Creating Beacons for Water Towers and Radio/TV Towers using OSM data

    Found the OSM tag info for water towers and radio/TV towers and worked up 6 lines to add to my ScenProc lights script that generates these flashing beacons at the typical heights of these structures.

    Here are the 6 lines to add to your cultivation script:

    # Water tower beacons (50 meters above ground)

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="water_tower" And FRAND<=0.5 |1.0;0.0;0.0|10000|2.0;0.0;50|50

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="water_tower" And FRAND>0.5 |1.0;0.0;0.0|10000|2.2;0.0;50|50

    # Radio tower beacons (200-500 meters above ground)

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And name="*" And Not (name="*AM*" Or name="*FM*" Or name="*TV*") |1.0;0.0;0.0|10000|2.4;0.0;50|200

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And (name="*AM*" Or name="*FM*" Or name="*TV*") And FRAND<=0.5 |1.0;0.0;0.0|10000|3.0;0.0;30|300

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And (name="*AM*" Or name="*FM*" Or name="*TV*") And FRAND>0.5 And FRAND<=0.75 |1.0;0.0;0.0|10000|2.6;0.0;30|400

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And (name="*AM*" Or name="*FM*" Or name="*TV*") And FRAND>0.75 |1.0;0.0;0.0|10000|2.8;0.0;30|500

    Here's my latest lights template ...

    streetlights+trafficlights+waterradiotowerbeacons.txt

    If you want the full lighted radio tower look (see pic below), you'll have to copy the tower lights section for your toc file and paste them into a new towers toc that you'll reference in your airport's tsc file.

    For example, if your ScenProc script created a flashing beacon at 400m, copy that block and paste it 3 times in your new towers toc file, changing the element numbers and height values ...

    Original lights toc element

    <[light][element][107]

    <[vector3_float64][position][-96.730987 32.778823 400.000000]>

    <[vector3_float32][color][1.000000 0.000000 0.000000]>

    <[float32][intensity][10000.000000]>

    <[vector4_float32][flashing][2.800000 0.000000 30.000000 0]>

    <[uint32][group_index][0]>

    >

    New towers toc file

    <[file][][KDAL-towers]

    <[cultivation][][]

    <[string8][coordinate_system][lonlat]>

    <[list_light][light_list][]

    <[light][element][0]

    <[vector3_float64][position][-96.730987 32.778823 300.000000]>

    <[vector3_float32][color][1.000000 0.000000 0.000000]>

    <[float32][intensity][10000.000000]>

    <[vector4_float32][flashing][2.800000 0.000000 30.000000 0]>

    <[uint32][group_index][0]>

    >

    <[light][element][1]

    <[vector3_float64][position][-96.730987 32.778823 200.000000]>

    <[vector3_float32][color][1.000000 0.000000 0.000000]>

    <[float32][intensity][10000.000000]>

    <[vector4_float32][flashing][2.800000 0.000000 30.000000 0]>

    <[uint32][group_index][0]>

    >

    <[light][element][2]

    <[vector3_float64][position][-96.730987 32.778823 100.000000]>

    <[vector3_float32][color][1.000000 0.000000 0.000000]>

    <[float32][intensity][10000.000000]>

    <[vector4_float32][flashing][2.800000 0.000000 30.000000 0]>

    <[uint32][group_index][0]>

    >

    >

    >

    >

    Quote from kenventions

    I don't have a 3D model of a radio tower for daylight viewing - maybe Spit40 can add one to his FSCloudPort object library.

    Wouldn't that be a shot in the arm. Good idea.

    Regards,

    Ray

    I figured out a way to generate radio tower "buildings" with ScenProc and also added small buildings for water towers ...

    Add these lines to your ScenProc buildings script section ...

    # these lines generate radio/TV towers

    PointToPolygon|man_made="tower" And name="*AM*" |4;4|0|String;towertype|antennaAM

    PointToPolygon|man_made="tower" And name="*FM*" |4;4|0|String;towertype|antennaFM

    PointToPolygon|man_made="tower" And name="*TV*" |4;4|0|String;towertype|antennaTV

    PointToPolygon|man_made="tower" And name="*" And Not (name="*AM*" Or name="*FM*" Or name="*TV*" Or name="*Traffic*") |4;4|0|String;towertype|antennaOTHER

    CreateAF2Building|towertype="antennaAM"|165|1|flat|industrial|0

    CreateAF2Building|towertype="antennaFM"|99|1|flat|industrial|0

    CreateAF2Building|towertype="antennaTV"|132|1|flat|industrial|0

    CreateAF2Building|towertype="antennaOTHER"|66|1|flat|industrial|0

    #

    # these lines generate square water towers

    PointToPolygon|man_made="water_tower" |20;20|0|String;towertype|water

    CreateAF2Building|towertype="water"|16|1|flat|residential|0

    You'll also need to update your lights script section so the radio tower lights match the heights of the new tower "buildings" generated above ...

    # Radio tower beacons (200-500 meters above ground)

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And name="*AM*" |1.0;0.0;0.0|5000|3.0;0.0;30|500

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And name="*FM*" |1.0;0.0;0.0|5000|2.6;0.0;30|300

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And name="*TV*" |1.0;0.0;0.0|5000|2.8;0.0;30|400

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="tower" And name="*" And Not (name="*AM*" Or name="*FM*" Or name="*TV*" Or name="*Traffic*") |1.0;0.0;0.0|5000|2.4;0.0;50|200

    #

    # Water tower beacons (50 meters above ground)

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="water_tower" And FRAND<=0.5 |1.0;0.0;0.0|5000|2.0;0.0;50|50

    CreateAF2Light|man_made="water_tower" And FRAND>0.5 |1.0;0.0;0.0|5000|2.2;0.0;50|50

    Excellent creative work. I don’t recall seeing many square water towers but we do have a generous number of tall towers. I am eager to see if some of these antenna farms are in the city data. Thanks for all this work.

    Regards,

    Ray

    The Dallas-Fort Worth area has ~60 radio towers in the OSM data.

    When you import your OSM file, if your first line (ImportOGR) is filtering object types, be sure to add man_made ...

    Example from lights script ... \mapKDAL.osm|*|highway;man_made|NOREPROJ

    Quote from ZoSoChile

    Hey guys, here are a few basic water towers to use. Link- Water Towers


    Much appreciated traffic/road/tower light script work! kenventions

    Hey Jake and Ken,

    This is a great start on the towers. wow. I am going to try placing some of them later today. I am in the middle of downloading and processes scenery with Nick's AutoScenery.

    Regards,

    Ray

    In what directory do i need to place the building objects for the towers after running scenproc?

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    Martin, the radio tower / water tower stuff evolved into the following TowerProcTL tool that was released back in December …

    https://flight-sim.org/filebase/index…58-towerproctl/

    The problem I ran into with the OSM scenProc approach was either duplicate towers in the same location, missing towers, and no height info on the radio towers. Also, tall radio towers have more complicated lighting that the scenProc approach couldn't handle which TowerProcTL solved.

    If you already have your OSM file, you can use the JOSM viewer to locate the water towers using the FILTER capability of the viewer.

    https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM

    There's a HOW-TO guide included with the TowerProcTL download.