LINZ Data Building Outlines available 10 May 2019

[Kelvinr]

Hey all,

Looks like i'll be continuing my work on the NZ building outlines project for Prepar3d/FSX

My autogen I created for NZ Photoreal will hopefully be completed using the latest LINZ building data which will split the buildings by residential, commercial, and industrial areas using the latest building outlines data.

Along with this I'll be continuing to work on my latest revision of vegetation autogen.

The problem to date has really been availability of aerial imagery that is required for using this autogen. I am using virtual earth imagery and nearly finished my stage 1 of the initial processing to BGL files for the entire nation.

I see that someone has made the NZ Photoreal for Xplane using LINZ aerial imagery so I'll look at seeing if I can convert the 250GB of imagery into a useable format, this means, with the commons attributions licensing, that it will allow for distribution.

Alot of work ahead but I have the groundwork done so really it's a matter of how fast my computer can process it all.

I'll post future updates once I have something to show.

Cheers!
Kelvin

[toprob]

Cheers, Kelvin, I did see the new dataset, it's great to see how far we've come with the available data -- no more hand-drawing autogen houses! Well, except for the areas which are still missing.
Yes, LINZ would be the best choice, as the license allows you to do anything you like with it, really. Getting it downloaded and ready to resample is always going to be a bit of a nightmare, but worth it in the end. I was considering doing the country that way for Aerofly FS2, but since Orbx have hinted at TrueEarth NZ, I won't bother.

[Kelvinr]

[quote="toprob"]Cheers, Kelvin, I did see the new dataset, it's great to see how far we've come with the available data -- no more hand-drawing autogen houses! Well, except for the areas which are still missing.
Yes, LINZ would be the best choice, as the license allows you to do anything you like with it, really. Getting it downloaded and ready to resample is always going to be a bit of a nightmare, but worth it in the end. I was considering doing the country that way for Aerofly FS2, but since Orbx have hinted at TrueEarth NZ, I won't bother.[/quote]

I quite like tinkering as it keeps me out of trouble so until something is widely available and looks great then I'll continue to tinker. It's a lot of work though, but I geek out on this sort of stuff.

[mikced]

Finally I managed to register an account here Have been trying for months but the easy question to verify you are not a spam robot did not work no matter how much I tried. Anyway..

Just a Little friendly tip. I created all of southern south Island (up to Christchurch) in a few hours in 1 m/pixel resolution and with Bing as source. I noticed Bing had very little clouds and almost no color variation in the area so it looks amazing. I used Open streetmap for autogen data (New Zealand is very nicely covered I noticed). Naturally I used the FSX/P3D version of Ortho4XP to create the photoscenery. The advantage of course is that I dont have to bother with water masking at all. The program takes care of it all automatically.

Mike

[toprob]

Welcome, Mike. I've heard from someone else (or was it you?) that the captcha feature on signup here is a bit of a nuisance, maybe the admin can have a look at that. We shouldn't be making it too difficult these days, it isn't as if we get too many new members to cope with...

I'd certainly recommend your method to anyone looking to make their own photoscenery, for some reason not a lot of locals have tried this out. I think, though, that Kelvin is looking at something he can share, which means that the normal servers are not options. But for anyone who wants large areas of photoscenery to fly over, it can be an almost automatic process, once you get the hang of the basics.

Kelvin -- saw your latest screenshots on FSDeveloper, it's sure looking flash. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I've never tried your new tool, I just haven't had the time, but I will as soon as I have some spare time to catch my breath.

[mikced]

Thanks, it wasnt me who previously reported the forum account problem.

Well Ortho4XP (X-plane and FSX) versions are free and you are allowed to share the result. In fact thats the tool used in the X-plane Community like the major data source found on ZonesPhoto. Also I beleive the guy who did all of New Zealand for X-plane (Lyndiman.com) used Ortho4XP with the LINZ source. LINZ is an easy to select option in the program as well. No need to spend months and years on this Project

I actually asked Lyndiman if he could convert the result to P3D but never heard anything back unfortunately.

By the way, up until P3D v3 I was a frequent user of your very nice subscription service. Thanks for that and many years of enjoyment. Just wished you had continued.

[toprob]

Cheers, Mike.
Ah, yeah, I had forgotten that you could use choose LINZ as the source, in which case you could do what you like with it, they have a great license. I did try it once, but couldn't get it working, I might try it again one day.

[Kelvinr]

[quote="toprob"]Welcome, Mike. I've heard from someone else (or was it you?) that the captcha feature on signup here is a bit of a nuisance, maybe the admin can have a look at that. We shouldn't be making it too difficult these days, it isn't as if we get too many new members to cope with...

I'd certainly recommend your method to anyone looking to make their own photoscenery, for some reason not a lot of locals have tried this out. I think, though, that Kelvin is looking at something he can share, which means that the normal servers are not options. But for anyone who wants large areas of photoscenery to fly over, it can be an almost automatic process, once you get the hang of the basics.

Kelvin -- saw your latest screenshots on FSDeveloper, it's sure looking flash. I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I've never tried your new tool, I just haven't had the time, but I will as soon as I have some spare time to catch my breath.[/quote]

I'm using Bing maps for the meantime at least as it allows my autogen to work on it and thanks for the compliment, as soon as I saw a new building outlines dataset was out I jumped at the chance, although at the moment I'm suffering some crazy infection causing me to simply drop everything and hide in a corner it's that bad so further work is on hold but a lot of the ground work I'd already done.

I'm actually mixing ORBX nzni and nzsi so I get scenery objects ie airports mainly. I'll post up some more screenshots when I feel up to it. Quite amazed myself with the results. I'm redoing my vegetation as well with correct road cutouts etc..

Anyway that's enough from me for now, see you all when I'm feeling better.

K.