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Do you like flying VFR and watching the World below you? Do you sometimes feel that something is missing? We Love VFR is here to help you. We Love VFR is a free add-on for Microsoft Flight Simulator that adds thousands of new VFR-friendly objects. In this version, you get communication, radio, and tv antennas, chimneys, cooling towers, radar domes, construction cranes, and satellite/radio telescope dishes. I have plans for many more.
What's new in this update?
- Reworked handling of construction cranes. Now we include only sites older than one year, but not older than 4. Also, verified all cranes near runways.
- Added more accurate data for Austria with verified all smokestacks and all other objects over 100 m.
- Added some more crosses in the Alps.
- Fixed one of the smaller chimneys' LOD issue.
- Incorporated data correction requests made by users.
Looking for America? Download Region 2 here »
What does We Love VFR include?
- Over 150 000 objects were placed in region 1.
- Coverage of all Europe, Africa, and part of the Middle East.
- In this version mobile communication, tv, and radio antennas, chimneys, cooling towers, flare stacks, large and mountain top crosses, radar domes, construction cranes, and satellite/radio telescope dishes.
- Smoke and steam effects for chimneys and cooling towers - wide and temperature dependant
- Puffin AI* - correct placement and appearance of objects**
- Included detailed obstacle data from 30 countries (list below)
- Over 100 custom models
- Lower spec PC friendly
- Much more planned
Need power lines and ski lifts?
Be sure to check out fantastic add-ons by mamu82 like the latest Powerlines and Solar Farms! With We Love VFR and his add-ons you basically get a full VFR package for a great price of $0 ;)
How to install it?
Find your „Community” directory and just copy "a-puf-we-love-vfr-region1" there. That’s it. That’s it. If you’re updating my addon, remove the old version before installing the new one.
If you have a conflicting addon refer to the included ReadMe file.
If you don't like smoke effects, or they somehow kill your fps, first of all, report it here or on discord, but then you can download the "no effects" version of this add-on.
Warning: To get satellite dishes/radio telescopes you need to have installed "USA Points of Interest" by Asobo, from the official World Update USA. It's available in the marketplace for free.
It's not a beta anymore but I don't have much time for testing so...
...don't be mad if you see any errors, just report them to me so I can fix them ;) If you see an object that you know but its appearance, join our discord and report it there. I'll try to add/fix it for the next version. You can also join our beta testers team.
Countries with upgraded data (other countries use OSM data and manually added data from wiki or users):
Albania, Armenia, Bahrain, Belgium, Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Croatia, Equatorial Guinea, Estonia, Gabon, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Mauretania, Montenegro, Niger, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, Serbia, Spain, Slovenia, Togo
Known Issues:
- in very rare cases there might be an office building instead of a chimney (I don't mean cooling towers, these are not implemented in the mod at all... yet). Same with office building in place of the demolished cooling tower. This is a case of mismatched data between Asobo and OSM and has to be fixed manually. Report it in comments or in discord.
- most of my objects are switched off on photogrammetry to avoid conflicts. Unfortunately, photogrammetry boundaries are sometimes different than real photogrammetry coverage. Because of that objects that are close to photogrammetry areas might not appear at all. If you find an object like this, just report it to me so I can switch it on.
*Not really AI. Just quite complex conditions, but AI sounds a lot better.
**Depends on data availability.
User Reviews
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Írjon egy véleménytSteve1408
Beware of inadvertant issues caused by this mod in other parts of the world. I just posted a photo to the gallery of smoke being generated in the air above the new Orbx YMLT Launceston.
PuffinFlight 7 day(s) ago
I don't think I see your image in user gallery, but I'm on mobile, so that might be the case.. I'll check it out tomorrow. It's very odd. My generator has a coordinate lock and discards everything outside set area and Australia will come in Region 3. I'll get back to you.
PuffinFlight 6 day(s) ago
Just checked and there are no objects placed by me in the area. https://imgur.com/a/ARWEyZL
Also, I don't see your image, so I can't tell what's going on.
PuffinFlight 6 day(s) ago
Finally was able to check out your screenshot. That in fact looks like my smoke! It's very very odd. I've tested with both regions and nothing showed up.
Would you be so kind to help me diagnose it? Preferably via discord or direct chat as it would require you to click a few things in developer mode. I don't have ORBX add-on so can't test it out. The only idea I have for now is that... they accidentally included a reference to my object in their add-on. Far-fetched, but I can't think of anything else. Conflict? Not likely as my effects names are quite unique.
