OSM autogen and so on: need some guidance

[Guest]

I decided to get rid of all mesh and OSM stuff I downloaded so far because 1. it has been created for XP10 and may not be up to date and 2. I was curious how well XP11 would look out of the box. Now I love how streets don't run through houses anymore that are baked into the ground textures but during my very first complete flight just now from KRFD to KORD (I decided to move to the US because I think it has more detail) I did see how the roads cut right through fiels in a rather ugly way so... it seems indeed that Photoreal is the way to go.

 

But...

 

1. ...should I create it myself or are the tiles from http://zonephoto.x-plane.fr just as good? If I have to create it myself, can someone provide a screenshots from Ortho4XP with some basic settings that will 'always' work? (EDIT Just now I noticed zonephoto doesn't have that many tiles from the US...)

 

2. ...where/how do I get proper OSM generated buildings/autogen to make things less flat (because I hate flat photoreal)? I presume that tiles override everything that XP11 gives you by default when it comes to buildings? Do I have to generate all that data myself too or can I download complete packages somewhere that will fit nicely (or perfectly) into the photoreal scenery?

 

And as a bonus:

 

3. ...are there quality tiles and is there quality OSM autogen for the Netherlands out there?

[vesalius 153]

Beste Jeroen,

 

I've been following this topic since you opened it. Hoping to learn from the community.

 

Alas... no replies.

 

 

Any help to these converted ESP flyers is much appreciated

[Humpty 751]

Zonephoto is Z16 and with Orhto4XP you can have much more like Z19 which is will be way better but high on disk space, and it would also depend on how good is the coverage but Europe seems to be pretty good. And photoreal will always be flat.

 

I really don't know what autogen does is it that it puts data anywhere i don't know. But openstreetmap is community driven has data in the exact locations. 

 

 Now if you use simheaven W2XP scenery or you can create it on your own using W2XP with OSM data , so you photoreal will be not be flat when you use the W2XP . You will see the buildings / forests etc... on top of the photoreal.

 

I would say for now stay with the default XP11 stuiff as it's pretty good , trust me I made some meshes for my country which took me months but when I see the same areas in XP11 it's wow.

[tonywob 4,769]

1. ...should I create it myself or are the tiles from http://zonephoto.x-plane.fr just as good? If I have to create it myself, can someone provide a screenshots from Ortho4XP with some basic settings that will 'always' work? (EDIT Just now I noticed zonephoto doesn't have that many tiles from the US...)

 

It really depends on where you want to generate. The default settings actually all work very well. I only generally increase the mask size to 32. Most of the tiles on zonephoto are old and not generated with Ortho4XP. You are best making them yourself, especially if you want nice coastlines

 
2. ...where/how do I get proper OSM generated buildings/autogen to make things less flat (because I hate flat photoreal)? I presume that tiles override everything that XP11 gives you by default when it comes to buildings? Do I have to generate all that data myself too or can I download complete packages somewhere that will fit nicely (or perfectly) into the photoreal scenery?
 
I would tell you to use World2XPlane but I no longer develop or support it. You can use my ready-made regions for this. I have Norway, Denmark, UK, Massachussets. Norway and UK will be getting updates and New Zealand is waiting to be released. Simheaven also have W2XP scenery generated for most of the world but I find them too heavy on frames. 
 
3. ...are there quality tiles and is there quality OSM autogen for the Netherlands out there?

 

Absolutely. The Netherlands has very detailed data. I will probably do a region here eventually, but you can also use the Simheaven region (but it likely has too much detail and the shrublines look a bit OTT here). I found Ortho4XP Bing imagery looks good there.
 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info, Zulfiqar and Tony! Much appreciated!

 

I just did my very first flight with my own created Ortho4XP tiles (made two in London at zoom 17) and GB Pro. Well, 1. this combination really hurt my performance, 2. zoom 17 is still a bit low res BUT 3. WOW I can see why people like this because it already looked phenomenal...!!! Seeing ALL those houses in London (took of from Heathrow) fitting exactly in the photoreal (even though it was still low res) is totally awesome!

 

So the next thing I will do (not now but somewhere in the near future: first I will continue to enjoy default XP11 for a while :wink: ) is to create tiles for my home country, the Netherlands, using a mask of 32 and Bing imagery (there are a lot of options for that and it's almost impossible to test them) and use Simheavens scenery on it. Looking forward to your verions for this country, Tony! :wink:

 

Anyway, this looks very interesting and promising. Although 2 tiles at 17 already take some 18 GB so I probably need an extra HD because my two SSD won't be able to handle all this LOL

[Humpty 751]

Netherlands is highly dense with OSM data , it is the 1st country I tried way back b4 W2XP when I used OSM2XP ( W2XP was either under development or was not don't remember ). I used to fly from EHAM rwy 22 (For VFR Only) heading 210 towards Seppe EHSE and it was very convincing data. I used two LED's 20" in eyefinity mode and was having fun.  Some useful info , EHAM TMA is 1000 , when you leave rwy 22 turn to Bravo and then head Victor. IIRC you will hit Amsterdam radar after leaving Victor. 

