Contribute

We are always looking for new contributions to the library – buildings, static aircraft, ground markings or anything else you would like to contribute.

Copyright

If you want to become a contributor, you must agree that your work can be distributed to anyone who downloads the library, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.  In addition, if you have included any work from anyone else then they must give their permission too.  We will contact them if you wish, but you must make this clear and let us know their contact details.  A couple of examples of where this is necessary:

  1. Where you have converted an X-Plane® aircraft into a static object, you must get permission from the original author of the aircraft.
  2. Where someone else owns the copyright for the original photograph that a texture is based on, then they must give permission.

Note that the Creative Commons license protects against people copying objects out of the library and distributing them as part of their own work.  However, there are no restrictions on who can reference objects from the library – so for example OpenSceneryX can legally be used by payware authors, as the payware author is not distributing your work to the end user, we are.

Quality

You must also agree not to get upset if your submission is declined – Now that the library has reached a decent size, we are getting stricter on quality control so don’t be upset if we have some suggestions for improvements before your stuff is added.

Standards

There are a few standards and checks that you should do before submitting, otherwise we may ask you to fix these:

  1. Please ensure the scaling of the object is correct. For example, in Blender 1 unit = 1 meter.
  2. If it’s an object with an identifiable ‘nose’ (like an aircraft, car, boat etc.) then please align the object pointing North with the tip of its nose at the origin (0, 0) – zoom in in your 3d editor to position it exactly.
  3. If the object doesn’t have an identifiable nose then please centre the object on the origin (0, 0) and rotate it so it is aligned with North, i.e. it’s not at an angle. This includes buildings.
  4. If your contribution includes lighting, please use the lighting model which was introduced in X-Plane® 10, so don’t include baked-in ground shadows and spill lighting effects in textures. You can still include illuminated internal elements, for example windows, but where it is possible to use a proper X-Plane® light source, please do so.
  5. Please spend some time optimising your object model and textures. Remember that everyone worldwide who uses OpenSceneryX will have to download your object, so the smaller and more efficient you can make it the better!

How To Submit

Option 1 (Easy Option)

Firstly, you can just zip up a whole pile of objects, submit it and let us sort it all out. Bear in mind that this takes us time and you may not see your objects appear in the library for a while. We often have a queue of contributions and the ‘bung it in a folder’ method means your contribution will be at the bottom of the list.

Note that even if you do this YOU MUST STILL LET US KNOW ABOUT THE COPYRIGHT ON ALL OBJECTS AND TEXTURES YOU SUBMIT.

Option 2 (Helpful Option)

If you want to save us some time and get your objects into the library faster, then follow these steps:

  1. Please put every item in its own folder. Put any textures the item uses in the same folder… unless…
  2. If any textures are shared between multiple items, please put the textures in their own folder.
  3. Name the folders anything you like, but make them something sensible so we can identify what’s inside. The folders will be renamed anyway before they get added to the library.
  4. Please supply a read-me file with every item, stating who owns the copyright on the item and the texture. You can also supply some background information too if you wish, including how to use hints and tips. If you want to be really helpful, there is a standard format that we use for these read-me files. In this standard format, the file is named info.txt. Click here for more information.

Or – Do you have a whole library you would like to merge with OpenSceneryX?

We have recently been accepting full library merges, where an existing library is merged into OpenSceneryX in its entirety. This involves a lot of work on our side, so if you are the owner of an existing library and would like to donate it, please don’t bother following the ‘How To Submit’ process above – you need to get in touch first so we can discuss.

So if you would like to merge your library, please drop us a line using the contact form.

Enough talking!  How do I send you my stuff?

Visit this page where there is a form to submit your zip file.