Does it show up only with ORBX airport installed or always?
torete 6 day(s) ago
I have ORBX airport. I confirm what Steve 1408 says. I also see black smoke over YMLT Launceston. It happens when the PuffinFlight-We_Love_VFR_0.6.2-Region1_iYhZv file is copied to the Community folder.
With the PuffinFlight-We_Love_VFR_0.6.1-Region2_kLGE2 file there is no problem.
To avoid seeing the smoke in YMLT, I now have in the Community folder the files PuffinFlight-We_Love_VFR_0.6-Region1-NoEffects_aidIF and PuffinFlight-We_Love_VFR_0.6.1-Region2_kLGE2.
But I don't see the effects of the smoke from region 1. A pity.
Sorry for the English, I'm using the translator. I hope I helped you.
PuffinFlight 6 day(s) ago
Ok, so it's my object for sure. Thanks for the confirmation. I wonder if Orbx accidentally put a reference to my object in their product by accident. That would be hilarious. I can't find any other reason why it's like that. I guess it's the smoke effect simobject. I might buy that airport just out of curiosity 😃
Just to make it clear. The reason it is fine with Region 2 and not with 1 is that names of objects that place smoke are unique in every region to avoid conflicts. I guess without ORbx airport it's fine for you, right?
torete 5 day(s) ago
Yes, that's right, without ORBX's YMLT airport, everything is fine.
By the way, thank you very much for your 3 MODs. They bring a lot of immersion to MSFS.
gax
Hi,
thank you for your essential mod. Atm., i fly alot in the mountains, and i noticed a big graphical issue, wich nearly caused me some fatal accidents. Also, they take away from the beauty of the game. I am sure the error is on my side, as i did not find other posts regarding this issue. It looks like the powerlines from wlvfr cause a different height map and force the game to try to show 2 different heights. Do you have an idea what i can do to correct this?
https://easyupload.io/bt13be
https://easyupload.io/0gw5wx
PuffinFlight 10 day(s) ago
Hi. Wrong address mate 😊 The powerlines are from the Mamu Power Lines Project. But I will take the praise for We Love VFR regardless, thank you 😀
gax 10 day(s) ago
Oops! Thank You! 😀
GunStrauss
Just posted an image to the user gallery of triple chimneys south-east to Rendsburg in the Kiel Canal. I'm pretty sure it's caused by We Love VFR. Would be nice if you could have a look.
PuffinFlight 27 day(s) ago
Looking at sat images these should be a lot lower. The data in OSM for them has no height. In such cases, I try to figure out what the chimney is used for. In this case, it's for powerplant so I set them to be quite big. I will change it manually to a value that's closer to real life. Also, I plan to add more accurate data for Germany soon. Thanks for the report.
GunStrauss 27 day(s) ago
Ok, I see that the image is available now. Are all the three chimneys made by We Love VFR? As you can see, they intersect a little.
PuffinFlight 6 day(s) ago
Argh. I never get notifications when I get a reply to my reply. Sorry. Yes, they are all by me. They are bigger than they should be, that's why they overlap. I even have the flag that shows me chimneys close to each other but there are hundreds of cases where it is a correct behavior, so reviewing it all manually would be too much work.
Soon I will create video tutorials on how to edit OSM data to make objects in your area more realistic, which might also help
ipp
In Helsinki smoke is 10 meters away from the two big chimneys. On the other side of town they are okay as in rest of Finland, I've seen so far..
PuffinFlight 29 day(s) ago
I guess that the position of OSM data and photogrammetry is misaligned. I'll check it out and will try to correct it. Thanks.
Vanchel92
But some chimneys and all cranes have a purple texture. Reinstalling doesn't help. What could be the reason?
PuffinFlight 1 month(s) ago
That may indicate missing textures. Try to remove the add-on, then redownload it and install it again.
ChupacabraO.o
Thank you very much 🤝
GunStrauss
I notice that the no-effect version is not updated to the latest version number... are there many differences between the two versions?
PuffinFlight 2 month(s) ago
Very minor. Next time both will be updated.
GunStrauss 2 month(s) ago
Ok, any estimate as to when you'll release the next versions?
PuffinFlight 2 month(s) ago
I thought it would be November but life has different plans. With coming holidays I don't want to throw any dates around
GunStrauss 2 month(s) ago
I see 😊 BTW: Would you like to have a look at the comment I made to this addon: https://flightsim.to/file/26451/scenery-flensburg-1-0-by-kielfjord ?