 

EHAM is available @.org. 

 

Yes even Z17 is high in HDD space , i tried Borana Kenya (well i didn't see the ortho :(  but could be due to the Rdesigns Borana Airport scenery ) but that 1 degree of Z17 was 6GB.

[Murmur 3,941]

So the next thing I will do (not now but somewhere in the near future: first I will continue to enjoy default XP11 for a while :wink: ) is to create tiles for my home country, the Netherlands, using a mask of 32 and Bing imagery (there are a lot of options for that and it's almost impossible to test them) and use Simheavens scenery on it. Looking forward to your verions for this country, Tony! :wink:

 

There is a new Simheaven scenery that has the latest OSM data for Europe, it's called W2xp_Europe_Mix, so that's probably what you're looking for

 

http://simheaven.com/?page_id=3260

 

You also have to install W2xp_World-models to use it (it's the last download on the above link), and I think (not 100% sure, someone could confirm this) it also requires two additional libraries called R2_library and Europe_library:

 

http://simheaven.com/?page_id=14

 

Then of course you have to correctly set up the order in the scenery_packs.ini.

[Guest]

There is a new Simheaven scenery that has the latest OSM data for Europe, it's called W2xp_Europe_Mix, so that's probably what you're looking for

 

http://simheaven.com/?page_id=3260

 

You also have to install W2xp_World-models to use it (it's the last download on the above link), and I think (not 100% sure, someone could confirm this) it also requires two additional libraries called R2_library and Europe_library:

 

http://simheaven.com/?page_id=14

 

Then of course you have to correctly set up the order in the scenery_packs.ini.

 

Ah, just downloaded W2xp_Europe_OSM... well, I will give that a try first anyway. I am trying to create tiles at 18 right now but just one tile is taking hours and it's 30 GB already LOL so I think I'd better go back to 17. As you can see I am having a hard time to keep myself under control with all this LOL but in the meantime, while Ortho4XP is working, I did yet another awesome flight around Lugano with 100% default scenery. It's just incredible. I always asked for a sim with next gen graphics: think I found it. I seriously having a hard time going back to P3D scenery.

[tonywob 4,769]

Jeroen, you'd be better going with ZL16 and having ZL18 around airports. If you use the Custom Zoom Level option in Ortho4XP you can choose areas of higher zoom. It works really well because on take off you have high res textures and once you reach 3000ft, ZL16 is more than good enough (at least for me). The advantage is that you can generate lots of areas and not use massive amounts of disk space.

[Guest]

Jeroen, you'd be better going with ZL16 and having ZL18 around airports. If you use the Custom Zoom Level option in Ortho4XP you can choose areas of higher zoom. It works really well because on take off you have high res textures and once you reach 3000ft, ZL16 is more than good enough (at least for me). The advantage is that you can generate lots of areas and not use massive amounts of disk space.

 

Great tip! Thanks! My first tile is done now: some 37 GB LOL

[Humpty 751]

Great tip! Thanks! My first tile is done now: some 37 GB LOL

 

Which area ? 

[Guest]

Which area ? 

 

+52+005 (the center of the Netherlands).

[markk70 26]

Question:

With Orth4XP when you create overlays and point the directory to the XP11 global scenery folder wouldn't you also have the latest OSM data?

 

Marcel

[hjsmuc 393]

 

 

but I no longer develop or support it.

 

Which is really sad. Maybe one question is allowed: I never to manage to get smart exclusions to work. I set it to true but the default autogen never shows up. Any idea what the reason might be?

[tonywob 4,769]

With smart exclusions you have to set the range to trigger an exclusion. In your config file you have these options
 

<building-exclusion-range>150</building-exclusion-range>
<buildings-per-grid>5</buildings-per-grid>
<forest-exclusion-range>1000</forest-exclusion-range>

Building and forest exclusions range say how many metres in size each zone should be, the buildings-per-grid say how many OSM buildings can appear in each range before an exclusion is triggered, so the above says: Split the tile into 150x150m for buildings, if more than 5 buildings appear in one of the 150x150 grids, don't create an exclusion. The forest one is much higher, but is the same idea. You can try tweaking these values to see if they work, but I think there is likely a bug in there somewhere in 0.7.6.

 

I intended to get rid of smart exclusions completely for performance reasons and actually just place X-Plane's or my autogen instead. You can see this in my Germany SD scenery on x-plane.org.