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Getting started

seippg

seippg

Messages
238
Country
unitedstates
Hi guys,

Now that I have ScenProc working I got Quantum GIS and ran into a wall trying to figure out how to use it and get data. After an hour and a half of watching tutorials, still nowhere. It downloaded 2 datasets when I installed it but the data downloaded doesn't match anything they're telling me to do. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. I guess this is the first of a hefty set of learning curves. I just want to find an area...maybe a city...get it into a useable size/format that I can begin trying out scenproc. If anyone can point me in a direction and give me some guidelines for practical use it would be HUGELY appreciated.

EDIT: By city, maybe I mean a town.
 
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I found this...

http://downloads.cloudmade.com/

...which has data by country (and US state). I downloaded South Carolina since I have photoreal for that area. Heh. That's a start but I'm guessing that this file is still too big to work from. So I did a Select and then Save Selection as Vector file to "Myrtle_Beach.shp". IMPORTSHP requires 3 parms. I figured out that I could just put a * in there.

Also, you put the output in a scenery directory you have in your FSX, I guess. It surprises me that you put it in a texture directory. Is the paired 'scenery' directory empty when it's complete? Anyway, this is where I am right now with my tiny test (see below). It's found things but I guess nothing matches the criteria I have in my script based on the log and the fact that no file it output.

IMPORTSHP|D:\SceneryDesign\geodata\sc\Extracts\Myrtle_Beach.shp|*|NOREPROJ

#
SPLITGRID|AGN
#
SETAGNBUILDINGHEIGHT|*|1.0;0.0;0.0;0.0
SETAGNBUILDINGTEXTURE|*|autogen_NL
#
CREATEAGNPOLYVEG|FTYPE=POLYGON;type=forest|{e8b937fd-a1f2-4bd5-8548-2c80d30102af}
CREATEAGNGENBUILD|FTYPE=POLYGON;FROMFILE=buildings_schier.shp;FWIDTH<20|{5ae04eb6-934c-4f63-bb48-5e7dee601212}|MAXRATIO=2
CREATEAGNGENBUILD|FTYPE=POLYGON;FROMFILE=buildings_schier.shp;FWIDTH>20|{6089A0BD-CED1-4c47-9A9E-64CDD0E16983}
CREATEAGNROWHOUSE|FTYPE=POLYGON;FROMFILE=houses_schier.shp
#CREATEAGNLIBOBJ|FTYPE=POINT;type=light|{0017a263-464f-14fd-f77f-2996fed44864}
#CREATEAGNLIBOBJ|*|{0017a263-464f-14fd-f77f-2996fed44864}|*|length;width
#
WRITEAGNFILES|FSX|d:\SceneryDesign

This was my output...

11:59 AM IMPORTSHP Information Reading SHP file D:\SceneryDesign\geodata\sc\Extracts\Myrtle_Beach.shp
11:59 AM IMPORTSHP Information Read 3530 features from file
11:59 AM SPLITGRID Information Splitting features in 0.0146484375 x 0.010986328125 grid...
11:59 AM SPLITGRID Information Features divided in 5372 cells
11:59 AM SETAGNBUILDINGHEIGHT Information Setting autogen building heigth...
11:59 AM SETAGNBUILDINGHEIGHT Information Set autogen building heigth for 5372 cells
11:59 AM SETAGNBUILDINGTEXTURE Information Setting autogen building texture to autogen_NL
11:59 AM SETAGNBUILDINGTEXTURE Information Set autogen texture for 5372 cells
11:59 AM CREATEAGNPOLYVEG Information Creating autogen polygon vegetation with filter FTYPE=POLYGON;type=forest...
11:59 AM CREATEAGNPOLYVEG Information Created 0 autogen objects
11:59 AM CREATEAGNGENBUILD Information Creating autogen generic buildings with filter FTYPE=POLYGON;FROMFILE=buildings_schier.shp;FWIDTH<20...
11:59 AM CREATEAGNGENBUILD Information Created 0 autogen objects
11:59 AM CREATEAGNGENBUILD Information Creating autogen generic buildings with filter FTYPE=POLYGON;FROMFILE=buildings_schier.shp;FWIDTH>20...
11:59 AM CREATEAGNGENBUILD Information Created 0 autogen objects
11:59 AM CREATEAGNROWHOUSE Information Creating autogen row houses with filter FTYPE=POLYGON;FROMFILE=houses_schier.shp...
11:59 AM CREATEAGNROWHOUSE Information Created 0 autogen objects
11:59 AM WRITEAGNFILES Information Writing AGN files to folder d:\SceneryDesign
11:59 AM WRITEAGNFILES Information Written 0 autogen files
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information scenProc finished processing
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 0.53 seconds for IMPORTSHP
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 6.64 seconds for SPLITGRID
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 0.09 seconds for SETAGNBUILDINGHEIGHT
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 0.05 seconds for SETAGNBUILDINGTEXTURE
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 0.11 seconds for CREATEAGNPOLYVEG
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 0.20 seconds for CREATEAGNGENBUILD
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 0.13 seconds for CREATEAGNROWHOUSE
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 0.08 seconds for WRITEAGNFILES
11:59 AM SceneryProcessor Information 7.83 seconds total
 
