X-WORLD for XP12

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X-Plane 12 is already in early access and maybe you wait for the new versions of my packages for XP12 as announced earlier. Well, I had all ready to publish, but meanwhile new Microsoft building footprints were published and I found a way to avoid buildings on runways and to change buildings in water to anchoring boats, both wrong buildings are coming from the MS building footprints.

I do hope these changes are probably worth waiting some days more. I’ve been working on the new versions for XP12 AND XP11 for 4 – 5 weeks day and night, but processing of > 200 GiB of data needs much time. Hopefully this weekend Europe will be published, next is America ca. mid of October, others will follow.

Second thing is, that I decided to rename the packages for XP12 to avoid confusion for you and me, the upcoming updates for XP11 (which are probably the last updates for XP11) are keeping the names like X-Europe, X-America etc. and for the new versions for XP12 the name changes to X-WORLD.

Preview of the upcoming X-WORLD Europe for XP12

X-WORLD continues for X-Plane 12 the successful and high quality sceneries for X-Plane 11 like X-Europe, X-America etc., objects are not set by autogen rules, they are set following OSM data in addition with Microsoft building footprints, which leads to a more realistic look and feel. The new X-WORLD Vegetation Library is needed, each continental package is available separately :

Major updates on final approach

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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:

5.8.15.9changeremarksrelease date
X-EUROPE2,65 GiB4,08 GiB+54%mainly MSBF in Southern, Eastern and
Northern Europe are added		06/08/2022
2.0.13.0
X-AFRICA1,18 GiB2,26 GiB+92%For 4 countries MSBF were
already included in 2.0.1		06/10/2022
X-AMERICA2.83 GiB3.80 GiB+34%For Northern and partly Southern America
were MSBF already included in 2.0.1		06/12/2022
X-ASIA1,36 GiB4,50 GiB+330%totally insane 😊06/12/2022
X-AUSTRALIA-
OCEANIA		unchanged as MSBF were
already included in 2.0.1		06/11/2022
X-ANTARCTICAunchanged (no MSBF 😉)06/10/2022
Manila, Philippines (4k screenshot of X-ASIA 3.0)

X-Plane 12 and major updates

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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 11X-Plane 12tiles per layer
X-EUROPE 5.11X-WORLD Europe1,667
X-AFRICA 4.0X-WORLD Africa2,711
X-AMERICA 4.0X-WORLD America4,577
X-ANTARCTICA 4.0X-WORLD Antarctica102
X-ASIA 4.0X-WORLD Asia6,231
X-AUSTRALIA-OCEANIA 4.0X-WORLD Australia-Oceania1,405

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

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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: 😊