He lists your plugin as incompatible, but seems like all that would be needed was to reach out to your team.
PuffinFlight 2 month(s) ago
I'll reach out to him, and will check placement of that chimney. But it will take some time. I have some things to do first.
I don't know why more devs won't reach out to me. I'm always willing to help in making our add-ons compatible as I treat We Love VFR as inferior to custom sceneries. Something like extended auto-gen.
GunStrauss 2 month(s) ago
Indeed, there are a lot of stuff regarding the MSFS development scene that's a bit weird. Anyways, thank you so much for both fantastic products and admirable swift respons to your users/the community.
GunStrauss
Thank you very much for this amazing scenery, however, would you mind to shed some light on this following topic for us who combine your global sceneries with other packages?
https://forum.flightsimdevelopmentgroup.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3331
PuffinFlight 2 month(s) ago
That's very nice of them to provide a manual to make it compatible.
TBH I don't know why they recommend removing my exclusions. Those are there to remove unwanted buildings and objects placed by Asobo. I think it will work just fine if you leave it in and my add-on is at the lowest priority.
Also:
"Our Landmarks of Germany series does not cover areas that are included as photorealistic in MSFS (like Mannheim or Munich) or objects that are already part of the MSFS D-A-CH content (like several Frankfurt landmarks). Those might be missing if We Love VFR includes exclude calls for them. We cannot influence that."
If We Love VFR object is placed over any object from World Update it is a bug and should be reported to me 😊 I exclude such objects from my add-on.
"We Love VFR likes to exclude photorealistic scenery around its objects, most notably in industrial areas like Mannheim, while our Landmarks of Germany series integrates our objects into these photorealistic sceneries. We suggest to disable the We Love VFR exclude bgl files. That way these areas look the way they're supposed to."
That's... that's not true. Or I don't understand what they mean by that. With exception of masts, I don't place objects in photogrammetry areas. If you see a chimney or cooling tower in such area it is most likely a bug. There are a few exceptions to that, where the photogrammetry was bad so I place the object manually. Still, if they use exclusions they should be able to remove my objects underneath. I will check areas that were pointed out, but even if I remove photogrammetry it is just under the object, not around it.
GunStrauss 2 month(s) ago
Thanks a lot for shedding some light on the issue with your thorough answer! 😊
tetraethylead
when is Region-3 coming?
PuffinFlight 2 month(s) ago
Q1 2023 hopefully
sixshooter
Can't wait for Australia!
bmjmod
This is great. However I have found an interesting artifact. At -2.59095 28.74578
About 12 nm sw of Kamembe (HRZA) Rwanda. it is a huge satellite dish. when I say huge it must be visible from space. Except there doesn't appear to be one there IRL. I have used the latest version. I notice the dish appears infested with random vehicles, so something is not right!
Here are some pics:
https://imgur.com/gallery/MyZ9a9V
moereezy 2 month(s) ago
Looks Great hahaha
PuffinFlight 2 month(s) ago
What the...!? I review manually every dish and fill missing info. I guess I've made a typo 😀
Just checked. Not a typo. This one should not be placed at all. And it got a diameter of 8888 which I use to mark objects that are marked in OSM as "relations".
I'll make sure to remove it in the next update and will put a limit in the generator so cases like these will be automatically disabled.
bmjmod 2 month(s) ago
Hey that’s great at least it wasn’t me! It was fun navigating it! Looking forward to the update. Keep up the good work
manicminer
Unfortunately the radome 'golf balls' conflict with payware addons, like LIML from JetStream Designs.. Is it possible to remove your radomes and additional buildings and keep theirs?
https://i.ibb.co/0Z3JpJK/LIML2.jpg
PuffinFlight 3 month(s) ago
I consider my add-on as an "extended autogen". This means that every other add-on should be treated as more important and potentially better than mine in depicting real-life places. Unfortunately, I'm unable to detect if a model of the other add-on is loaded on top of a model placed by We Love VFR. On the other hand, if another add-on is using an exclusion rectangle to "clear" the area of any unnecessary objects my doubled radar dome would be removed.
In the experimental options of MSFS, you can activate the package reorder tool (https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/Additional_Information/Experimental_Features.htm). There you will be able to set higher priority for your payware scenery. If they are using exclusion rectangles, my radar dome will be gone.