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Hi,

Did you look at the tutorial on the wiki about making autogen for Luxembourg?

I'll try to answer your questions in more detail when I am behind my FS pc later on.
 
Hi Arno,

I was looking at this example...

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=ScenProc

If there's a tutorial maybe I should be looking there. I know I have a LOT of reading to do. But I will say that selecting the right input seems to be a major piece to this. I downloaded that .shp file from the location above but, on closer inspection, it didn't have houses or forests...roads, yes, but the rest was not too interesting stuff. I have to figure out where to get good data from.

Gregg
 
Hi,

I would check this one out as well:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Autogen_from_OpenStreetMap_data_with_scenProc

And don't forget that you get help about the steps when you hover with your mouse over them. That will give you more details on the attributes.

Where to get data indeed differs per area. Openstreetmap has quite good data for Western Europe, but not all other areas are so dense. For the us the usgs might have some vector data you can use.
 
Well, getting the data isn't as easy as I would have imagined. I've gotten OSM files but haven't found any SHP files for the US yet none that contain useable data). I tried opening the OSM data in Quantum GIS but either the data in the files is poor (in one case) or it won't open (in the rest of the cases). There are some sites that have the files but you have to pay for them. Hopefully there's some site out there that has them or there's another way to get data.
 
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Hi,

Did you just look at the map on the openstreetmap website? That should show you if your region has the kind of features you are looking for or not.

Finding good data can indeed be hard for certain regions. But good data is the most important for good results.
 
arno said:
Hi,

Did you just look at the map on the openstreetmap website? That should show you if your region has the kind of features you are looking for or not.

Finding good data can indeed be hard for certain regions. But good data is the most important for good results.
Click to expand...

That's in interesting thought. Here's two images. The first shows gray buildings....looks promising...
N9TtjBa.jpg

The second is clearly a residential area but shows no buildings.
wTqrzN7.jpg


Poking around I see a lot of areas where there are no buildings despite this being a fairly populated place. I checked more cities and found similar results. So there is at least some info out there. There are no .shp files at http://download.geofabrik.de and, having googled and searched for a few hours, there doesn't seem to be any .shp files available yet for the US. Maybe someday...or maybe I'm missing something. The .osm files I have gotten (by extracting from Open Street Map, has buildings on the screens but when I extract it it doesn't show buildings in the legend...just route_points, routes, and waypoints. I don't have a tool that can read the .osm files I got from http://download.geofabrik.de so...dunno what's in there.

Maybe there's something else I could try?

EDIT: I did find one set of US .shp files for the area but it didn't have a buildings file and no buildings at all.
 
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Hi Gregg,

scenProc can read the OSM files as well, but if they are very big it might run out of memory :).
 
Most of the ones I've found so far are very big 2gig and I can't say whether or not they have buildings since I haven't been able to look at them. :banghead:

I was thinking about the AGN file thing, if that's an option, but not sure how it works.
 
What you see on the openstreetmap site is what is in the osm file as well. So if you don't see buildings there, they won't be in the osm file either.

I am not sure what you mean with agn files. I assume you want to create agn files.
 
Actually, I was referring to the IMPORTAGN command. Does that read the default FSX AGN for the area you're modifying so that you can export for photoreal?
 
Hi,

Importagn indeed can read in existing autogen files. But if you haven't made any before for your photo scenery there will be nothing.
 
Ah. Ok, well, I think what you've made a great tool. I might pick some spots in other countries then. If the US gets data then it will be invaluable over here.
 
seippg said:
Ah. Ok, well, I think what you've made a great tool. I might pick some spots in other countries then. If the US gets data then it will be invaluable over here.
Click to expand...

You do know that you can add the data yourself on OSM? I did this for my area.
 
What I don't know about this data could fill volumes. I'm at a loss when it comes to US data.
 
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