ORBX FTX England

[GHD]

As far as I know, Darren of Earth Sims is on the Orbx England team so I guess all of the autogen trees/buildings will be his.

[basys]

Hi Folks

You can also have too much autogen.

Gobsmacked to see OrbX's Lake District mountains covered in trees
with some having lush ploughed/cropped fields to their summits.

Interested to see any screenies of the following uplands -
- Cheviots/Keilder
- Pennines/North York Moors/Peak District
- Dartmoor/Exmoor
- Lake District

Also of the White Cliffs of Dover.

ATB
Paul

[DaveB]

This is a little OT but it illustrates Martin's comment. Three shots taken with GenXv2 and Treescapes of where I live. You can't really see at that height how big the houses are so I've lobbed a Google Earth shot in too. There are a couple of white houses there too just for good measure






Those houses would have to be a lot taller than they are to match the Treescape trees
ATB
DaveB

[DaveB]

Back on subject...

For anyone who has ES Scillies, Alderney and Guernsey AND ORBX PNW.. go and check your ES sceneries. With George mentioning that Darren was on the ORBX FTX England team (as far as he was aware).. I remembered seeing that ORBX had some issues with ES scenery for the England release. With Darren on the team, he'd know straight away if there was any conflict.

'White houses' being to the fore in my mind.. Darren being on the FTX England team.. I've just popped to the Scillies to find all my autogen has buggered off. The airport and a few bespoke buildings.. the odd tree here and there but almost completely featureless. SO.. I banged every slider except water to max and no change. Went to Alderney and the same there. On to Guernsey and nothing there except the airport and bloody greenhouses

I wonder if the problem with FTX England and ES sceneries stretches beyond that? A coincidence for sure but having recently loaded the ORBX PNW demo and finding that my ES sceneries now have little detail.. I'm a bit suspicious Beware FTX England users!

EDIT: Found it. Having unticked all the ORBX areas from the scenery add/remove page, nothing happened. All of the CI and Scillies were void of much of their scenery.. trees, autogen e t c. Went to the FTX Control panel and reset to 'FSX Default' and ALD/GUE and the Scillies have returned to normal. One would hope they found a workaround for FTX England

ATB
DaveB

[GHD]

That is why I never liked Orbx. They replace AutogenDescriptions.spb and default.xml rather than editing them and adding their specific values.

[ChrisHunt]

Well... I've gone and done it and bought/installed/had quick run out of FTX England. Confined myself to the areas I know best, namely Suffolk and bits of Norfolk. First impressions - hole in runway at Norwich airport from a too enthusiastic landing! Seriously though... the representation of the countryside (vegetation, field sizes, boundaries, woods, forests etc) is very good and is immediately recognisable as East Anglia. Placement of towns and cities (I think Norwich qualifies as the latter?) is also very good as is the placement of the industrial areas within them. Recognised my own town easily - shape and size more or less correct. Performance good - no different to default. All airfields/airports in the area explored have been given a make-over and even out of the box are recognisable. Coastlines are accurate and well drawn. Okay, that's the good bits, now the not so good bits - roads are still way too big (albeit in the right place) and Felixstowe docks is the wrong scale (or possibly the ships are too small?) and cranes etc are a little too default (Felixstowe has them in groups of 4 rather than spread equidistant) and many of smaller villages and rivers are missing (someone nicked the river Brett).

All in all a very good first version of England with the positives far outweighing any negatives (not that there are many). Worth the money? If you want a living landscape which looks more or less like it should then definately.

BTW didn't notice the predominantly white autogen house but I must admit I wasn't looking.

Regards,
Chris

[DaveB]

Thanks for that George and thanks for the quick report too Chris

I was also impressed with how close the area (PNW) ran when compared to default.. no real difference. As nice as it is though, there's little in the demo area except for trees, countryside (much you can't see because of the trees) and mountains. The older Tasmania was a better 'system' test I think even though it used older technology/techniques to make

Should there be no surfeit of white houses, that can only be a bonus as far as I'm concerned Is there any mention of scenery conflicts with ES areas? If you have any ES scenery, it might be worth rechecking to see if half of it hasn't been knicked for the mainland

ATB
DaveB

[speedbird591]

If you have any ES scenery, it might be worth rechecking to see if half of it hasn't been knicked for the mainland

Hi Dave, there's a post on the ORBX forum today about ES scenery. ORBX confirms that it's perfectly compatible as long as it's above FTX stuff in the scenery library. If you install it after FTX you need to switch FTX Central to default before doing so and then re-select Europe after installation. Here's the link but I'm not sure if you have to be registered to view the forum.

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/ ... %2Bscenery

Re white houses. Looking out of the train this morning I was looking at houses. I was amazed just how many Wiltshire houses are white! I'd never have noticed if you hadn't mentioned it I'm talking farms, cottages and stand-alone houses and I only started looking later on. I'll have to do a better survey later. One thing about this scenery - it's certainly made me look at England differently!

I still think I'll get Central Rocky Mountains next. Less houses

Ian

[DaveB]

Thanks for that Ian A note in the PNW demo advises that the FSX DEFAULT should be checked/ticked in FTX Control before installing any new scenery as a matter of course when their scenery has been installed. Nice to hear the 'workaround' with ES is quite painless though as George said, it's a bit untidy changing the main descriptions file to match their stuff rather than write a separate file. The 2 will work together so that's the important thing

I'm surprised you've not bought it yet Ian

ATB
DaveB

[speedbird591]

I'm surprised you've not bought it yet Ian

I'm a bit of an odd one out. After a couple of months of all the dramatic FTX landscapes in Alaska, Canada and the NW of the US, all those flat green fields look a bit boring I'm surrounded by real ones here (liberally dotted with white houses ) so I find the escapism of somewhere I don't know more exciting. And there's the advantage of not caring how accurate it is!

I might get it next year ...

Meanwhile, FTX are working on Southern Alaska and Northern California and they're not too far away

Edit - in time not distance!

Ian