Orbx expansion plans and roadmap May 2012

[Clem Wu 28]

Pretty big announcement.

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/44575-orbx-expansion-plans-and-roadmap-may-2012/

 

Big road ahead!

[Ben Cap 89]

Interesting news. I was hoping that they would move to the Socal region rather than southern Alaska.

[styckx 1,871]

Another airplane huh? Hope it's better than the Lancair.. I can't pinpoint exactly what I didn't like about it but after giving it a fair chance I found myself utterly bored to death with it.

[Parping Couplet 117]

Whatever one's views of recent events, you can only admire how they are expanding, though one hopes not too quickly.

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Pretty big announcement.

http://www.orbxsyste...admap-may-2012/

 

Big road ahead!

 

Are you or someone willing to please copy the announcement and paste it here so us that are banned over at Orbx can read it. I unfortunately have been relegated to the great unwashed masses and can't read it.

[alainneedle1 97]

#1John Venema

 

Orbx CEO

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Posted Today, 04:21 AM

Hello everyone,

 

I have been away from the forums in the first few months of this year for a number of reasons; one of which is to allow nominated Orbx staff, moderators and team leaders take responsibility for key communications and customer liaison. The other is that 2011 was a difficult one for my family with some quite stressful life threatening health issues we had to work through as a family and that meant I needed to take a back step from day-to-day Orbx operations and focus on the important things in life. The good thing about situations like these is that after nearly six years we have built a solid team framework in our company and almost every facet of keeping Orbx moving along has been more than capably handled by the team. I want to give a big shout out to the whole Orbx team for their outstanding work ethic and product delivery leading to last December and also the exciting product pipeline being worked on even now.

 

So that's the personal stuff out of the way, and of course you won't find me posting as much on the forums moving forward, since my role as CEO is moving in a different non-developer direction and more focused on the bigger picture of company growth. With over 80 staff (and counting) spread around the world, the days of me having a hand in every aspect of the business are long gone. I might even lose my "developer" badge, LOL! More about in a moment.

 

Orbx is growing!

 

When Matt, Marty and I started the company back in 2007 we rented some office space in the heart of Melbourne and planned to cater for about 12 people there over a five year period. Thing is, we weren't ready for that "corporate" presence back then, and as many of you remember we went through some difficult birth pains as we worked very hard to get the initial FTX Australian regions out the door and on sale. Since then of course we decentralised and we've grown to a virtual team spread around the world of some 70+ people, which recently has grown even larger. A while back I shared our plans to open a UK-based development office in the Hampshire area and this has now gone ahead full steam to the extent that we have outgrown the temporary office building being used.

 

So we're moving to a state-of-the-art new facility in Havant, the Langstone Technology Park. This is a former IBM data center which now houses some 3,500 tech workers across a dozen companies including Lockheed Martin, Hitachi and other software companies. This will be the new worldwide HQ for Orbx and we'll have 15 staff working there by mid-June when we finalise the office move. We are planning to have over 30 staff in our 2,400ft leased area which can cater for up to 45 staff by 2014 and beyond. I will be splitting my time between Australia and the UK as we push to grow Orbx to be the world leader in simulation software for the FSX and P3D platforms.

 

Langstone Technology Park - our new home. More info - http://www.langtp.com/

 

 

 

The UK Development Team

 

Located in our Langstone Development Centre will be several teams including our new Regions team (building FTX England as I speak). This includes a texture/landclass team and autogen team. We'll also have a modelling team led by Russell White as well as Airport development teams. The aim is for the UK office to be releasing at least six or more new regions per year and 24+ new airports per year. The initial focus of their work is to build out Orbx-quality airports for the UK and Europe, and yes - we will be working on regions in Europe from early 2013 with an aggressive rollout strategy.

 

We have staff relocating from various parts of the world to work in the UK office, including I am proud to say, my two sons Toby and Reece who will be working on landclass textures and photoreal ground imagery development. Toby's work can already been seen in the YPMQ Port Macquarie Airport release, and soon the YBTH Bathurst Airport release which he's working on with Tim Harris. I am very proud to have my two sons working in the company with me and they are very excited to be relocating to the UK to work with the outstanding team already in place there. Greg Jones who worked on YMMB Moorabbin Airport will also be relocating from Australia shortly and will be based there as well.

 

Matt Tomkins concluded a training visit to Hampshire a few weeks ago and currently Holger Sandmann is in Havant finalising further training to the landclass/texture team there. We have more training scheduled soon, and Orbx is investing in our senior leaders visiting and supporting the new team as it grows.

 

We are planning to host our inaugural Orbx Developer Conference in 2013 at the new office, which will be an exciting time for the company as staff from all corners of the globe will fly in for workshops, company vision sessions, guest speakers, planning meetings and generally getting to know their colleagues from around the world.

 

 

The Orbx Roadmap

 

So in 2012 I made the decision to slow the information feed about out product roadmap mainly because we have been doing a lot of core infrastructure work within the company and working on the Prepar3D product rollout. Soon Ed Correia will be finished developing the first of two Orbx P3D Migrator tools; the "linker" edition. This will allow our entire Orbx product library to be linked to P3D from FSX. The second version of this tool will be the "mover" edition; this will physically move your Orbx products out of FSX and permanently move them to P3D. It's a one-way trip, so that tool is for those who have decided to de-camp from FSX and make P3D their new sim of choice. Rest assured, FSX is most definitely our core platform for as long as Microsoft continue to sell it. We build on FSX first, then port to P3D. That is how we'll continue to operate for the forseeable future. Yes, we're excited about P3D but we also recognise most of our customers have a huge addon investment in FSX and we will always support that platform while people are using it as their main sim.

