How many simmers out there are familiar with openstreetmap (https://www.openstreetmap.org) ?
I’ve been a mapper for many years on openstreetmap and I have discovered FS2024 is using data from OSM to create building and other features like radio masts, which is great because WE can edit the map MS is getting their data from.
What I’d really like to know @joerg is how often does the server check for new and updated data in OSM?
Issues I’ve noticed so far…
The autogen for trees does NOT seem to be using OSM data, which is a shame, as it would be more accurately mapped. Same applies to water features.
If the mapper on OSM is using Bing satellite imagery to create roads/building shapes it will line up with the FS2024 as it’s the same map, however, as often the case, Bing satellite data isn’t great so an OSM mapper will use more up to date satellite data like ERSI, in this case, the roads and land features edited on OSM will often be offset from FS2024 and looks a mess.
It would be great to get some feedback from the 2024 team to see how they are importing the OSM base map data, how often and if there is a way to can collaborate and contribute to the basement for the sim.
How can we get this info to the devs?
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I’ve done some mapping before. I would love to see this data get properly used. “The other sim” does a much better job of rendering believable roads using it, whereas roads in FS2020 and 2024 are often covered in grass and just slightly discolored from the surrounding terrain, not actual road models. But the funny thing is, the AI cars follow the paths, so they clearly are using some data for roads, just not building roads out of said data.
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I believe that is because the OSM mapper used a different satellite overlay to map the position of the ground objects, often ERSI data is clearer and more recent than the Bing satellite imagery, but the two companies data is often slightly skewed, especially when the image scanned is on the extreme edge of the camera field of view when it passed over the section of earth.
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I’m pretty sure the AI can also choose between Microsoft’s detection algorithm and OSM when rendering airport buildings. However, the discrepancy between OSM and Bing often mean hangars are protruding a few feet into a ramp or taxiway, but then shift the other direction the next time the aerial imagery are updated. The constant shifting is a major impediment to managing airport accuracy.
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I did some comparisons between the data in the sim and analysed the OpenStreetMap data using the Overpass API and it looks like they used the planet file from 2024-08-26. It seems that they do not have an automatic replication process for the OSM data. But I hope they update the data more often than in msfs2020 - as far as I know they never updated the OSM data in the 2020 sim.
Updating the data more often would be cool, as the amount of 3D related information is increasing rapidly - here is a graph of the number of objects with the building:levels tag. This tag is used by the sim to estimate the height of buildings, which works very well.
Another thing i discovered: Tags like building:material or colour seems not to be used. It also looks like roof:levels, roof:shape and other 3D building related tags currently are not being used. This would be a nice addition.
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