Cultivating Venice - a missed approach

  • After successfully grounding and cultivating my environment I was into a few iconic places, maybe with the option of a bit of promotion. My first try was Tokyo where Cultivation miserably failed with sparsely scattered houses, no high-rises etc. Okay, perhaps people don't feed OSM there, perhaps we don't have libs for JP, and given I've never been there it might actually look that way ;(.

    Next, I tried Venice. I only choose a small area around the old town, including LIPZ, a part of Maestre and the Lido. FSET+GeoConvert+GeoConvertHelper as well as scenProc did their jobs, but the result is what I would call underwhelming in a large way.

    http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/image/GbbC


    That's supposed to be the Piazza San Marco. I am not asking for special POIs here, but I think the whole picture is basically just wrong. Venice Old Town turned into an industrial park. The Lido, on the other hand, with its smaller houses comes out much better.

    So what did I wrong? I just can't believe our libraries are that poor that all buildings with a footprint of more than 30m are assigned to a factory. If this is the case - which I still can't believe - it would be high time to contact Tony Wroblewski the maker of World2XP, donate him 1000 € in advance (I'll contribute 200€) and ask him to contribute with his libs. Tony is actually inclined towards AeroflyFS, there might be a way to have him contribute in some way.

    Here is what the result might look like

    http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/image/GbbO

    http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/image/GbbO

    That's the recent X-Plane Simheaven X-Europe together with photogroud I made using Ortho4XP. Simheaven X-Europe is based on World2XP which is based on OSM. There might be a few more data resources involved, but nothing commercial and the scenery (of course exluding the orthophotos) is free. ((Forget about the two oversized churches which can be removed, I will contact the author about this.))

    I am not asking for something comparable to the classic Aerosoft FSX Venice. For a free/amateur approach I would be content with something like this. In AeroflyFS2.

    Thanks for paying attention

    Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • Hi Michael,

    this is not any buildings library but only the settings in scenProc:

    Code
    Lines like these define the resulting buildings types:
    
    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH < 14|1|flat|industrial
    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH >= 14 And FLENGTH < 28|1|gable|residential
    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH >= 28|3|flat|industrial

    Please refer to the scenProc manual to check the meaning of the parameters and modify them.

    Regards

    Rodeo

  • I see. I never meant to have to work in your config file. But I'll play with these a bit. Obviously this should be amended on a per area base. On the other hand industrial areas in Maestre might turn into residential buildings then...

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • I like this model very much.

    Look at the typical italian roofs. And the nice fassades!

    Unfortunately my converter crashes, perhaps due to file size.

    But it is only a matter of time to get this solved.

    Rodeo

  • Where did you take this from...?

    I modified parameters in switching properties from "industrial" to "gable", just as a quick check if it works, and it did.

    [Blocked Image: http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/03/03/Piazza_San_Marco_AeroflyFS_2.jpg]

    That's much improved - with the result of industrial buildings getting lost elsewhere, of course. I also see a lot of empty places, which don't stick out because of the fine ground texture, but are missing as buildings anyway.

    But I feel I should better leave this to people who know what they're doing. It's probably beyond what a layman like me should dig into.

    Thanks and kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

    Edited once, last by pmb (March 3, 2018 at 2:09 AM).

  • Hi Michael,

    it's fine when you try a challenging area.

    And your second result is a strong improvement. With exclude polygons you can even run the osm data with different settings for adjacent areas.

    And your test reminded me to my own test with Venice.

    Regards

    Rodeo

  • Hi,

    I'd expand a bit. I tried ground tiles plus cultivation for Auckland, NZ, perhaps one of the most beautiful cities of the world I happen to know. After adding the Sky Tower the result doesn't look bad (and, perhaps, can be improved upon playing with the script), however, I see two more general points.

    1) Auckland City is quite well represented in OSM, however, as soon as you leave the city center you will find empty areas. The general answer to that situation in the X-Plane world (say W2XP) is "These areas can be excluded and will be filled with autogen, it's not that exact but better than nothing".

    Autogen in this context (as fas as I know) refers to buildings being not placed based on their exact position in, say, OSM but on, e.g. landclass data. Do we have a similar possibiliy within ScenProc for AeroflyFS2 to fill these empty places? (The documantation is more geared towards FSX in general.)

    2) "My" Auckland features two types of buildings, industrial and residental. That is understood from the (Rodeo) script. Now, City centers like Tokyo or Auckland are often dominated by neither of the two but office buildings and high rises (Tokya and Auckland for sure). The SenProc documentation does at least mention a 3rd class, i.e. "commercial". Can we try this as well or are there no fitting buildings in the libraries - yet?

    Thanks and kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • Hi,

    there are 2 limitations for cultivation.

    1. IPACS cultivation TOC only supports 2 building types 'residential' and 'industrial'. Depending from this parameter a building_texture will be chosen. So you can both of them for your office buildings, just check the library which one you prefer.

    Cultivation parameters can be found in my documentation of airport design package.

    IPACS will expand the possibilities, but I can't give you any time frame for this.

    2. OSM data for buildings are incomplete. In most cases we only have footprints without further parameters.

    So the current approach, introduced by Arno, is to distinguish both building types by the parameters FAREARAT and FLENGTH, rougly spoken just a size calculation (check manual for more information).

    BUT: Of course you can edit or add more values to the OSM data, use either JOSM or a GIS like QGIS.

    There is no limitation for this to get better results by adding more parameters. You can use all parameters as a filter for scenProc and add as many CreateAF2Building lines as you want.

    Let me give you an example:

    Select all buildings within the landuse polygon 'residential' and add this value to the buildings.

    CreateAF2Buildings then with 1 or 2 levels, gable roof and residential texture, if their size is more than 50 sqm.

    If they are smaller than 50 sqm they are assumably garages, so output them 1 level, flat roof, industrial texture (if you like).

    Use a 'downtown' polygon to filter all buildings in the center,

    Output them as industrial or residential texture, flat roof, 10-40 levels.

    You can even modify single buildings parameters by clicking onto the building, e.g. to add skyscrapers data.

    And scenProc allows to dissect complex buildings into rectangular ones to even give a more complex shape.


    As you can see from the OrbX examples, we just need to add more parameters to get better results.

    Regards

    Rodeo

  • By the way, Arno is working on a ScenProc building detection filter similar to his tree detection filter. I don't know about his progress in this area - but the vegetation filter has been quite successful - it "plants" single trees very nicely. I used it for San Diego County and with just a little touch up using JOSM (trees too close to major roads), it really looks good. One thing of note though is the incredible size of the TOC file and how is it possible that out GPUs and FS2 code are able to handle all that!!

    Dave W.

  • Thanks Rodeo, offline editing of the OSM data might be a good solution worth trying. Honestly, I was rather into quick and dirty solutions and would leave the hard work to actual scenery designers (like Godzone who are said to work on NZ).

    Anyway, I am tempted to try your procedure. Should I ever overcome JOSM crashing while loading the (600 MB) .osm file, but this probably doesn't belong here.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • I already downloaded it from OSM directly using overpass (and converted it using ScenProc once). But now I want to open it with JOSM, and this one crashes.

    But thanks for the hint anyway, I didn't know that.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • Thanks guys, I'll see if that works (probably yes :)).

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64