X-Plane 10 HD Mesh Scenery v2 released!

Andras Fabian of alpilot.net has announced the release of version 2 of the donationware X-Plane 10 HD Scenery Mesh, reporting that “It covers many of the “interesting” regions of the planet”, using over 55 Gbytes of data, across Europe and North America.

If you already know about the project and just want to skip straight to the download details, they can be found here, although the developers recommend that “all users, to first start with one or two small regions. Download them, install them, test if it works and then – slowly, step-by-step – get more regions“. Otherwise, click “Read More” below, to see the full Press Release.

X-Plane 10 HD Mesh Scenery v2 released!

The free (donationware!) X-Plane 10 HD Scenery Mesh v2 has been released after almost a year of work. It covers many of the “interesting” regions of the planet (over 55 Gbytes of data), covering:
* Europe (Iceland and Canaries included)
* USA (Hawaii included)
* Canada (most parts of it)
* Alaska

A coverage map can be found here:
http://www.alpilotx.net/images/hd_mesh_scenery_v2_coverage.jpg

It is an update to the older v1 HD Mesh (and a replacement of the default Global Scenery) and brings a lot of improvements to the simulator:
* It is a much higher resolution base mesh (more, smaller triangles) compared to the default Global Scenery which ships with X-Plane 10 (one could say: approximately 2-3-times more dense)
* The higher resolution mesh allows for a much more detailed representation of the elevation profile of the landscape
* The higher resolution mesh allows a much more detailed/exact representation of the underlying landclass data (because of the smaller triangles, which can follow landclass changes in the raw data more closely)
* It is based on a completely new Openstreetmap (OSM) data (approximately end of September 2013), which brings (compared to default Global Scenery) a lot of improvements in:
** water features (lakes, rivers, coastline) – many previously missing water features are now finally there
** roads
** railroads
** power lines
** urban park areas
* It includes line rivers from OSM (not just polygons as before) tagged waterway=river which improves the landscape in most regions quite a bit
* Uses improved urban zoning (thanks to improved algorithms in the scenery generator)
* Many smaller and larger landclass data improvements
** completely replaced the landclass data for Canada (big improvements)
** improved forest density representation in Europe (changed the sparse / dense classification)
** some new classes added (in many regions), like: moraines, riverbeds, mining/dump sites
** added differentiation between ice (perennial) and snow (more temporal) to have an even more detailed representation of mountains
** dded differentiation between irrigated / non-irrigated crops (in some regions – like the USA etc.)
* Completely replaced the elevation data with viewfinderpanoramas.org (if yew have a few cents, donate to that guy!). This doesn’t changes much in areas which were already great, but fixes some which were really hosed.

One important prerequisite: to make this scenery work, you MUST have at least X-Plane version 10.25 (beginning with 10.25 beta1)!

A large selection of screenshots can be found here:
* Europe: https://picasaweb.google.com/101666907909842492197/XPlane10HDMeshSceneryV2EuropeFINAL?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCNKp646D4Ynscw&feat=directlink
* North America: https://picasaweb.google.com/101666907909842492197/XPlane10HDMeshSceneryV2NorthAmericaFINAL?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCLCalPCK1MD6vAE&feat=directlink

All informations, possible updates, installation instructions, and download links can be found here:
http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-scenery-mesh-v2/

I recommend all users, to first start with one or two small regions. Download them, install them, test if it works and then – slowly, step-by-step – get more regions.

I would like to thank www.flightsim.com for making it possible to host a project of this size!

Andras Fabian
www.alpilotx.net