2 hours ago, Litjan said:

It´s a job that takes an afternoon to create a nice rendition of your local hospital in WED, then you can also upload it to the Scenery Gateway and have it appear for everyone in X-Plane. 

There are literally thousands of such hospitals (and other helicopter landing sites) already fleshed out like that in X-Plane. Granted, they don´t sport the name of the hospital on the front of the building and the buildings and pads are generic, but they are often a fairly accurate representation of the actual buildings and settings. 

Here is one example:

https://gateway.x-plane.com/airports/AZ24/show

I am seriously considering doing just that - thanks for the motivation!

There is also an old WWII / Cold War airfield nearby that is already in the sim (not as a usable airfield, but the runways/taxiways are there), but needs some minor work and terrain flattening to get it back in action. Maybe I'll knock them both out.

Hospitals could be indeed important for VFR-navigation. During my PPL-lessons we used to train at an airport that required to have a big hospital as an aiming point (visual reference) when doing the approach patterns.

3 hours ago, Franz007 said:

Hospitals could be indeed important for VFR-navigation. During my PPL-lessons we used to train at an airport that required to have a big hospital as an aiming point (visual reference) when doing the approach patterns.

Ha! Same...not a hospital but a silo at the end of the downwind leg left hand for RWY 12 at Cardiff! 

6 hours ago, Falconjet112 said:

Ha! Same...not a hospital but a silo at the end of the downwind leg left hand for RWY 12 at Cardiff! 

For me it was a fish pond 😄. 

59 minutes ago, uwespeed said:

For me it was a fish pond 😄. 

SimHeaven is good for these VFR reporting points. Airports in the UK often reference ponds, stations, churches etc - SimHeaven may not get the building exactly right, but it will be there.

IIRC the respective fish pond is already contained in the XP default scenery. Simheaven doesn't change the default mesh and thus areas of water, but only drapes overlays above the base mesh. So, Simheaven is also a 'nice to have' but not necessarily required for navigation. It only makes it sometimes easier.

27 minutes ago, uwespeed said:

Simheaven is also a 'nice to have' but not necessarily required for navigation. It only makes it sometimes easier.

I prefer to use SimHeaven in XP12, especially for circuit flying and local VFR. While the default scenery is good enough for A-to-B navigation, SimHeaven adds all the buildings and features often referenced in airfield circuit instructions. They might not look exactly like real-world structures, but their placement is accurate enough to provide essential visual cues. Combined with ortho imagery, it makes the experience much closer to real-world VFR flying.

That's what I basically said 🙂.

I've been in full flight simulators of the LH (MD11 twice, B737 and A380^*) and - partly - their 'scenery' was so 'good' that some^TM flight simmers would refuse to operate that thing 😄.

^*A380's scenery was good.

On 8/3/2025 at 9:27 PM, UrgentSiesta said:

It all comes down to Suspension of DISbelief rather than "realism." And it's quite a subjective standard...

The only time I care about stuff like whether a kindergarten or McDonald's or train station is modeled is if I happen to be rotorwinging around an area I personally know well enough to realize it. But at that point, all the rest of the stuff is so INaccurate that it doesn't even matter to me.

Things that bother the heck out of me is like running a MedEvac to a local hospital and having it be represented as a 30-story office tower rather than as a 5 story building. And then looking around the rest of the downtown area and seeing the exact same office towers just with different total heights.

And not being able to get enough performance out of XP to run with World Objects set to High only exacerbates the issue.

I guess it's fine if you mainly fly airliners, or if your primary goal is cockpit switchology and a very good flight model.

But if I can't fly around a major US metropolitan area and have accurate building types (and by "accurate", I mean "is the County hospital with a helipad that's been there for the last 40 years actually there...?), and if I fly over an area of the city that's entirely industrialized but X-Plane shows it looking exactly like an empty cow pasture (with the cow trails and all...), I mean, c'mon guys...who are we trying to fool...?

Both XP's default scenery and X-World run on the GIGO priciple. If your source data (mostly OSM) is not or falsely tagged for height or purpose, it will mercilessly show in the simulator because it's impossible to cross check and hand correct each and every building on the planet (other by fixing it in OSM and regenerating the scenery tile). But that's not entirely limited to X-Plane. If I remember that photogrammetry thread in here from a while ago correctly, it turns out that MSFS can take atrocious guesses for autogen buildings as well if the area does not have photogrammety.

I also faintly remember a post by X-World's Armin, who requested assistance for better, more fitting building assignments for X-World America. And as far as I know, nobody took him up on it.

 

14 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I am seriously considering doing just that - thanks for the motivation!

There is also an old WWII / Cold War airfield nearby that is already in the sim (not as a usable airfield, but the runways/taxiways are there), but needs some minor work and terrain flattening to get it back in action. Maybe I'll knock them both out.

Just make sure that you make it completely XP12 compliant. Julian is a stricter gatekeeper than the bouncers of that trendy club downtown at 2 am.

 

3 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

SimHeaven is good for these VFR reporting points. Airports in the UK often reference ponds, stations, churches etc - SimHeaven may not get the building exactly right, but it will be there.

If your reporting point is a natural feature like a body of water, you're gonna benefit from orthos.

 

41 minutes ago, uwespeed said:

That's what I basically said 🙂.

I've been in full flight simulators of the LH (MD11 twice, B737 and A380^*) and - partly - their 'scenery' was so 'good' that some^TM flight simmers would refuse to operate that thing 😄.

^*A380's scenery was good.

Well, on a positive note, the scenery is the least of a crew's worries when the instructor just triggered an engine fire, flap failure, category 3 hurricane, decaf coffee in the galley and an engagement ring on that one FA working the cabin.

9 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

I also faintly remember a post by X-World's Armin, who requested assistance for better, more fitting building assignments for X-World America. And as far as I know, nobody took him up on it.

Not entirely true 😉. I helped him (although around 2 years back).  Maybe he even wanted to have more variety later but didn't get more support.

1 hour ago, uwespeed said:

I've been in full flight simulators of the LH (MD11 twice, B737 and A380^*) and - partly - their 'scenery' was so 'good' that some^TM flight simmers would refuse to operate that thing 😄.

I can picture some simmer going like:

"I just tried the latest B737 level-D simulator yesterday, thanks, but no thanks. The scenery was not good enough."

20 hours ago, Litjan said:

It´s a job that takes an afternoon to create a nice rendition of your local hospital in WED, then you can also upload it to the Scenery Gateway and have it appear for everyone in X-Plane. 

There are literally thousands of such hospitals (and other helicopter landing sites) already fleshed out like that in X-Plane. Granted, they don´t sport the name of the hospital on the front of the building and the buildings and pads are generic, but they are often a fairly accurate representation of the actual buildings and settings. 

Here is one example:

https://gateway.x-plane.com/airports/AZ24/show

@Bjoern

do either of you know how often XP takes a fresh snapshot from OSM?

3 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

@Bjoern

do either of you know how often XP takes a fresh snapshot from OSM?

Every few years (basically with major new X-Plane versions, although there WAS a new Global Scenery Recut a year ago or so for X-Plane 12 mid-run).

Been intercepting this thread here & then, from week to week ...

What's the verdict after all?

A) Use Map Enhancement pro standalone, with Pro maps;

B) Use both MEP and Sim Heaven X-World;

C) Use only default and X-World;

D) Use default scenery only;

 

Edited August 5, 2025Aug 5 by jcomm

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

Use Map Enhancement pro standalone, with Pro maps;

The pro version is reasonably priced and gives a great boost to the sharpness of the terrain.