Norway Pro (Work in Progress)

[charleslee201 19]

Fantastic

[tonywob 4,769]

No update unfortunately. I'm actually in Norway at the moment for work and haven't had time. I hope to get back to it when I get home

[Bionor 44]

Any news on this? Patiently waiting:-)

[tonywob 4,769]

Sorry guys, I stopped working on this for a while due to a bug I couldn't fix, however it seems that LR finally fixed it in 10.45? (http://www.avsim.com/topic/480237-x-plane-1045-beta-1-released-torque-bug-finally-fixed/#entry3343049). If this is the case then I'll get back on to it after Christmas

 

I was also developing a method to use address points to choose where to locate buildings, so that the autogen is much more accurate, but I stopped working on it whist in Norway. Initial work was good and the autogen almost matched the photoscenery (if you have it), of course I had no idea what the buildings look like, their shape, but I could get their orientation from surrounding roads.

[mtaxp 666]

Hi tony

 

I'm eagerly waiting for more World2XP autogen packages , using those with photoscenery is "as real as it gets" in any simulator.

Great job and thank you!

 

mm just a question , are you planning GB pro V2? (not that it isn't great now , just remeber I read that once :-) )

[tonywob 4,769]

Are you planning GB pro V2? (not that it isn't great now , just remeber I read that once :-) )

 

I released a GB Pro v2 a few months ago ;-). If you mean additional improvements, then yes since this is by far the most popular W2XP download. I made a huge pile of fixes to building placements for Denmark and Massachussetts and I'd like to rebuild GB Pro at some point using this. I also wrote a utility to scan photoscenery or maps to get trees which will mean I can may be able to get some decent coverage for Northern Ireland:

 

 

 

These shots were taken in Poland (I'd love to do a Poland Pro since I live here :-) and all the trees were placed by scanning the photoscenery.

[mtaxp 666]

That's amazing!

 

Thanks , can't wait.

[Humpty 751]

You never told me about V2  I already have GB Pro but don't know if it's V2

[tonywob 4,769]

Yes I did, you beta tested it for me ;-). v2 was renamed to GB Pro HD 

[Humpty 751]

Yes I did, you beta tested it for me ;-). v2 was renamed to GB Pro HD 

 

Hmm was it. 

 

Great then I do not need to download it again

[Murmur 3,941]

I also wrote a utility to scan photoscenery or maps to get trees

 

How does it work? Is it some sort of pattern recognition algorithm?

 

[tonywob 4,769]

How does it work? Is it some sort of pattern recognition algorithm?

 

For raster maps it's fairly easy because the areas are often all one colour so it's easy to vectorise them. Basically you give it a WMS source (e.g. A government source of maps) and tell it what the colours mean and it will vectorise the map and turn it into XP scenery. Most governments won't provide vector data, but they often have WMS sources with raster map data.

 

For photoscenery, it's much more complicated since not only do colours differ across the same image, but also other things share the same colour. Basically, you tell the application what range of colours the trees/forests (and they can be very different per tile) and it tries to vectorise them. It then takes some rules to recognise what might be a single/small group of trees, what is just junk and what is a forest. It seems to work very well if the photoscenery is good quality, but it does take some effort to do an entire country, as not only is ZL17 a must for accuracy, but it needs hand-holding

 

Another interesting one I'd like to do is use LIDAR (Laser scanned terrain and building heights) data combined with building footprints to get the correct heights of buildings. There has already been some work on this for OSM in the UK and results are promising, and would produce some very realistic looking scenery.

[tonywob 4,769]

It' seems 10.45 does fix my autogen problem :-). So here are some more previews (Click to enlarge) in 10.45 taken with the free ortho tiles uploaded to zonephoto by Oscar Pilote (author of Ortho4XP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[soaring_penguin 428]

Tony, this is almost insane taking lower res photoscenery (I guess ZL 16 or less?) with your scenery on top is a perfect match.

[tonywob 4,769]

Yep this is ZL16. They're from the norgeibilder.no website which contains some very good ortho imagery (Although there are lots of different layers so it's a question of choosing whichever is best for the area you are doing, so it's a slow process). I'm currently trying to generate Kristiansand up to Bergen, but it's slow work.