We’re pleased to inform you that SimHeaven has released an brand new product for X-Plane …. X-Europe! A personal note from myself (Angelique); I had the opportunity to see X-Europe during one of the beta tests myself and it’s awesome. I flew over the Netherlands and included with X-Europe also the necessary ortho packages. The end result was a highly realistic VFR flight. So, worth to see, worth to try and worth a donation for Armin and his team.
According to Armin from SimHeaven; The default scenery is the first step, the second step will be the localization, i.e. different looks for different regions. This XP11 scenery is made by me and my core team Axel, Roland and Sven) totally new from the bottom, with these features:
- mainly uses OSM data to ensure the most realistic view
- default objects are original XP11 objects (with LR permission)
- no other libraries needed
- highly configurable via library system to change/add objects easily
- different layers (extras, scenery, network)
I’ve made some demo videos with beta versions including a comparison between Ortho4XP/Standard/X-EUROPE, you will find them at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZzxqygX3ZRF5rIlZuEE7RA/videos. And some (not actual) screenshots you will find in the announcement on my website: http://simheaven.com/x-europe-on-final-approach/
Have fun flying across Europe and exploring all the things we brought to you. If you find it useful, buy me a beer or make me drunk! All relevant information can be found at the dedicated SimHeaven web page.
OSM stands for Open Street Map. How many different road types, bridges and other network structures are available in the typology of OSM? If the data colllectors only have four five road types they can choose among, the result is maybe not match the reality.
The typology of the buildings is probably in the same situation. No information about the age or ther use of the building, if you can only choose between modern and contemporary construction ther picture of a European town or locality gets distorted.
I tried, but it has not much to do with reality, there are trees in the middle of fields, of roads, what used to be national roads become highways… I just don’t recognize the area, sorry.
Belgium seems to be one of the hardest country to model in simulation for some reason, using a sim for VFR training is simply out of the question. And yet the available OSM quality is very good, but the trees and autogen are messy. Same with Ortho4XP and so on, the overlay part just doesn’t have any reliable source.
Fortunately Orbx is making sceneries for X-Plane, but I doubt they’ll even do this part of Europe.
I must admit that I was a little bit disappointed by the rendition of my home town Strasbourg (Alsace).
The OSM data give a good locaziation of ground structures but poor informations about the nature and height of the buildings.
Seeing a default church on the place of the main synagoge of Strasbourg is not pleasant. I am aware of the tremendous task Armin has taken upon himself. The default objects show their limits. As trained historian and local guided i recognize that I am biased. But OSM has gotten some critics from the academic world for its methodological shortcommings.
I have also downloaded that great scenery and flew across Austria in VFR.
It looks fantastic, better than every other scenerypack I have ever installed and used, especially in combination with a photoscenery…
I could recommend that scenery everybody!!
Greetings from Austria!
Markus
Thank you for your comments. Actually, we must thank Armin from SimHeaven for this. And, we’ve added this great piece of software in our newsletter so highlight it to everybody.
Not having much luck with adding addon’s is XP11 but this one worked for me first time.Did a VFR flight from my old home town Eindhoven (EHEH) via Rottendam (EHRT) then via the coast to Amsterdam (EHAM)then to Lelystad (EHLE) Rivers, rail and roads are good to follow and for Angelique.. Almere, muziekwijk great to see but you where not home..followed the rail line past the oosterplassen great. next to find out how to get the ortho files of this area.
Note: flying over cities or villages… the churches are “black” ??? any reason.
Hi Hans,
Good to hear from you. What you could do is downloading from ZonePhoto photorealistic ortho packages (textures) for the Netherlands. That in conjunction with X-Europe will make the Dutch flying sensation even better, not to say more and more realistic. You can find ZonePhoto at http://zonephoto.x-plane.fr/
Hi, have followed the link to “zonephoto” and did a few area downloads…install was good and did the startup XP and close then the restart and this made my day(and night…) my framerate stayed nearly the same only after landing and parked up next to buildings did go from approx 57 to 30… but still great.. thank you Angelique this will keep me off the street. Cheers