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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
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
COLLISION HANDLING
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 a-mamudesign-powerline folder you will find two layout files
simply rename the layout.json as layout.collision
and layout.noCollion as layout.json
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/
flusiflo
hi. its red flagged as "sim compatibility not yet confirmed". is it SU10 compatible?
mamu82 2 day(s) ago
Yes no problems with SU10 so far, an update will come but is focused on bug fixes
StevenSilva
mamu82 3 day(s) ago
Thanks! It is all related to the available data, if you are interested in a specific country let me know, I'm working on the updates right now so maybe I can sneak in yours
TakeToTheSkies
Hi, I'm having an issue with crashing in the powerlines when I'm on the ILS for KMCO at runway 17L. I remember it being around short final for the ILS approach. I had to go around and when I tried again, I still crashed into the powerline. Maybe you have to make it smaller or just remove it completely. Thanks for reading my message!
mamu82 5 day(s) ago
Oh man I'm Sorry, it is a known issue, there is a high Powerline running under the airport at Orlando and was not being exclude.
I really need to work on the update for Powerlines too!
TakeToTheSkies 5 day(s) ago
yea and it might even need su10 compatibility too, I'll be waiting for your update!
marioh99
this mod plus we love vfr plus the marinas mod makes vfr flying in MSFS unmatched by any sim.
mamu82 9 day(s) ago
Thanks mate, and when talking about VFR, msfs is THE sim, no comparison!
marioh99 9 day(s) ago
agreed !
DragonLick
Also need to know...I use the "We love VFR" addon. It also puts up power pylons. Any way I can disable them or does your scenery already do this? And how would it be prioritized?
mamu82 10 day(s) ago
as far as I know Puff didn't put any power pylons, can you please send me screenshot? thanks!
DragonLick 9 day(s) ago
I could be wrong about that but what about MSFS power pylons?
DragonLick
I dunno but those power thingyies look awfully high to me. Are you sure you measured them? Flying into KSAN cannot easily clear them. They look 2 times too high.
mamu82 15 day(s) ago
Yep measured one by one 🤣
Expect an update soon, I'm waiting for a stable SU10 to test it, then release!
Some high voltage line in the the Americas doesn't follow the rules we have in Europe, so in some areas (the 69kv ones) the "wrong" pylons were placed, I already have the right ones running on my system, please be patient and you'll get the them soon!
(There are quite a few comments here talking about this)
clarithium
this is without a doubt one of the best mods one can get for this game. It adds SO much. Really changes how you approach some runways. This mod is special in that it offers great visuals AND gameplay. Get it.
also I'm curious; how was this mod made? Surely you didn't manually place all of these lines!
mamu82 21 day(s) ago
Thanks so much my friend!
well i was tired of reading shampoo labes while sitting on the trone, so decided to place some wires 😀
Actually i grab the pylons position from OpenStreeMap (as well as number of cables and voltage per each line), then I add to each pylon altitude via external digital elevation model, then import all the data to a my algorithm: there is only a single line passing through two points, so with some trigonometrics i calculate lenght, heading and pitch of each cable and translate those into a msfs .xml
TrentK
Love this mod and your others Mamu. I did smash into a power line on the RNAV(GNSS) RWY 24 at CCN2 Grand Manan which was a big surprise! I see you'll be addressing the tower heights soon so that's ok!
mamu82 26 day(s) ago
Oops Trent , sorry for your sudden crash!
Thanks, yep, I have the 69k lines in the works, and thanks for letting me know that Canada also need a pass on those!
SpeedDemon77
Is there an update on when the USA powerlines will be fixed(making them smaller for the proper electric pole etc.)?
mamu82 1 month(s) ago
hope mid september, anyway i need to way SU10 to be out
luckly latest beta didn't show any FPS drop, but the in previous ones i had some hiccups
jpl
Great work!
Thanks a lot!
Dexdoggy
So do some wires running around make a difference? YES they really do! I pretty much just fly VFR in the sim. Tried it in some Australia scenery in a place I am familiar with in real world (with a nice Tallawarra Power Station add-on by PAW_BROON nearby) figuring that would have some power transmission lines nearby. Sure enough, I only missed crashing into these wires by mere meters! Can't wait to try a helo and do a line inspection flight! This is a fab addition that just further adds to the immersion.
mamu82 1 month(s) ago
Thank so much mate for your sweet review!
Yeah helis are the best to enjoy the cable, hope that in the future Asobo will add some air work adventures for us 🙂
GideonCduToit
How do I install this? Where do I install this? Do I need to copy the folders somewhere? Is there an installation file? I cannot review this if I cannot install this and experience it for myself. If my rating was dependent on the installation instructions I would have given it two stars.
mamu82 2 month(s) ago
INSTALLATION
The downloaded zip contain to main folders:
put those in community and enjoy!
johnnyzampetti
Thank you for the outstanding work! I just have a little request. With the mod on there still is the issue of the pylons at LSGG (runway 22), is it possible to fix it? By removing the pylons (or whatever doesn't cause the aircraft to crash on the landing path). Thank you!
KatanaDV20
This must have taken months and months of hard work. I am in constant amazement at the skills of people like you. Thanks for sharing your work with us.
mamu82 2 month(s) ago
And is still a work in progress! Thanks so much for your kind words, really appreciated 🥰
BPieke
Amazing!
https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/622184-maple-bay-powerlines/
mamu82 2 month(s) ago
Great screenshot, thanks man!
masconti
Trouble to land at RWY 1 in KFRG: the power line is very hight!!!
Great addon
mamu82 2 month(s) ago
Thanks my friend, expect a fix after SU10 release! I wil place small wooden poles in the US for 69kv voltage, seems pretty common there!
jetpilot82
great Addon 😊
but there are much too tall powerlines in front of KSAN (I thik there are no Powerlines at all in reality), the same in KLAX, parallel to the Rwy (sounth side) there are no (tall) visible powerlines, could you correct it please? 😊
mamu82 3 month(s) ago
Yep, I have already fixed them in my internal beta (they are there but on wooden/small metal poles!)
Will release as soon as su10 is out to avoid further issues!
BPieke 2 month(s) ago
One more... north of CAM3 on Vancouver Island, there are only low wires on wooden poles... no red/white pylons or marker balls.
https://imgur.com/3YpKokx
Fabignojj83
Fantastic Mod. Thank you sir.
mamu82 3 month(s) ago
Really happy you are enjoying it!
Clubby
Great mod! Seems to be powerlines a little too tall and close to the approach path at KSAN.
mamu82 3 month(s) ago
Thanks my friend,
All the US will be reviewed to better match your pylon style !
HCG
Excellent! Thanks for covering canada as well!