New installer to update global scenery

[soaring_penguin 428]

14 minutes ago, AnsorgJ said:

Just about 3GB updates: the previously missing stuff towards the north pole. No new autogen. What's the trigger to get it?

There is no trigger, you must download the new installer directly from Laminar, then choose the option "Update Scenery Online".

I guess it depends on what you have installed, and which region you fly, you will see the new high rise buildings or not. From what I see, they correspond with their real life counterparts, I mean they are in the correct location with approximately the correct height, it is not like normal autogen.

[theskyisthelimit 48]

Shows 47gb for me, but the update keeps stalling. 

[alpilotx 505]

58 minutes ago, MarioDonick said:

And I hope that lake Bodensee has returned, but still have to download 25 GB to confirm that...

Yes, of course ... and I think I wrote about this already in a few places.

Reason was an absolutely idiotic tag in OSM on the lake, which tripped one of the sanity checks in my import process and filtered it out. Luckily this problematic tag was only available in my OSM import from last August, but now in the next one from December it was already corrected in the source (OSM) itself. Thus the lake is back.

[MarioDonick 752]

34 minutes ago, alpilotx said:

Yes, of course ... and I think I wrote about this already in a few places.

Reason was an absolutely idiotic tag in OSM on the lake, which tripped one of the sanity checks in my import process and filtered it out. Luckily this problematic tag was only available in my OSM import from last August, but now in the next one from December it was already corrected in the source (OSM) itself. Thus the lake is back.

And indeed, it is there :) The area now looks really great, with the European autogen and the brighter streets.

[x-plane 123 61]

Looking forward to trying it out when I get a chance to download it!

4 hours ago, alpilotx said:

But you didn't hear anything ... just lets wait and see if or what will make its way to an upcoming XP release.

Talking about things we haven't heard about... any update on the new water coloring?

 

 

[Adrian123 1,015]

I simply used the updater included in XP11 folder and downloaded the new sceneries. above 60 degrees etc. The installer at the top of the thread points me to the complete Demo installer.

[ryanbatc 12,781]

Is there any reason to get this for USA usage?

[theskyisthelimit 48]

Mine said 47gb to download but when it finished my main folders custom scenery aside lost about 15gb

Anyone else have this happen?  Custom did not change. 

[soaring_penguin 428]

4 hours ago, Adrian123 said:

I simply used the updater included in XP11 folder and downloaded the new sceneries. above 60 degrees etc. The installer at the top of the thread points me to the complete Demo installer.

That is the one you need! It is the same installer for the demo and the complete version.

[alpilotx 505]

8 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

Is there any reason to get this for USA usage?

Just like the entire global scenery, North America was re-cut too ... with some - maybe - obvious and some less obvious improvements (the scenery generator itself receivde some smaller autogen placement updates, but also the OSM data side is now newer AND building heights are "changed" in the USA too ... New York for example should look even more "dense" and realistic now).

[alpilotx 505]

11 hours ago, x-plane 123 said:

Talking about things we haven't heard about... any update on the new water coloring?

Water coloring should - I think - already be in. At least the data should have been shipped (there should be a water color folder in one resources subfolder - sorry, don't have the sim at hand at the moment). It is relatively "tuned down" and maybe not very "in your face" .... but especially in the Caribbean, there should be some slight ocean color changes (if you zoom out quite a bit, it might get more obvious).

Its a really problematic story, as getting global water color data is not trivial (and I have realized, how complex this topic really is from a scientific point of view) ... it took some time until we could decide which way to go (and don't make a diploma thesis out of it). For now, it is effectively based on the ocean coloring in NASAs Blue Marble Next Generation project (https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BlueMarble/). I "just" needed to find a way to - halfway - acceptably extract the water color from it (which - again - was less trivial than it sounds ...).

So, the data is there ... and the water shader should already factor it in. But maybe it will need some tweaking / tuning in the future (which I am sure, is not so high on Bens priority list ... because at least it works, even if its maybe not perfect).

(DISCLAIMER: it could be - didn't re-check in the last Betas - that the new water color shader is still not active and I might have seen the tests with an internal build ... in that case, sorry ... but nevertheless, the pre-requisites are definitely in place and it could then come sooner than later).

[carrotroot 77]

Osm for the United States is somewhat of a mixed bag, for major cities it can be very detailed while smaller cities such as Tampa and Orlando are almost completely lacking their building heights (although they do have all of the major building footprints in) so they have sort have vanished in the Sim. 

In a perfect world people would just go and edit the Osm database ... However, waiting for the data to someday improve might take a very long time. I'm hoping that they will merge the previous building height data source with the US OSM for the next recut. This will hopefully bring back these smaller cities.

[alpilotx 505]

13 minutes ago, carrotroot said:

In a perfect world people would just go and edit the Osm database ... However, waiting for the data to someday improve might take a very long time. I'm hoping that they will merge the previous building height data source with the US OSM for the next recut. This will hopefully bring back these smaller cities.

Very, very unlikely ... as "they" would mean "me"  ... and i was already thinking about this, but merging non-overlapping but partially redundant geodata is a non-trivial task (as in some "collision" cases its not even possible to tell, which source should "win"). ... By the way, the old data was some FAA obstacle data (definitely very old and outdated).

My observation (and comparison made for many cities) showed that really only a few cities lost a few buildings (while sometimes the same cities gained some other buildings ... where FAA did not have anything). For this reason, I will quite likely not spend resources on a task like this ...

I can really just encourage everybody to go and rather improve OSM (as that is the way forward and win for all other projects too!). For building heights you might for example (this is usually easier if you do not have facts about buildings) simply add the building.levels tag which gets evaluated and transformed in height (by some value). You can for example count building levels by using Google (or Bing) birds eye view ...

There are also some talks at Laminar, that in the future there might (as always, this is a "might" - we will see when / how / or if at all it happens) be more regular scenery updates than before ... as now the infrastructure for online scenery delivery and update is in place.

[alpilotx 505]

In the meantime I checked the water color stuff in XP11b15 and it is definitely in. Go for example to KEYW and zoom out quite a bit (and make a clear, cloud free day to have a good view) .... then you should see some partial turquoise coloring in some areas around the Keys ... 

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

14 hours ago, theskyisthelimit said:

Mine said 47gb to download but when it finished my main folders custom scenery aside lost about 15gb

Anyone else have this happen?  Custom did not change. 

My download was also 47 GB's, due to my installed content.  It did fully download the full 47 GB's.