New Autogen Tech

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

Just amazing. Is this autogen tech going to be in 0.7?
 
And, I know this is 'the question that must never be asked', but do you have a rough ETA for 0.7...?

 

Yes, but remember that I've only done basic autogen artwork for the UK. It takes me about 4-5hours to make a single autogen building, texture it, etc.. so I'm just concentrating on one area. Other areas I'm interested in doing are Alaska, Norway and New Zealand (All have somewhat similar styled autogen), but I'm really limited lately by the time I have

 

As for a rough estimate, I don't have one. Basically, the dreaded answer "When it's ready" :smile:. Not to mention also, that my dev computer has blown, so looking for a new one now. I can use an older Windows machine, but it's painfully slow.

 

I'm going to release the UK on my website for people to try, but I'm awaiting the availability of some data from Ordnance Survey (which is supposed to be available end of March). Depending on how much data they release, the results will either be amazing or so-so. OSM data in the UK is inadequate, and although it now has nice autogen, there is still lack of forests, etc..

[tonywob 4,769]

I finally got some time this weekend to work on some more autogen. This time I've made some buildings for eastern Europe:

 

This shot is taken on the Polish/German border in a small town. It could do with a bit more variety in the buildings and perhaps less trees, but it looks much better than having a trailer park here ;-). 

[CoolP 283]

I like it a lot.

[Mariopilot 9]

Whoa!! I do not fly XP but this is wonderful! I tied a similar approach in FS9 where I attempted placing autogen buildings besides residential OSM roads. Although It worked the FPS impact was unacceptable. It was not very smart either as it could only choose a random building type for each segment of road... I had plans to include new bridges, tunnel mouths, trains, etc... perhaps you can do this in X-Plane very easily...

[raex-flight 3]

Your German/Polish theme really works well. Well done!

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

I tied a similar approach in FS9 where I attempted placing autogen buildings besides residential OSM roads. Although It worked the FPS impact was unacceptable. It was not very smart either as it could only choose a random building type for each segment of road... I had plans to include new bridges, tunnel mouths, trains, etc... perhaps you can do this in X-Plane very easily...

 

It's not particularly easy in X-Plane either, especially since documentation isn't very good with lots of guess work of what things do. I've tried several approaches in X-Plane, including actually placing individual house objects along residential roads. For the most part it worked, but I've found using X-Plane's autogen format better as it allows more flexibility, randomisation and it allows the autogen styles to be easily expanded without rebuilding the entire scenery everytime I add a new block type. One of the major reasons I haven't tried to do similar for FSX/P3D is the memory required for such scenery. For smaller/less-populated countries like Poland, it will run on 32-bit, but go into Germany, and you'd quickly hit the VAS limit and need 64-bit. My favourite FSX project, FranceVFR looked amazing, but it would continually run out of memory for me :(.

 

The biggest problem I have is the lousy data inside OSM. In Poland, I've found people have tagged roads incorrectly as residential, even long backtrack roads running for many kilometers have been tagged as residential, so the effect is a long line of houses which looks ugly. To make it worse, most residential zones haven't been tagged either, so I'm having to resort to third-party data (Corine landcover) to work out where the residential zones are. However, since this is a scenery generator, people can easily spot problems in the data and quickly go and fix it inside OpenStreetMap (Although in practice people rarely do, and simply post bug reports even though fixing the data in OSM would be quicker than actually writing the email ;-)).

[FloB 34]

I finally got some time this weekend to work on some more autogen. This time I've made some buildings for eastern Europe:

 

This shot is taken on the Polish/German border in a small town. It could do with a bit more variety in the buildings and perhaps less trees, but it looks much better than having a trailer park here ;-). 

 

This looks fabulous and I think this is the direction W2XP should head for now.

I'm really sorry I can't provide buildings due to a total lack of know-how and - even worse - time.

 

Flo

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

I think this is the direction W2XP should head for now.

