months to a year to build up an area by yourself, but a few poeple together can populate a large area very quickly.

So a couple of hours ago I made my first contribution to OSM. I just added a caravan park in England near to where I used to live. We all have to start somewhere!

The OSM walkthrough/tutorial is very informative. I use Photoshop/3ds Max on and off so OSM comes fairly naturally and I love the concept of OSM. Really great stuff.

 

Is there a list of things that need improving in OSM somewhere, or is it just a case of getting in there and looking?

 

Just a hint for caravan parks, make sure you add the roads/tracks inside also. World2XPlane can then place caravans along the tracks so they look lined up. It works pretty well, check out the caravan parks along the East Coast between Hornsea and Bridlington, and also North Wales. Most roads inside a caravan park can be tagged as highway=service.

 

Regarding a list of improvements. The UK is very patchy, some of it is very well populated, e.g. Birmingham, North Wales, East Yorkshire, Edinburg, etc.. some of it is completely empty. One area that needs lots of attention is Manchester, especially around the airport. Of course you can work on anywhere you like (Have a read through this http://world2xplane.com/2014/03/16/how-will-my-regioncountry-look-using-world2xplane/). The idea is that we can organise an area to edit (somewhere in the world) and all concentrate on that for a week, and then move on. I think this way, we'll get the most popular areas covered as a team effort.

Tony, I'm re-doing my local airport after some information from here.  I'm having to overlay some polygons to get the grass and dirt textures I need, using only polygons from "g10 -> terrain 10" from the "lib" library.  I assume it's OK to use these draped overlays in Gateway submissions?

 

 

I assume it's OK to use these draped overlays in Gateway submissions?

 

As long as you only use X-Plane's library objects, then yes. WED can validate your scenery as you're working on it, so if you are about to do something which will prevent its upload, it will warn you. I think it's in the File menu (Validate Scenery).

OK.  So this validation verifies .pol overlays?  I do have one building (my FBO) which is best displayed as an openscenery object (which I know I will have to replace for Gateway) and the validation works with it in the list.  I assumed that validation was only to make sure XPlane would load and run with it, not that it was Gateway compatible.

 

Another question related to .pol textures.  As I work down the long list of .pol overlays in the "lib," I'm seeing many with different filenames in the "terrain10" list that appear identical in the preview window.  What is the difference, or are they the same with different filenames so that the XP engine will use only those in each geographical terrain area (cold, dry, flat for example) as it retrieves textures for autogen display?

 

Also, when I use these draped polygon overlays, for example bare ground next to grass, I'm getting sharp lines along the borders.  The default textures I'm trying to cover up are all soft, blurred and blended next to adjacent textures (the default airport grass for example).  How is this done?

 

And I'll repeat what I said above.  If there is a better venue for these questions, please let me know.

 

 

OK.  So this validation verifies .pol overlays?  I do have one building (my FBO) which is best displayed as an openscenery object (which I know I will have to replace for Gateway) and the validation works with it in the list.  I assumed that validation was only to make sure XPlane would load and run with it, not that it was Gateway compatible.

 

In WED 1.3, there is an option in the menu to validate it is valid for the gateway, and not just valid scenery. I'm using WED 1.2 at the moment as it supports create draped orphophotos.

 

 

 

Another question related to .pol textures.  As I work down the long list of .pol overlays in the "lib," I'm seeing many with different filenames in the "terrain10" list that appear identical in the preview window.  What is the difference, or are they the same with different filenames so that the XP engine will use only those in each geographical terrain area (cold, dry, flat for example) as it retrieves textures for autogen display?

 

You'll find that they are probably alias names and all of them point to the same object/polygon. I think the aliases switch based on region, etc.. 

 

 

 

Also, when I use these draped polygon overlays, for example bare ground next to grass, I'm getting sharp lines along the borders.  The default textures I'm trying to cover up are all soft, blurred and blended next to adjacent textures (the default airport grass for example).  How is this done?

 

This is because X-Plane won't blend the polygons with the scenery below, so you'll simply get the image splatted/draped onto the terrain with no blending to adjacent scenery. You have two ways to do this:

 

a) Create a second polygon texture which is slightly transparent and has a slight blend into the adjacent tiles you want. e.g. Runway into grass. This is how I've done this in my XPOK Pocklington scenery with the old concrete taxiway. You can also find ready-made edge effects on x-plane.org.

 

b) Create the area you want as a draped object in a 3D application such as Blender or Sketchup. Paint the texture exactly as you want it using transparency around the edges. I've seen this approach used in some commercial sceneries, and is very good if you want to control exactly how the entire texture will look. I've used this to create a gravel car park which blends in to the grass area around it.

Let me know which OSM area you are working on all add couple buildings work town center shape first and start to add houses.

Makes me wonder if there are any other communities than flight simmers who are using OSM and can be encouraged to up their efforts?

 

 

Makes me wonder if there are any other communities than flight simmers who are using OSM and can be encouraged to up their efforts?

 

There's always the Outerra crowd who are going to look at using OSM in the future. But without an easy way to see their changes quickly, they'd lose interest. The same problem exists with FSX/P3D users who don't have an easy-free way to add OSM data to the simulator. They have commercial solutions such OpenVFR and also some scripts to do it, but nothing as easy as running a program theirselves (AFAIK).

 

The way to get people interested is to show it off somewhere, e.g. When the f4 map was shown off (http://demo.f4map.com/), lots of people added OSM3D to the cities, a great example is Warsaw which has 3D buildings in great detail. I think when people see shiny screenshots of what's possible, it encourages them to get editing the map.

But the trouble with either method is that it can't be used for Gateway.  I'm much better with Photoshop and haven't learned Sketchup or Blender (still struggling with WED and W2XP).  And I'm not sure how to turn a Photoshop texture file into a .pol file, or perhaps that's the task of Sketchup/Blender?  I guess the Gateway version will have to have the hard transition lines between polygons ...  :-(

 

***************

Tony said:

 

"This is because X-Plane won't blend the polygons with the scenery below, so you'll simply get the image splatted/draped onto the terrain with no blending to adjacent scenery. You have two ways to do this:

 

a) Create a second polygon texture which is slightly transparent and has a slight blend into the adjacent tiles you want. e.g. Runway into grass.

 

B) Create the area you want as a draped object in a 3D application such as Blender or Sketchup. Paint the texture exactly as you want it using transparency around the edges."

 

 

@Tony.  Here is the problem I'm having.  I've made some notes on this image but I'm not sure how to handle this.  I'm trying to include a dirt area on the west (right) side of this airport runway (KEOS) but I can't get it to blend with the grass and the sharp outline looks artificial.  But if you look on the left side, you'll see the default ground textures (a city texture which shouldn't be there at all - it should be dirt/grass) blend with the runway grass along the side of the taxiway.  Somehow, XP is blending those textures together but won't blend my grass/dirt interface.

 

http://www.pbase.com/mldavis2/image/159155547/original

 

I have a lot of work to do on this before it's ready for Gateway or as an upload.  Should I give up and just put grass where the dirt is to avoid the sharp lines?  I can't use a blended texture with Gateway, anyway. 

 

Also, you can't see it from this shot, but there is a slight rise in the ground which leave some of my hangers slightly above ground on one end.  Is there a way to handle that by flattening the airport area?