SimFocus MSFS Autogen Helipads brings thousands of helipads to Microsoft’s sim. Yep, thousands.
The company is getting data from OpenStreetMap and converting it to MSFS in quite a smart way:
- It’s able to generate helipads with correct shapes and positions
- It’s able to generate edge lighting around the helipad
- Either for all pads
- Or for pads that have “lit”=”yes” tag in OSM
- It generates polygons that exclude buildings and vegetation
- It can retrieve elevation data from opentopodata and apply terraforming
- It will fetch names and ICAO codes from OSM if available
- It’s able to adjust materials (paved or not for now) from OSM if available
- It generates a .csv file with userpoints to be used in littlenavmap
Not everything is perfect, though (of course) and, right now, the major issue SimFocus finds is regarding “unreliable elevation data”. This can cause weird effects, such as the one you can find below.
Nonetheless, even if it’s not perfect – and, let’s be honest, it can look ugly now and then – this is a phenomenal first step into what could turn out to be a great product. And it’s free!
You can download SimFocus’ MSFS Autogen Helipads, for free, here.
