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Overlay projects, OSM and default scenery import, WED export

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Overlay project and OSM import

Overlay = a separate pack with objects, facades, forests, polygons and roads over the terrain of another scenery.

  1. Editor › New project with a window (for OSM buildings preferably small, up to ~0.01°) › What will you create › Overlay only (like WED). The default choice Edit the base scenery would take over the items of the base DSF for editing (see Editing the base scenery).
  2. By hand: parts from the Library panel (click + tool, or drag into 3D), see Entities and tools.
  3. From OSM: Import OSM › source RenderFarm shapefiles (per tile) (OSM shapefiles from the folders in Settings › Scenery folders, without a setting from Tvorba\Input-OSM) or Own file (.osm, .pbf, .gpkg, .shp), or From the internet (Overpass) › choose layers (OSM buildings, ML buildings, point trees, tree rows, power lines, roads, fences and walls; OSM forests, shrubs, grass according to the OSM forests option) › Preview assignment. - From the internet (Overpass): the panel shows whether the data for the area are already downloaded (0.01° grid; one query covers at most 0.05°). Download from the internet… first explains what will be downloaded and from where (number of queries, server, layers, area, license); the download starts only after you confirm, runs piece by piece into the Studio cache, and the preview then reads just the cache. One download makes at most 16 queries over an area of at most 0.25° × 0.25°, and the whole Studio sends at most 120 queries per hour. Cancel the download keeps the parts already downloaded in the cache, Download again (update)… downloads the data of the area again. ML buildings (Google/Microsoft) are not in OSM, so they are not downloaded from the internet. The data are © OpenStreetMap contributors under the ODbL license – give the attribution when you publish the scenery. For a large area (a whole tile) a .pbf extract (e.g. Geofabrik) used as your own file is kinder. Change the server in Settings › OSM import from the internet. - A window larger than 0.1° is imported part by part (part size 0.1–0.01°, arrows ◀ ▶, ⌖ Part at the camera selects the part with the view centre – the selected part is yellow in 3D and in the window Overview): preview and accept each part separately; after accepting, the panel moves to the next part. Features the project already has from an earlier import are not added again.
  4. The Rules tab (which config rule a feature got, file:line, most frequent parts) and Unassigned (with a reason). Assigning buildings (FIT2) takes tens of seconds on a 0.01° window.
  5. Accept n inserts the entities into the project (Ctrl+Z undoes the whole import), Discard preview inserts nothing.
  6. Edit by hand, Validate, Export DSF… › Export.
  7. Test via Test in X-Plane (source "editor export").
  8. To share it, build a finished package: Package… (in a narrower window in the … menu) › Build scenery package – choose the contents (editor export, DSF versions, orthophoto), fill in the name, author, description and license, optionally Also create a zip to share › Check › Build. The Studio checks that each tile has only one DSF and that the parts and textures are in the package or in the X-Plane library, and writes a README with the license and the data attribution. It copies nothing into X-Plane; test a package built into the Studio cache with the Try in X-Plane button.

The assignment rules come from the RenderFarm config in the working copy (a default copy is part of the installation). OSM road types are a hypothesis (marked so in the UI).

OpenStreetMap attribution (ODbL)
The project remembers items from the OSM import (Properties › Provenance). While it has any, the Export DSF… window points out the ODbL license and the DSF export and the WED export write ATTRIBUTION_OpenStreetMap.txt into the pack folder ("© OpenStreetMap contributors", ODbL 1.0, in Czech and English); the Build scenery package window puts it into the README. When you publish the scenery, keep the attribution and mention it in the download description too. See Validate and export.

Exclusions
To replace objects or forests of the base scenery in your overlay, draw a rectangle or a polygon with the Exclusion tool (X). Choose which kinds it excludes before drawing, with the What to exclude button at the top left of the 3D view (all kinds by default); change them on a finished exclusion in Properties › What to exclude. An exclusion only affects scenery with a lower priority than your overlay pack.

Custom buildings (off by default – the import is unchanged): selected buildings and landmarks (churches, towers, castles, terminals, buildings over 40 m and buildings with building:part parts) are built by the Studio from OSM – heights (height, min_height, building:levels), roof shapes (roof:shape: flat, gabled, hipped, skillion, pyramidal, cone, dome, onion…), roof height and direction, materials and colours (building:material, roof:material, building:colour, roof:colour) – like buildings of the Building tool with library materials. Ordinary houses still come from the library per the config. Advanced has At most custom buildings (25 by default – each is its own model with a texture; landmarks and taller buildings come first) and Which buildings (landmarks and buildings with parts, or all up to the limit). The preview shows how many and which buildings will be built; after Accept the Studio builds them one by one with progress (Cancel = nothing is added) and replaces their library candidates (one Undo step). Buildings without roof:shape: family houses (house, detached, semidetached_house, terrace) get a gable roof, apartment and commercial buildings a flat roof. OSM data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). building:part parts are only in Overpass data (downloaded with the Custom buildings option) and in an .osm / .pbf file – RenderFarm shapefiles do not have them, buildings are then built from the outline and its tags. A single imported building is built custom by the Build custom button in Properties.

