OSM City Data Loader

🌍 Overview

The Geopogo OSM City Data Loader is an Unreal Engine 5 editor plugin that fetches real-world geographic data from OpenStreetMap and procedurally generates meshes in your level — no manual modelling required.

Simply enter an address or coordinates, choose a radius, and click Load. The plugin queries the Overpass API, parses the response, and spawns categorised actors into your current level within seconds.

🏙️

Buildings: Extruded wall and roof meshes with height data from OSM tags. Separate wall and roof material slots on each actor.
Roads: Procedural road surfaces with miter-jointed intersections, width-scaled by road type.
Water: Rivers, lakes, and water bodies filled as flat mesh polygons with a water material.
Parks: Green space polygons for parks, gardens, and recreational areas.
Railways: Rail line geometry for train tracks, tram lines, and metro systems.
Terrain: Ground plane mesh covering the full query bounding box with water polygon cutouts.

📋 Requirements

Requirement	Detail
Unreal Engine	5.3 or 5.7 (Windows, 64-bit)
Internet connection	Required at editor time to fetch OSM data from the Overpass API
Plugins enabled	ProceduralMeshComponent — bundled with UE5, enabled automatically by OSMLoader
Visual Studio	Required only if installing from source. Not needed with the pre-compiled binary release.

No runtime dependency. All geometry is generated at editor time — packaged games have zero overhead from this plugin.

📦 Installation

Download the plugin: Download the OSMLoader zip from your Fab library after purchase.
Create the Plugins folder: In your UE5 project folder, create a folder named Plugins if one doesn't already exist.
Copy the plugin: Unzip and copy the OSMLoader folder into YourProject/Plugins/OSMLoader/.
Open your project: Launch UE5. When prompted to rebuild, click Yes. The plugin compiles automatically.
Open the panel: Go to Window → Geopogo OSM City Data Loader to open the dockable editor panel.

Your folder structure should look like:

YourProject/
  Plugins/
    OSMLoader/
      Binaries/
      Source/
      Resources/
      OSMLoader.uplugin

The plugin generates geometry in the editor only. If you package your game, OSM actors placed in the level are included as static data — no internet request happens at runtime.

🖼️ UI Reference

The panel is divided into several sections. Each element is labelled below.

How to Use

Step 1 — Open the panel

Go to Window → Geopogo OSM City Data Loader. Dock it alongside your World Outliner or Details panel for a comfortable workflow.

Step 2 — Choose a location

You have three ways to define the area:

Address search — type any place name and press Search. Coordinates fill automatically.
Quick Preset — pick a city and size (S/M/L) for instant one-click loading.
Manual coordinates — enter a bounding box or a centre + radius for precise control.

Step 3 — Select feature types

Use the Feature Types checkboxes to choose which geometry to generate. Uncheck categories you don't need — this speeds up loading considerably for large areas.

Step 4 — Assign materials (optional)

Use the Materials pickers to assign your project's materials before importing. Each feature type has its own slot — mix and match freely.

Step 5 — Configure options

Enable Group actors if you want to move or clear the entire imported city as one object.
Enable Collision if you need players or vehicles to interact with the geometry. Note: this makes importing slower.
Enable Tag for Nanite if you plan to convert to static meshes for production-quality rendering.

Step 6 — Load

Click Load from Bounding Box or Load from Center + Radius. The plugin fetches data from the Overpass API and spawns all actors. A status line shows progress and a summary when done.

⚙️ Settings Reference

Setting	Description	Default
Address Search	Geocode a place name to coordinates via Nominatim	—
Preset Size S/M/L	Radius used by preset buttons — 0.5 / 1.5 / 4.0 km	S
Bounding Box	Explicit South / North / West / East decimal-degree bounds	—
Center Lat / Lon	Centre point for circular query in decimal degrees	0.0 / 0.0
Radius (km)	Query radius around the centre point	0.5
Terrain	Spawn a ground plane mesh covering the bounding box	✓ On
Roads	Spawn road surface ribbon meshes	✓ On
Buildings	Spawn extruded wall + roof meshes	✓ On
Water	Spawn water body polygon meshes	✓ On
Parks	Spawn park / green space polygon meshes	✓ On
Railways	Spawn railway line ribbon meshes	✓ On
Road Width (cm)	Width of road meshes in Unreal centimetres	600
Building Height (cm)	Fallback extrusion height for buildings with no OSM height tag	1000
UE Units / Metre	Scale factor — 100 = standard UE scale (1 m = 100 cm)	100
Wall Material	Material applied to building wall meshes (slot 0)	Built-in off-white
Roof Material	Material applied to building roof meshes (slot 0)	Built-in dark slate
Road Material	Material applied to road and intersection meshes	Built-in grey
Water Material	Material applied to water body meshes	Built-in blue
Park Material	Material applied to park meshes	Built-in green
Railway Material	Material applied to railway meshes	Built-in steel grey
Tag for Nanite	Adds OSM_NaniteReady tag — convert via right-click for Nanite static meshes	Off
Group actors	Attach all spawned actors to a single OSM_Group root actor	Off
Enable collision	Cook complex physics collision — required for pawn/vehicle interaction	Off

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

The load button does nothing / times out: The Overpass API is a free public service and can be slow or temporarily unavailable. The plugin retries up to 3 times automatically. If it still fails, wait a few minutes and try again with a smaller radius to reduce query size.
Buildings appear at the wrong scale: OSM height data is in metres. The plugin converts to Unreal centimetres using the UE Units/Metre setting (default 100). If a building has no height tag, the Building Height fallback is used (default 1000 cm = 10 m ≈ 3 storeys).
Can I use this at runtime in a packaged game?: The plugin is Editor-only. It cannot fetch or generate data at runtime. The actors it spawns are saved into your level and work normally in packaged builds.
Can I load multiple areas?: Yes — each Load operation appends new actors without clearing previous ones. Load different areas sequentially to build a larger region. Enable Group actors before each load to keep areas organised under separate group roots.

📜 Attribution & License

Map data used by this plugin is sourced from OpenStreetMap and its contributors.

🗺️

If you publish a project, game, or visualisation that uses OSM data loaded by this plugin, you are required to credit OpenStreetMap in your project credits or documentation per the ODbL terms.