ORBX FTX England

[TSR2]

Stunning mate

[speedbird591]

Well done, Dave! Great comparison/review there. I only have ORBX scenery so I was very keen to hear how it compared to the other stuff and you using the free demo was ideal. Such dedication to duty as well, staying up to the early hours just for us

A couple of comments. I think your assessment of ORBX scenery was fair and accurate and matched my own, rather more vague, feelings. As you know, I currently have three adjoining ORBX sceneries in the US including the Pacific North West. I too found the Tasmania demo a bit drab and I think it's because it's a few years old now and one of their first attempts. The PNW demo is newer and better and of course Bowerman is a good showcase for what they can do in a local area. Bowerman is 70 miles SW of Seattle btw

I'm pretty sure I read on the ORBX forum that they tried hard to blend the UK2000 airports into the England scenery and that they are fine as long as they sit higher in the scenery library. I think that's what they said. We'll soon find out, I suspect.

Thanks again for the interesting post.

Ian

[DaveG]

Good comparison there Dave.

There are some screenshots of FTX with Uk2000 airports on their website. Blending isn't perfect, but they did a good job.

There were also shots of a highly enhanced Goodwood airfield, which looks superb, but I'm not sure if that's included or will be a paid extra.

[speedbird591]

Goodwood is the first of their proposed add-on airports for England. It's a Payware add-on that they had hoped to release at the same time as the England scenery but it's been delayed. There are two other Payware airports in the pipeline, Southampton and Shoreham, and if the pricing matches their other airports they'll be about £25 each. In general, their airports cover a fair bit of real estate outside the airports, including local towns.

Ian

[DaveB]

Thanks for that Ian

This could be a possible 'sting in the tail' for folk wishing to go the whole hog. On a purely financial side.. the UK2K airports average between £28.99 and £33.99 per area (vols 1 and 2 being £28.99 and vol3 £33.99) and each area covers between 73 and 82 airports. Lets say an average of 77 airports at an average cost of £36 per volume and we're looking at around 46-47p per airport. ALL of England and Wales covered for £91.97 whereas going all ORBX.. you'd get 3 and a bit airports for England

This said.. will ORBX ever cover all the airports covered by VFR vols 1, 2 and 3 I dunno but I'm guessing not.

It's certainly exciting scenery. Landmarks will be there I'm sure as having gone further inland last night, I found a fa-hookin big power station and the areas around Bowerman were rather more detailed than any tinkering with the default autogen could achieve. You fly over a sports field not far from the docks and it has it's own grandstand. I can't imagine that being there if it were not there. I've just Google Earth'd the area and the sports field IS there, just off W Emerson Avenue. The Port of Grays Harbor and Aberdeen beyond looks very much as in the scenery and even the power plant is there.. Satsop Nuclear plant (which is listed on GE as being unfinished.. it may be). It does kinda throw open the argument, do you want to see a flat but accurate picture of where you live or see a reasonable representation of where you live full of life. My road traffic is at the default.. somewhere around 15% I think and those roads were well busy. Bowerman airfield has it's own AI and much of what you see in those pictures was 'on the move'.

It's easy to look at somewhere you've never been too and think 'that looks nice' but if you lived there or knew the area, you may be rather more critical as Mike was before he understood what the scenery was all about. It does seem that landmark buildings are in place and I can only presume that FTX England will have the same level of detail.

What about Wales.. a reasonable question? Scotland and Northern Ireland have for so long been missed off GenX and other main scenery packs but we've always had Wales I think you have to look at this in the context of someone having FSX and NO GenX.. poor souls they must be Folk in this position will not miss a lack of our Celtic friends on the far west of this fair island and if they've indulged in UKVFR airport packs, they will still have some realism west of the border.

I was sceptical about the ORBX England release but I have to say that having seen what's possible with my own eyes at Bowerman and the surrounding area which stretches far beyond Bowerman itself, I'm rather more than impressed and begin to doubt whether having photoreal ground textures with the tradeoff's this brings.. a complete lack of autogen, is actually worth it. What is equally impressive is the speed my old dualcore pc runs the scenery at.. there's little difference between it and default but you see so much more. I should point out that I never fly anywhere outside the UK in FSX.. so poor do I consider the ground tiles elsewhere and as such, I'm only used to seeing a beautifully tiled England and Wales with Treescape (an absolute must for any GenX user). Given what you see with this setup, one would expect the world to grind to a halt with a mass of autogen but in fact it doesn't.. it runs better. My FSX autogen is at one notch above Dense.. Very Dense I think and there's one more above that so my shots above do not show the full picture of what's possible. That wasn't my intention though. ORBX do that very well on their site. The aim of the exercise was to see how the scenery runs at like for like settings with nothing at all touched.. my default setup and ORBX out of the box defaults. In all honesty, my expectations have been well and truly exceeded

EDIT: I've just noticed my math above isn't strictly accurate.. even as an average I'd noted the upper limit being £44 when in fact £31-£32 should have been used so the UK2K airports are cheaper per airport

ATB
DaveB

[Chris Sykes]

Dave you have raised the main issue i have with Photoreal scenery, lack of autogen, and the huge price it would cost to cover the UK! I know that Orbx will be only england but at that price it will be england with autogen, which by the looks of it is way better than the photoscenery and trees only option. I recently got UTX which has better autogen than default and has better roads, rivers towns etc, but still the same tiles repeated. I might go for Orbx as it seems to give that better look to FSX than default with UTX.

[DaveB]

Hi Chris

Yes, the repainted default tiles ORBX use manage to maintain the same efficiency as the defaults (which it has to be said is good) while making them look more realistic. This was a major downer for me with the default UK in FSX.. the UK simply doesn't look like that. The ORBX tiles should look much closer to what we see with our own peepers.. a major bonus in itself

I've mentioned airports a few times and the comparative cost between say UK2K and ORBX. That kinda detracts a little from what ORBX is. It's direct competitor is GenX which also comes 'airport free'. I've just been to Earthsim and looked at their pricing for GenX and Treescapes which is good as many areas/packs are discounted.

If you want full England and Wales coverage with GenX alone, you can get all 3 areas bundled for £69.98. If you want to add trees to those 3 areas, you can get all 3 bundled at £44.97.. a grand total of £114.95. England and Wales covered in photo tiles plus accurately placed trees. Immediately, the cost differential is obvious. You can go another way and buy the 3 England/Wales packs individually bundled with trees at £54.97 a shot but doing it this way will set you back £164.91 A lot of math there to be getting along with and still.. not a house in sight and trees that have already been struck with the birch disease!

Don't get me wrong.. I'm a huge fan of GenX and a huge fan of what Treescapes does for it but you pay dearly for your accurately placed trees and photo scenery and at the end of it, it remains autogen free. This may not bother some but seeing what can be done with better proportioned/painted tiles and autogen AND as many trees as you can fit in does make me wonder To have it all run better makes me wonder even more!

ATB
DaveB

[petermcleland]

Looks exactly like the real thing for me...Better than anything else I have seen. So I will download it tomorrow

[DaveB]

That's the spirit Peter

Please.. a photo record if you could and your thoughts
ATB
DaveB

[Paul K]

A lot of people seem to be wetting themselves over this

Yep, that'll be me. I might even camp out in front of my computer in a sleeping bag tonight, just in case it appears.