Happy to announce a further major improvement for the X-WORLD series for X-Plane 12. This year, Microsoft added estimated heights to the global buildings footprints, for Northern America, Australia and Europe (as June 2023), maybe more to come in future. In total there are now 1,200 millions footprints and 174 millions estimated heights available.

Thanks to user @ueid who programmed the scripts processing and integrating the estimated heights, we not only can use the estimated heights for the footprints in layer 5-footprints, there are even used for OSM buildings which have no height information tags. This leads to more realistic buildings in X-WORLD, as building heights are not generated by rules if they are missing, they are generated by the use of estimated heights where available.

Best see the improvement in screenshots of Melbourne, Australia (old/new):

For Northern America should be the same major improvement. As New Zealand lacks of MS building footprints and OSM data is mainly poor, the used building objects are reduced by one storey, so this comes closer to reality, see the example screenshot of Wellington, New Zealand:

These packages will be (due to published estimated heights) updated to v3.0:

• X-WORLD Australia-Oceania 3.0
• X-WORLD America 3.0
• X-WORLD Europe 3.0

Uh, this was an exciting and busy year, X-Plane 12 now is final, X-WORLD for XP12 was published mid of the year and improved. Now it’s time to take it a little easier, enjoy Christmas and recharge batteries for the new year.

Actually planned improvements (maybe more to come) for the X-WORLD v2.0 next year:

all layers will be regenerated based on actual OSM and footprints data, additionally

• 0-exclusions  layer removed
• 4-extras         new: biergarten added – sailing boats (.for) at lakes removed
• 5-footprints   objects from airports removed
• 6-scenery      objects from airports removed