 

Agreed and this is the way forward I think, but I know others would definitely disagree. Autogen looks fine if you don't know the area you're flying in, but as long as it looks 'plausible' (Austin Meyer's favourite word) and makes you believe you are flying over a distinct region's town or village, then as far as I'm concerned it's achieved the effect. Plus using OSM building data alone, I think it will be many years (if ever) that we'll see complete coverage for countries such as Spain.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

Video of Liverpool area. Excuse the piloting of the helo - at least I know why the things attached to the bottom are called skids.

 

To think that the whole of the UK is in this detail is mind boggling.

 

Objects set on extreme.

 

(To get to high def version go to link icon in top right of video and click on the three dots)

 

 

cheers

Peter

[tonywob 4,769]

Thanks for the video Peter, I'm glad people are still using the scenery and enjoying it. Also, I'm happy to see you try the Bell 407, a completely different beast than the Tomahawk and great fun to fly.

 

I've been working hard on autogen for Eastern Europe. Quite simply, I want to fly over my home area, but since the data around here is rubbish, I'm concentrating on realistic autogen. I'll try and post some progress in the next few days, but the results so far are quite pleasing. I'm finding it hard to work on certain items due to lack of any response from Laminar Research, but I think I'm slowly starting to get it from experimenation.

[klamal 282]

Gorgeous!!!  If only X-Plane had ASN weather or something at least close to being able to generate what ASN can in P3D/FSX and at least an aerosoft airbus level Airbus 320/Boeing 737 aircraft now then I'd buy right now.  Once PMDG gets here w/ the NGX, then...

[scotchegg 4,186]

 

 

I'm glad people are still using the scenery and enjoying it.

 

I'm enjoying your stuff immensely Tony. Just earlier I completed a rebuild of Japan with W2XP 0.7 and the latest OSM data and it looks much better. 

 

And the UK project you did is really good. Despite being from the UK and going through a huge bout of homesickness recently I never used to fly around the UK in XP because everything looked wrong. As you know this is one of the problems when procedural generation bumps up against local knowledge. But now, thanks to your UK project, I fly around there all the time and am enjoying it so much.

 

The only thing that's missing (and I know there's nothing you can do about it) is local textures. I know photo scenery is available but there's just to much in it to break the immersion. 

 

Anyway, just wanted to say a big thank you!

[tonywob 4,769]

Thank you, and I'm glad you're enjoying it. People keep telling me that Japan is looking better, so I need to try it out. There are a lot of edits and imports going on in Japan right now for OSM data, and activity has kicked up a lot over the past few months, but I just wish we had Japanese buildings (Japanese autogen here would look great  :wub: )

 

 

 

Despite being from the UK and going through a huge bout of homesickness recently I never used to fly around the UK

 

Same. Although I'm only a 2 hour flight back home, I often fly over places I used to live or visit when I'm homesick and Peter just happens to be training from the my former home airport (and the airport I fly into when I go back to visit). GB Pro scenery does need some work on FPS and the artwork, but I've never found any decent UK scenery (Except Earth Simulations on FSX who have sadly gone out of business), so this is a particular country I'm spending a lot of time on improving.

[tonywob 4,769]

For anyone who wishes to try out this autogen, I've uploaded a scenery for the Czech republic http://world2xplane.com/2015/07/20/czech-republic-autogen/

 

All feedback welcome (Good or bad ;-)).

[wolke85 150]

 

 

but I just wish we had Japanese buildings (Japanese autogen here would look great :wub: )

 

Hi Tony!

Judging from my personal travels to Japan i dare saying that Japanese autogen may not be to hard to model.

I think this is also clearly visible by looking around at Japan via Google Earth/Maps.

Sure there are some very speciic architectural types and styles in Japan - no doubt here - but overall however, i think it should really be possible to build a plausible "Japanases Autogen Library".

But as we know: Time is precious and very limited, ...

Anyways - let's remain confident and maybe one day or another some time in the future, there may also be some Japanese Autogen available.

But for now i hope to find some time to check out Your latest enhancements for the Czech Republic over the next few days.

Thank You very much again for all the effort!

:smile: