X-WORLD 3.0

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):

v2.2.1
v3.0

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 2.1 + fix

All packages are now available, this is a major update only available as full download

  • Europe
  • Asia
  • America
  • Africa
  • Antarctica
  • Australia-Oceania

Even the XP11 versions of these continents are updated, this will be the last update for XP11.

If you have installed any of these packages, you should install the new version as this has so much improvements, see changelog of the download.

If you have downloaded and installed X-WORLD v2.1 before 03/01/2023, you should install the fixes available at https://simheaven.com/new-updates/

Happy xmas time

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
Biergarten at Lindau, Lake Constance, Germany

X-WORLD for XP12

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 :