simHeaven | finest stuff for simulation - improving realism and safety

Major updates on final approach

Posted on June 7, 2022 by admin

200 GiB of data were processed over the last 4 weeks, in pre-, main- and post-processing, a stressful time for the computer and me, it worked day and night and generated a total of 112,969 tiles. Many, many buildings (almost a billion in total) were added from Microsoft Building Footprints (MSBF) AFTER matching with OSM, about one third OSM, two thirds MSBF:

510,265,762	buildings from OSM
907,043,878	buildings from MSBF
1,417,309,640	total buildings

Catania, Italy (4k screenshot of X-EUROPE 5.9)

Layer 4-scenery – containing the buildings – has increased dramatically:

	5.8.1	5.9	change	remarks	release date
X-EUROPE	2,65 GiB	4,08 GiB	+54%	mainly MSBF in Southern, Eastern and Northern Europe are added	06/08/2022

	2.0.1	3.0
X-AFRICA	1,18 GiB	2,26 GiB	+92%	For 4 countries MSBF were already included in 2.0.1	06/10/2022
X-AMERICA	2.83 GiB	3.80 GiB	+34%	For Northern and partly Southern America were MSBF already included in 2.0.1	06/12/2022
X-ASIA	1,36 GiB	4,50 GiB	+330%	totally insane 😊	06/12/2022
X-AUSTRALIA- OCEANIA				unchanged as MSBF were already included in 2.0.1	06/11/2022
X-ANTARCTICA				unchanged (no MSBF 😉)	06/10/2022

Manila, Philippines (4k screenshot of X-ASIA 3.0)

X-Plane 12 and major updates

Posted on May 22, 2022 by admin

Laminar Research recently posted development news for X-Plane 12 and announced the next milestone, the early access release of X-Plane 12.

We are part of the X-Plane developers workspace and thanks to the access, all of the packages (X-EUROPE, X-AMERICA, X-AFRICA, X-ASIA, X-AUSTRALIA-OCEANIA, X-ANTARCTICA) are already adapted for XP12 and actually in the final generation, including the new vegetation and with (besides the current OSM data) much more (exactly 788,235,841) Microsoft global building footprints to complete the landscapes all over the world.

Here’s an overview what’s coming next to illustrate the versions you’ll soon be able to download and fly:

X-Plane 11	X-Plane 12	tiles per layer
X-EUROPE 5.11	X-WORLD Europe	1,667
X-AFRICA 4.0	X-WORLD Africa	2,711
X-AMERICA 4.0	X-WORLD America	4,577
X-ANTARCTICA 4.0	X-WORLD Antarctica	102
X-ASIA 4.0	X-WORLD Asia	6,231
X-AUSTRALIA-OCEANIA 4.0	X-WORLD Australia-Oceania	1,405

200 gigabytes of data are processed to create over 116,000 tiles. The versions for XP11 and XP12 are almost identical, for XP12 there will be some changes to use the new vegetation, so a new vegetation library is required. The overlap of adjacent packages will be optimised to ensure an impressive flight without gaps between continents. X-A packages will then have the latest developments from X-EUROPE. All new versions for XP11 and XP12 and the new vegetation library will be released at the start of the public beta of XP12 (when it is not on my holiday😊).

Updates v2.0 for all X-A packages

Posted on December 18, 2021 by admin

Microsoft published on github computer generated building footprints for various countries: USA, Canada, Australia and parts of South America and Africa. Thanks to user @ueid who did the script, we are proud that we now included these footprints into the sceneries to complete and fill poor OSM data.

An impressive number of 213,442,146 buildings are newly added to the continental sceneries.

See the difference for e.g. Oklahoma City:

More screenshots at x-plane.org and Aerosoft forum (in German)

The last months and weeks I generated > 100,000 tiles, some multiple times, and > 32 GB of data. And we reworked US houses and churches, thanks to Pete for his help. New versions 2.0 are available for

X-AMERICA
X-AFRICA
X-AUSTRALIA-OCEANIA
X-ANTARCTICA
X-ASIA

Key features of the new versions 2.0:

built on latest OSM data
Microsoft building footprints included where available
Layer 3a-details included (you may already know from X-Europe)
new elements: noise-barriers, car repairs, car shops, furniture shops, IKEAs, fire-stations, transformer-towers
improved facades, house objects

Downloads at https://simheaven.com/xp11-sceneries/

E.g. take a stroll along the skyline of Toronto Canada and discover all the new little details: 😊

X-EUROPE Details and Update 5.6

Posted on June 20, 2021 by admin

A new additional package has been added: X-EUROPE Details, adding very small objects to your scenery, it’s especially for low altitude flyers, helicopter pilots, car drivers. 😉 Normal flyers don’t need it as most of the additional objects can’t be seen at >1,000 ft AGL. So this package is not included in X-EUROPE, it’s a separate download.