If not you still can remove all radar domes from my add-on by deleting the "Radomes" folder from my add-on.
brunocarvalho
Hi Puffin, just want to say that your mod is incredible! I hope you can overcome any problems that have happened in your personal life, I wish you a lot of strength brother.
AlNik541
Огромная благодарность за проделанную работу! Давно мечтал увидеть такое. Только к сожалению не увидел ни одной градирни. Вместо них холмы и кое где вместо них торчат маленькие трубы. Еще хотелось бы добавить недостающие трубы и подкорректировать размер существующих. В ответах на вопросы рекомендуется редактировать карту. К сожалению не понятно как это делать. Зарегистрировался на дискорде, но там вообще не ясно где спросить. Если возможно, дайте пожалуйста более четкие инструкции.
С уважением, AlNik
PuffinFlight 4 month(s) ago
Can you give any specific examples (coordinates)? Hills around big power plants are usually caused by wrong elevation data. But my models should be placed on top of these silly hills, not inside them.
AlNik541 4 month(s) ago
Я Вам дам все координаты которые смогу найти. Сообщу в течении нескольких дней. С уважением.
Bellus
Great add-on which provides a better immersion. Since the last update 1-27-21, I still can see the electrical pylons, masts and posts but the wires /lines are not visible anymore.... Anyone with the same problem?
Bellus 4 month(s) ago
Sorry guys, this message is for PowerLines and solar farms
brad0131
Love this addon, but have noticed more stuttering, esp in SU10 when panning. Hoping a SU10 compatible update comes out.
PuffinFlight 4 month(s) ago
Hmmm. I didn't notice any change. Did you check it without the add-on and did you check if your graphic options stayed the same after the update (I lost all my settings)?
There is no specific update needed for SU10 as there were no significant changes to the way that sceneries are handled. But I will try to prepare an update in the upcoming weeks with:
I'd really love to focus more on We Love VFR but my real life went to s#*# recently and I have to crawl back to the surface first. But no worries, I believe it will get better 😉
brad0131 4 month(s) ago
Yes, so I tried with your mod active and de-activated. When activated, I lost 3-5 fps and it was a tad more choppy. Without it, I re-gained. I tried the no effects version too, which was slightly better but still gave me problems. I usually test loading into KLAX on 25R with PMDG. And no worries, personal life always comes first!
cscurlock
Seeing a lot of errors in developer mode when you have VFR1 and VFR2 with duplicated GUIDS. For example: Duplicated model data guid {6B49068C-B4BA-4C4E-7B70-ED5534DB9A02} found in BGL! package "a-puf-we-love-vfr-region2" and "a-puf-we-love-vfr-region1". There are a lot of these.
PuffinFlight 4 month(s) ago
Yup. Those should not affect the sim for now and they will be dealt with as soon as possible. Before Asobo did not indicate duplicated IDs as errors and it was assumed that they are overwritten depending on load order.
Give me some time as I've just lost my job and have quite a tough time IRL.
Pagey69 3 month(s) ago
This is an awesome mod. I hope you circumstances improve bud.
btdc00
Although I fly only airliners, can't tell you how big is the gap you did fill. Really missed the cooling towers and chimneys, etc. Thanks for this amazing work, much love
lschaef3
Great mods. Would it be possible in the future to add flashing lights to TV/Radio towers?
Maxest
Hello I got a question,
is it possible to have only models installed but not them placed in the Sim?
Some addon developers require this mod installed to have some elements of they scenery appear. It is actually a great mod. But the reason however why I don't want this mod to be installed is that it's places too much random antennas and chimneys in non existent places but also conflicts with other addons including ones from ORBX, Drzewiecki Design, some other custom modelled power plants and so on. I of course fully understand that you can't simply make it compatible with every single mod that is made and will be made for the Sim.
PuffinFlight 5 month(s) ago
I'd love my add-on to be compatible with every single one of payware add-ons but I can't detect if anything goes over my objects. On the other hand they can remove any objects underneath theirs very easily but usually just don't bother to do that.
In case of "random" antennas and chimneys you can report each case to me. OSM data is not perfect and in some regions objects are placed but not tagged enough to be detected as not wanted by my add-on.
Now for the best part. I think you can remove my scenery without issues and be left with just models. Just remove BGL scenery files of objects you don't want from the add-ons folder. Models are kept in separate file. You should figure it all out on file and folder names. You can also just limit the number of antennas and chimneys by removing their BGL files that have "minor" in file name. This will leave you with only taller masts and chimneys.