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Powerlines and Solar Farm
By Mamudesign
OVERVIEW
When you fly VFR, in real life, being near the ground leads to lot of dangers.
One of the most common one is the possibility you get caught in a power line (electricity transmission line)
MSFS has powerlines pylons, but no wire between them
With my addon I added the wires between each pylon for high voltage power lines (more than 60k volts).
Actual POWERLINES coverage includes:
Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic (Czechia), Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Hungary, Belarus, Austria, Serbia, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Slovakia, Norway, Ireland, Croatia, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Montenegro
and
Australia!
versione 0.9.5 contains also
USA, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, Japan
SOLAR FARMS Coverage:
Italy, Germany, Spain, France, Great Britain, Benelux, Danmark and Canada
+United States and Greece from 0.9.7 update
The project coverage is gonna increse overtime
With this addon, along with my other add-on Project Lifts and the spectacular We love VFR by Puffinflight, the long time ago request:“Please add powerlines, gondalas, mast” from the MSFS Wishlist has been fulfilled, for free, by independent developers. Hey Asobo, that is 2 person work :D
FEATURING:
The project use Open Street Map data (the same source of Microsoft) for pylon placing
Each “line” (way) of the trasmission grid has a specific “voltage” and "number on cables" in the OSM data, i have assigned specific pylon and number of cables by using those value
if nr. of cables is not indicated, lines up to 140k volts get 3-wire, line between 140k and 280k get 4-wires and lines above 280k volts will get a 6-wire setup (OSM data also has nr. of wires data, but is quiete unconsistent, so this is the deal)
To spice things up, and provide additional realism, I have crossed Powerlines data with Airports, major roads, rivers, and digital elevation model (SRTM1).
In this way i can detect where to place white and red marker balls for the cables and red/white painted pylons
Rules as folow:
- Within Airport boundaries no pylons or wires are allowed
- From each runways threshold, in an area 1500 meters long and 300 meters wide, powerline will have marker balls and red white pylons
- When a wire cross a major river or major road marker balls are placed
- Also, when a wire crosses a a major valley marker balls are placed (more that 50 meters from the bottom of the valley to the base of the pylon, this make the ground-wire clearence to about 70/90 meters)
All the above rules may not follow individual countries regulations, but you know, is not a “Cable simulator”!
I did not notice any major FPS impact
SOLAR FARMS
Another thing that the sim was missing was Solar Panels / Solar Farms
So i did them! Basic implementation, but no more empy black-bluish fields
The data source is of course the Open Street Map database. When a single panel is mapped i’m placing it accordingly, while if an entire solar farm is mapped as an entire “area”, i’m filling it with regular patterns
I’m still working on the placing routines / solar panels aspect, so a limited number of countries is provided
Over extremely large solar farms, if too close, fps is gonna lower a bit
KNOWN ISSUES:
NEW: most of you wanted collision handling, so I have added it! It won't affect FPS, but there is a big known issue:
when a cable cross a road, there is some possibility that autogenerated road traffic cars will drive over the cables, the issue has been aknowledge by Asobo's Devs and hopefully will get fixed , more info on this 3d
https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/questions/5553/cars-follows-simple-shape-collisions.html
If you already know my Project Lifts scenery, the issues are the same:
To be able to place wires between pylons I NEED to know the exact altitude above sea level of each pylon at design time. Since there is no way to obtain the data from the sim itself i’m gathering them from free sources like SRTM1 (30 meters Digital Elevation Model). Those not alway match internal MSFS DEM
Therefore, sunken or overflying pylons are fairly common
INSTALLATION
The downloaded zip contain to main folders:
- a-mamudesign-powerlines
- a-mamudesign-solarFarms
In Each main folder there is folder called scenery/a-mamudesign-powerlines/scenery
Or scenery/a-mamudesign-solarFarms/scenery/
Those last foldes contain the actual compiled sceneries, in format contryName-placement.bgl and contryName-exclude.bgl
Since the sceneries contains MILIONS of objects placed, if you suffer for slow loading times you can simply delete or rename unwanted countries
NEW:
The included folder mamudesign-high-pylons contains Special scenery for the highest powerlines in europe:
- Elbe Crossing 1 & 2 near Hamburg (coordinate 53.60211835180482, 9.602438321475487)
- the Messina and Reggio power tower (dismissed)
It is totally optional, but I guarantee they are quite interesting structures!
