ORBX announces Great Britain series

[rohan]

Ben, Dave,
to try to clarify further, the Orbx FTX series are an equivalent to the UK VFR series from either Horizon or Just Flight, or even the magnificent island sceneries from Earth Simulations, or in some ways the Flight1 GEX series. The biggest differences seem to be the geographical scope, wherein four regions cover the whole of Australia and two regions cover both islands of New Zealand, and the fact that they are all-inclusive for most intents and purposes. As Dave says, it will be interesting to compare the costs of the Horizon regions with tree add-ons against the FTX UK regions, though it will be another year before we can do so.

The biggest drawback to the FTX regions is the fact that individual airport sceneries have to be written to work specifically with an FTX region, so that, for example, Gary's excellent Extreme series are very unlikely to be compatible with the FTX UK series when they are finally released. Having said that, I've found UK airport sceneries that work with either the Horizon VFR series or the Just Flight VFR series, but rarely both ...

Hope that helps,
Ro

[DaveB]

Thanks for that Ro

I've just had a slow walk around their site and the blurb starts by saying it's made from 1pix/metre aerial phots (or the other way around) so yes.. it is as you describe and as I'd presumed I can't imagine anyone in their right mind would be running the FSX UK without having at least the UK2000 Extreme/VFR airfields.. even if they don't enjoy Horizons VFR scenery so to find your airports suddenly skewiff with ORBX would be a downer. We'll have to wait and see I guess. They're guaranteed to work with Horizons scenery and that may sway things. Still.. let's not kill it off before seeing it

ATB
DaveB

[GHD]

They are not photographic textures (no matter what the scale), they are hand-made to give an impression of the region.

I have the Australian sceneries and, as I said earlier, you can see the textures repeating over a distance.

[DaveB]

..you can see the textures repeating over a distance.

Tks George . An 'outside' review on the ORBX site said you couldn't (or at least they couldn't)

ATB
DaveB

[DogTailRed2]

I think that settles it. If I can't look out the window and recognise what's below I don't think this product will be of use to me.
I like to fly VFR.

[rohan]

DTR2,
Granted we have to wait another year before we can see what Orbx have actually produced, but these comments from the product pages of the last two region releases ought to make you give them the benefit of the doubt for the UK regions, at least for the time being ...

"Additionally, every single square mile of land class is hand placed and all major roads, rivers lakes, powerlines, wind farms, and vertical obstructions are included for accurate VFR flying.

• Superb new Matt Tomkins ground textures
  Selected photoreal coverage areas"

From http://fullterrain.com/product_nacrm.html

"Like all Orbx FTX regions we include accurate roads, rivers, lakes, railways, bridges, vertical obstructions, shores, mudflats, glaciers and coastlines.

• Brand new beautiful ground textures
  Photoreal mountain peaks and glaciers"

From http://fullterrain.com/product_nzsi.html

I would also comment that the Australian regions were released some considerable time ago, and, even though the current release is SP4, their technology has moved on significantly ...
Ro

[GHD]

I think the salient point is "Additionally, every single square mile of land class is hand placed". These are generic textures.

I don't think there will be many glaciers in the UK

[rohan]

They may be generic textures, after all that's simply the way that FSX works. The key point is how many different textures are (or in this case, will be) produced ...

[TSR2]

It sounds like a good alternative to UTX / GEX with, "select" photo real areas. It doesn't sound like an alternative to photo scenery though

[ChrisHunt]

Whilst not photoreal (for the most part) the Orbx series provide reworked landclass (not based on default FSX), textures fairly close to the relevant landclass, reworked autogen (e.g. lines up with roads and the like), reworked rivers, streams roads, coastlines etc etc, plenty of custom objects, reworked airports and mesh. If you look at the NA series you generally get a very good deal for the size of the area covered. I'm a bit concerned that a relatively small area of Europe is to be produced in four parts, particularly if each part is the same cost of a typical NA release.

Also on the FTX website are a growing number of very good freeware airports. Bottom line (as I see it) whilst not photo scenery it is by some considerable distance the best all-round scenery package you can get for FSX, albeit for relatively small areas. For comparison download the demo NA Blue package and try that.

Regards,
Chris