Hi there!

I bought the unlocked full version of the XP11 beta release. And I really like the look of the European autogen and the resulting scenery.

One thing I noticed though: There are no higher buildings in cities like Frankfurt. Does that mean, that Laminars OSM data doesn't include the height information in Europe?

But than again, as a test, I installed HD Mesh v3, and, although it definitely looked very different and more dense and precise, there were still no higher buildings and sky scrapers in the Frankfurt city area.

So, does that mean, that the European facade in XP11 doesn't include higher buildings?

 

And sorry for the title, with XPX 11, I meant X-Plane 11. ;-)

The sticky by alpilotx in this subforum has that information for you:

 

further planned improvements in the scenery generator from Laminar (like including building height data, which  has NOT been included in this first scenery released by Laminar with the public beta ... yes, I can confirm this information as I discussed it with Ben Supnik).

 

From: http://www.avsim.com/topic/498742-differences-between-xp11-default-global-scenery-and-hd-mesh-scenery-v3/

The sticky by alpilotx in this subforum has that information for you:

 

 

 

From: http://www.avsim.com/topic/498742-differences-between-xp11-default-global-scenery-and-hd-mesh-scenery-v3/

Thank you for the link, that confirms my impression.

But, beside the missing height information in the OSM data, there seem to be no fitting building types as well. Because, with HD mesh v3, these buildings still don't show up.

In the US, such buildings are present in the default scenery.

In US there is some very old obstacle data, which in a few places has provided building height data. This is - to my knowledge - still in use for the current XP11 default Global Scenery (and was in use for HD Mesh Scenery v3). The real change - at least I hope so - will come with the switch to OSM based building height data (as it provides - even now - much more data points and should make some cities look very cool). And I am very optimistic that it is not an "IF" but only a "WHEN"  (and I will exercise some pressure on Ben to don't forget about this feature).

 

By the way: the reason why Ben left it out was, that the old "tech" in the scenery generator didn't work well with the new OSM data and he wanted it to be a bit more smarter (and integrate better with the complex autogen tech in X-Plane).

Ah, ok! Very interesting!

Thanks a lot for the insight!

But that one question remains, more out ouf the pure curiosity.

Why and how does it work very nicely in XPX with HD Mesh v2 or 3 (cities like Frankfurt or Cologne look very nice with the facade of the European library), and why it isn't working in XP11 at all? Is the default facade vor Europe missing these type of buildings?

Glad to hear that they will add building height data. I was flying in Dublin yesterday and whilst it looks incredibly better, I was surprised to see no difference in building height towards the city centre. 

Why and how does it work very nicely in XPX with HD Mesh v2 or 3 (cities like Frankfurt or Cologne look very nice with the facade of the European library), and why it isn't working in XP11 at all? Is the default facade vor Europe missing these type of buildings?

I think its purely a question of the artwork at use ... With XP10 it was more of an guess work, when / where to put high risers, thus there was some autogen which then looked like high risers where only based on city density it seamed feasible (not necessarily correct!). I suppose - this one I didn't talk with Ben - that in XP11, in anticipation of the cool OSM height data, the autogen is not showing "fake" high risers anymore ... only dense city. And when the real high risers come (via OSM data) then the overall picture will look much better (having correct high riser autogen in the right place with more or less correct height data).

 

This is - admittedly - a bit of a speculation on my side, but knowing Ben (and X-Plane scenery), I think I am not too far off.

Ok, thanks again for the deatailed answer and insight.

So, let's wait for this to be added in a future update.