COLLISION HANDLING HAS CHANGED!
If you want to disable collision handling, because you just wanna have fun or don't like cars riding the cables (see known issues)
inside the Community\a-mamudesign-powerlines\scenery\a-mamudesign-powerlines folder locate the
powerlines-modelLibNew.BGL and rename it as powerlines-modelLibNew.disabled
and
powerlines-modelLib-noCollision.disabled and rename it as powerlines-modelLib-noCollision.bgl
DISCORD:
https://discord.gg/DxsrNN95FS
REVIEWS:
Check PIES IN THE SKY TOUR for some wonderful review of this add-on and other great simulation videos
https://youtu.be/YywHpGsX6XI
another great review from flightnews24, always up to date info for the flightsim community!
https://flightnews24.de/2022/01/14/msfs-stromleitungen-und-solarparks/
Another sweet channel, SimFlighPro, thanks for the review!
https://youtu.be/SkRgAu9MofU
And thanks Vasco from MSFS Addons, great words about the Powerlines
https://msfsaddons.com/2022/01/16/this-freeware-mod-adds-powerlines-and-solar-farms-to-microsoft-flight-simulator/
User Reviews
Review data
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Napisz recenzjęEduMCfly
Could you add Ecuador please?
mamu82 3 day(s) ago
I can manage to do that, stay tuned!
EduMCfly 2 day(s) ago
Thank you!!! 😊
FranklinFjM
Awesome work! An absolute must have for every VFR pilot!
mamu82 5 day(s) ago
Thanks a lot for your support!
Cygnet683
Great addon, but causes audio skipping in proximity to pylons for me.
mamu82 10 day(s) ago
Audio? Really? That's a first timer!
Unfortunately performance issue are up to Asobo optimisation,
I made everything they recommend to optimise the game, they introduce performance issue from su10 and still waiting for a fix
Cygnet683 8 day(s) ago
I've had audio skipping in the past, so it could well be my system, but the pylons set it off again.
rob12770
nothing in the UK ? 😞
mamu82 19 day(s) ago
Hi Rob,
UK is fully included😄
Make sure to install the addon correctly, the zip contains 3 folder, those are supposed to be put in Community!
jonnyboy4222
i'm sorry, i might be new, but how do i get this into my simulator? I extracted everything and they are in a folder.... now what?? How do i get them into Microsoft Flight Simulator? Thanks!
mamu82 28 day(s) ago
The zip contains 3 folders
Move the 3 folders into your Community folder (the same you use for every other addon) and enjoy 😄
Vingilot
Great addon, I did wonder if you might consider adding the rail power lines to Europe's electric rail net?
newtestleper
Has your scenery-highpylons mod been disabled? I have it downloaded but not seeing it on the website anymore.
ftnet305
Even being a brilliant addon I must disable it at airports like KLAX. My findings are that with this addon enabled, the first takeoff from or approach into KLAX is pretty much flawless showing stable 30 to 35 fps (not considering frame generation) on Ultra with LOD 150. Yet doing a short flight of 5 min or circling around the airport, the next approach or flyover will bring heavy stutters in between 10 to 15 fps. I confirmed this behaviour multiple times and abolutely nailed it to this addon. As the author already wrote the problems are with Asobo, I hope for an update making this fantastic mod usable again. Maybe a solution for now would be to have a config file in order to exclude certain areas / airports?
12700K, RTX4090, KLAX from iniScene
mamu82 2 month(s) ago
Thanks, at the moment there is very little I can do, the sim is just not able to handle so much data, hoping for improvement
Other than that, I can only suggest to lower the settings to make room for this (and any other) addon,with your specs 30fps is really too low and any hiccups can create stutturing
jetpilot82
your Powerlines are a really great addon, but for me (and as i read for some others as well) it unfortunately causes a huge performance drop, especially around LAX and greater LA area as well as around London and EGLL.