Importing the default scenery into an overlay

Want to edit houses, forests or autogen drawn by Laminar's default Global Scenery? Import them into an editor project and replace the original with an exclusion – the result is a separate overlay above Global Scenery. The other way, without an exclusion, is editing the base scenery: New project › What will you create › Edit the base scenery and the Base copy (like terrain) export, i.e. a copy of the Laminar DSF in which only the edited items change (do not share such a DSF though, see License).

  1. Editor › New project on the tile › What will you create › Overlay only (like WED). A small window works well (e.g. 0.05°). For a project over the whole tile, use the cut-out at the camera or a drawn area.
  2. Import DSF / WED (in a narrower window in the … menu) › Source (or Browse…), e.g. …\X-Plane 12\Global Scenery\X-Plane 12 Global Scenery\Earth nav data\+50+010\+50+014.dsf, then Preview. The first read of the DSF takes about 10 s.
  3. Range: Only in the project window; for a large window, Cut-out at the camera or Only in a drawn area, or Whole tile.
  4. Kinds: untick what you do not want to edit. A Global Scenery tile often has over 100,000 roads.
  5. Keep Replace original ticked (it is the default), otherwise X-Plane draws both the original from Global Scenery and your copy.
  6. If the preview warns that the project will be large for the free memory, you can do what it says (Turn off suggested, or a smaller range) – but the import is done even without it, the number of project entities has no limit.
  7. Import into the project. Then edit the entities, run Validate, Export DSF… and try the scenery in X-Plane (Test in X-Plane).

For details on ranges, kinds and the memory warning, see Import DSF / WED.

The range edge (verified in X-Plane 12.4.4)
An X-Plane exclusion removes the original when at least one of its points lies inside. With Replace original the import therefore takes (except forests) only items with a point in the range. - X-Plane excludes forests only by rectangles and clips the original at the edge. A forest across the edge is imported whole, so trees are doubled beyond the edge – the preview reports it for every such import. - Autogen is excluded by the object exclusion (obj), not the facade one: importing objects without autogen (or the other way round) would leave a hole in the range – the preview warns.

Export for WorldEditor (WED)

  1. Editor › project › Export DSF….
  2. The Export for WorldEditor (WED) section: Folder (empty = the Studio cache; a custom folder must not be inside X-Plane, scenery or the Tvorba folder; an existing earth.wed.xml is never overwritten) › Export for WED.
  3. The Studio saves the project as a scenery pack with earth.wed.xml and reads it back for a check (WED export verified). It keeps library paths, heading, heights (MSL and above ground – AGL, set_AGL in WED), the original orthophoto UV (texture nodes), closure, polygon holes, facade walls, exclusions, Bézier curves, autogen, terrain flatten (WED 2.7 or newer) and roads (nodes shared between roads, type and levels from the #VROAD list). WED does not know polygon exclusions – they are written as rectangles; the airport filter is not transferred to a WED project. WED does not keep the order of overlapping terrain flattens (when writing the DSF it sorts them by point pool and height) – when flattens with different heights overlap, the export points it out (not verified in X-Plane – do not overlap flattens with different heights). Facades are written closed or open by the RING in the .fac (as X-Plane does). When the check fails, the Studio lists the reasons in the interface language. Project custom parts are bundled with their textures automatically. When the project refers to parts of the base package (taken-over items and their copies), the Studio asks before writing: Bundle (copied into the WED package, WED finds them as Local) / Keep the reference (WED shows them as missing) – see Local parts in Editing the base scenery.
  4. WED opens only packs in the Custom Scenery folder: copy the pack folder there yourself and in WED choose File › Open Scenery Package. The Studio does not start WED. The export writes the project airports into Earth nav data/apt.dat of the WED pack – in WED load them with File › Import apt.dat (see Airport in the package, X-Plane and WED).
  5. Before the export the section shows whether the Studio found WorldEditor (WorldEditor found: …). It looks in C:\Program Files\WorldEditor and C:\Program Files (x86)\WorldEditor; set another location with the Windows environment variable RFS_WED_EXE (the path of WorldEditor.exe, takes effect after restarting the Studio). A WED the Studio did not find opens the pack as well.

Not verified: opening in WED
The export is verified only by reading earth.wed.xml back in the Studio. Opening the pack in WorldEditor and exporting it further from WED have not been tried yet.

Based on the RF Studio manual (F1 › Manual, version 0.12.0-beta). Post your questions and experience in this thread.