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PROJECT LIFTS
...something more on the top of the mountains...

With this add-on I’m trying to add a long-awaited feature that MSFS in actually missing
Basically, all cable cars, gondolas and chair lift, and also those strange mixed-lifts in the World's Nothern Emisphere, 
Other countries will come, with your kind help :D

The project started as a nice addition to my Trento Mattarello (LIDT) Airport scenery, if haven’t downloaded it yet, this is the link:

https://it.flightsim.to/file/12026/lidt-trento-mattarello-aeroporto-g-caproni

There are some ski resorts in the nearby (well, in Italy we have lots!), and I thought it could be a nice idea taking off with the nice helis we now have and do some aerial work in lifts! After some tinkering, I thought it would have been a long work adding every lift manually, so I wrote myself an “automatic” tool to create the needed scenery placement files.

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY BEFORE ASKING, THANKS!:

FEAUTURING:

- Cable cars, gondolas and chairlifts and the respective cables

 - Drag lits (skilifts, t-bars, j-bars and platter), without cables (not enough clearence from terrain)

- Custom chairs, gondolas and cable cars cabin models, with some variations, chair type should be the correct one according to data source available, otherwise I’m throwing a random one

- Custom pylons and stations models (more variation will come, this is the easy part!)

- Night illumination on the ski slopes where appropriate

- Full PBR texturing, optimized fully custom 3d models with lods

- the package includes a special scenery with the full Skyway cable car experience, more info here:

https://flightsim.to/file/21922/skyway-mont-blanc-the-full-experience

Covering The whole World!!

(A map of all the lifts represented can be found here)

http://projectlifts.altervista.org/released.html

KEEP IN MIND:
The only way to place cable and cabins in the right position is having the precise altitude of the pylons and station.
At the moment I have no way to obtain altitude directly from MSFS, so I have to take it from a different source. I have tried using Bing elevation data, Google elevation Data, SRTM1 and ODP1, they are all good but no one match closely the msfs mesh.
If you look closely, you will find a lot of pylons soaked into the ground or floating a few centimeters above. The same will happen to the cables that should be attached to the stations (i can attach the cable to the station but this will lead to floating/buried stations, not the pleasant) .
If you don’t like them, you can download the version without cables (and pylons snapped to ground) here:

https://it.flightsim.to/file/22152/project-lifts-no-cable-version

Anyway, you are not supposed to fly that near to cables…..aren’t you?

WILLING TO HELP OR IMPROVE THE PROJECT? CONTINUE READING!

Using the public available openstreemap data, I added all stations and pylons of the lifts, and, of course, the cables!

Unfortunately, openstreemap data is not complete, or worse, is not perfect. Therefore, in order to obtain a plausible rendition I’ve to edit myself. Tons on data! There are thousands of pylons in the world, holy crap!

This could be the reasons why MSFS is waiting to add such data, too much manual work to do (and it is unlikely that they can manage pylon placing with AI)

There’s a lot of work to do, and, if you are interested, YOU can help as well. 

How? Become a openstreemap editor?

It is very simple:

YOUTUBE TUTORIAL:

https://youtu.be/5aV2rkJ5HfA

-          Sign in to openstreetmap.org https://www.openstreetmap.org/

-          Click on edit -> edit with ID-Editor

-          Zoom in an area that need attention

-          Select some background satellite imagery, you can choose among a handful.

-          Start adding pylons! Click on the lift path, click again where you want the pylon to be placed, click the newly added point and mark it as a pylon. Repeat until the end of the lift

-          Save your work, that’s it

- PLEASE RESPECT OTHER MAPPERS WORK, if you are not sure on what you are doing, ask for help!

I will be adding pylons as well, and will update the package every now and then. Minor upgrades will be n.n.x version, major upgrade will be n.x.n version

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WANT TO HELP?

A LITTLE TUTORIAL FOR YOU:

YOUTUBE TUTORIAL:

https://youtu.be/5aV2rkJ5HfA

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Special thanks to: 

OpenstreetMap.org and all the mappers

Gpsvisualizer.com for providing a WONDERFUL tool to get elevation data

Overpassturbo for data extraction

REVIEWS:

great review from CLUMSY https://youtu.be/kI3s5qhs9-Y

nice video from  VIRTUAL AIRLINE PILOT https://youtu.be/p8nQZ6gUu5o

MSFS ADDONS review https://msfsaddons.com/2021/10/26/project-lifts-is-a-must-have-add-on-that-adds-cable-cars-gondolas-and-chair-lifts-to-msfs/

FLIGHT NEWS 24 review https://flightnews24.de/2021/10/29/msfs-freifahrt-fuer-seilbahnen-gondeln-und-sessellifte/

Najnowsze zmiany for 0.8.1

- added world's Southern Emisphere and China , basically now all the World is covered
check map http://projectlifts.altervista.org/released.html for details
- updated Europe lifts data
- draglifts filled with pylons (where no data is availble pylon are positioned at equal distance)
- minor fixes