Is it possible to further optimize your scenery, or offer a version, where all powerlines are excluded it this 2 areas?
FireRx
could you add New Zealand into the mix sir?
popapig
Similarly to this incredible add-on, would it be possible to add railroads and ttheir electric catheters?
Those data are for free in OSM, can be exported ( simheaven does it in Xplane).
It is a very important nav aids for VFR flights ( we use railroads a lot in real life ) but those are truly missing in fs2020. A blurry satellite imagery is not enough, unfortunately.
MlodyM
Very nice!!!!
TIMAX
Does it work with the Google Map Replacement Tool?
mamu82 4 month(s) ago
Yes sure!
GustavoPeres
Sadly its not working for me... sometimes appears, almost always dont. And when appears, the defaut pylons show as well
mamu82 4 month(s) ago
I'm sorry for you experience gustavo, are you sure you have installed the folders correctly? Where are you flying?
MrJTSZ
Very nice job!
tuxuera
Hi, first I want to thank you for the great job you have done.
I have noticed that there is a big mistake of electric cables in front of the LFHU runway (Alpe d'Huez) I usually fly in that area in real life and there are no such cables, is there any way to exclude them?
mamu82 4 month(s) ago
Thanks sir!
Actually the cables are really there at l'alpe d'huez, but due to design limitations in the addon they are quite straight and don't have the required sag to clear the approach 🙂
I have already the solution here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_0OzIky0-6f-WQKFe-PZpjvpc2398ufp/view?usp=sharing
Unzip and overwrite the bgl file and cables there will be gone
A good advice, if you like the area is to install the Bank Angle Studio scenery, is a good one and has proper cables on the approach
tuxuera 4 month(s) ago
I have already tested the file, now it looks much better.
Ah!!! and if I have the back angle studio scenery, it's great to be able to fly again in the Alps Altiport.
Again I congratulate you for the work you have done, thank you very much for everything.
plicpriest1
Hello, I installed the powerlines. Everything works as advertised, but my GPU is now running at near 100% most of the time. Okay, my computer just isnt up to the task, however after i deleted the folders out of my community the sim still runs at nearly full GPU. I still see powerlines, so its as if they are still in there. Is there any way to ensure that everything is removed properly? Thank you
mamu82 5 month(s) ago
The GPU is supposed to run at 100% ☺️, it won't harm the PC, and quite sure Powerlines don't have a hit on it.
Powerlines however are a bit hard on the CPU in latest updates,
Removing from community will remove them, maybe you need to clean the cache?
plicpriest1 5 month(s) ago
Thank you for your insight. Maybe a case of confirmation bias. I will however look into clearing the cache. Thats a good idea. Thank you for your time. Again excellent addon, unquestionably, just my system struggles.
gax
Hi,
thank you for your essential mod.
manfer
Nice Work but it´s to much for my Hardware. Keyboard did not reacted, so i´ve kicked it...problems gone!
mamu82 5 month(s) ago
Thanks for the report, let's hope in some performance improvement from Asobo!
eraser2727
I have been using this addon for quite a while, but I recently noticed huge performance degradations in some situations where the powerlines bring my fps into the single digits, making it unplayable.
Again, did not notice this prior to the latest sim update, so I don't know what changed exactly.
mamu82 5 month(s) ago
Thanks for the report. While I'm not experiencing major issues (single digit FPS)
I noticed some degradation after su10 and a touch more after SU11
And it is obviously Asobo side. I can really do nothing more to enhance the performance, I'm following every SDK design advice
The instancing algorithm is became slower and slower, and it eats CPU power. So only advice is to make room for those cpu calculation, by decreasing terrain LOD and/or AI planes
eraser2727 5 month(s) ago
I found a spot where it is easily reproduceable, the 40thA Mission "Rome to Naples IFR" in the A310, at the start of the mission without any moving, cockpit view.
Having just the powerlines addon enabled, I go from 20-22fps (GPU bound) to 8-10 fps (CPU bound).
GunStrauss 4 month(s) ago
Does this happen with DirectX11 or beta Directx12?