Hey everyone,

the new version of UrbanEye3D, namely 2.0.0, is out!

This is a major update for the plugin. It’s been a lot of work and took about 2.5 months, but I’m confident it makes the 3D view significantly more useful and enjoyable to work with.

For those who haven’t heard of UrbanEye3D before: it’s a JOSM plugin that renders a 3D world from OpenStreetMap data directly inside JOSM. This lets you preview objects in 3D before uploading your changes to the OSM database.

What’s New

1. 2D Ground Plane

Buildings no longer float. The ground surface is displayed with “flat” objects - roads, lawns, rivers, and lakes. This flat layer is rendered based on downloaded OSM data using a custom MapCSS style. Alternatively, a satellite background can be enabled, as before.

2. Trees

Now natural=tree shows up as a 3D object.
- Height is taken from the height tag. If height tag is missing, the circumference tag is used to estimate height.
- Two tree textures are included: broadleaved and needleleaved (based on the leaf_type tag).
- More textures could be added for various species/genus – if you’re good with graphics, feel free to contribute!

3. Whole Multipolygons

Missing members of multipolygons and building relations can be downloaded automatically. Without this, the map often looked broken – like buildings cut in half or water spilling everywhere. The Building relation, which seemed completely useless, turned out to be good for something.

You can turn it off in the plugin preferences if multipolygons in your area are too large.

4. Background Processing

The UI no longer freezes when you load a large area. Everything is calculated in the background. It still takes time to render a big area, but at least JOSM stays responsive.

Contribute

This is a one‑person project, so any help is welcome:

• Textures for more tree species. See some details here.
• MapCSS improvements for the 2D layer. See here.
• If you spot some bugs, please let me know.

Check the GitHub repository if you’d like to help out.

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Download

The plugin is available via the JOSM preferences (search for UrbanEye3D).

Enjoy!