 

So what is is store for you this year?

 

Essentially, we'll continue to drip-feed product release information and only show screenshots and videos of products which are late alpha or in beta. We will only update the website with new product pages as they enter mid-beta cycle. This means that we can generate excitement around products which are real, in production, and not too far from being released. That said, I know many of you are anxiously awaiting an idea of what we are working on, so let me list you the products which are currently in development. Remember, this is just a list of what is currently being worked on - there are no release dates around any of these, nor will any of our staff give you estimates or timeframes. This is just what is being worked on by our staff worldwide.

 

 

Australia

 

YBTH Bathurst Airport

YBRK Rockhamption Airport

YSCB Cityscape Canberra

 

New Zealand

 

FTX NZ North Island Region (NZ-NI)

NZQN Queenstown Airport

 

 

North America

 

FTX Northern California Region (NA-NCA)

FTX South Alaska Region (NA-SAK)

W16 Monroe Airport

77S Kresswell (including bonus OR57 Walker Field)

KAJC Jackson Hole

KVOU Pearson Field Airport

CQBC Bella Coola Airport

KWYS West Yellowstone

KW28 Sequim Valley

 

 

Aircraft

 

Victa Airtourer

Vans RV4 (alpha cabin detail shot below)

 

 

 

Europe

 

FTX England Region (EU-ENG)

EGHR Chichester/Goodwood Airport

EGKA Shoreham/Brighton Airport

EGHI Southampton International

.. plus many more in pre-production for the UK.

 

We are particularly excited about introducing the Orbx quality of airports to the UK. As part of the development process, our UK partner company CEO Barry Hudson and I rented a C172 from Goodwood and did some circuit work to give the project some context.

 

 

What you will see in the sim in conjuction with FTX England and FTX EGHR Chichester will look remarkably similar to the photos below:

 

 

 

 

Barry Hudson, CEO of partner company GIS-ECO at Goodwood airport during our recce visit:

 

 

 

New Orbx Technology

 

So far Orbx has continued to innovate with new tech being introduced almost with every release. We have a growing roster of "flow" tech being added, a new unique way of optimizing autogen which you first saw in NZSI and soon in EU-ENG; the new release of PeopleFlow2 by Jorge Amengol which will end up having a library of over 300 characters all in various clothing, uniforms, poses and animations; the incredible new 2cm/pixel ground imagery by Russ White; dynamic snow on building roofs by Tim Harris and soon more unique animated trains and racing cars at W16 by Jorge and the W16 team. These are just a glimpse of what you can expect to see through 2012 not only in FSX, but seamlessly ported to P3D as well.

 

What I can promise you is this: we will never stop trying to push the boundaries, innovate, and try new things. Your investment in Orbx products means you are indirectly investing in our growth for the future and our ability to spend R&D dollars and hire new staff to help us build the future of flight simulation.

 

 

Thank You!

 

Thank for all so much for your support of the last Orbx sale in April. We delivered over 40TB of data via our CDN which is a record month for Orbx. There will be no more sales from us - we will continue to offer the most competitive pricing for the most immersive and innovative products we can make. Please support us by purchasing what you can afford through the entire year, rather than hold out for sales that won't come. As a growing company we simply need to flatten our revenue curve and offer consistent pricing through the whole financial year. So grab what you can at the time it's released. We have levelled the playing field for every customer which means you all pay the same price, all year round.

 

Thank you for sharing our journey so far. Many of you were there in 2008 when we launched AU BLUE, and many more of you have "discovered" Orbx over the past five years and become staunch fans and supporters. I hope that sharing our expansion plans and our roadmap and vision will encourage you to believe that the next five years will be some of the best in desktop simulation ever.

 

From our perspective, the future looks very bright and clear indeed!

 

 

Finally ... A special video

 

 

Patrick Scharnowski from the Orbx beta team has made a celebration video of our PNW airports as we move to new regions. We'll feature it as a YouTube video on the website shortly. Join us to remember our PNW journey, the introduction of new tech, some dearly loved locations, and the introduction of the final new airports for PNW to come soon!

 

 

 

i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz (Air Cooled) | Gigabyte EX58-EXTREME Mobo | 12GB DDR3@1600 | GTX580 1.5GB | 2x 150GB WD V-raptors in RAID-0 + 2x 1TB Samsung 7200's in RAID-1 on Adaptec_1430SA | Samsung 40" LED TV @ 1920x1080 | Thermaltake Spedo Case | Coolermaster V8 CPU Cooler | Windows7 64-bit | nVidia Driver 285.62 | Vanilla fsx.cfg, no tweaks

[Nyxx 6,993]

"one of which is to allow nominated Orbx staff, moderators and team leaders take responsibility for key communications and customer liaison."

 

Great job guys....great job!!

 

"customer liaison.".....that was a joke yes?

 

I stoped reading after that,

 

I will look at UK as it's my home. Nothing else.

 

---------------

Feeling aside from how I feel about Orbx Mods, I wish JV wife a full recovery.

[alainneedle1 97]

 

Feeling aside from how I feel about Orbx Mods, I wish JV wife a full recovery.

 

Yes, no matter what kind of disagrements I (we) can have about the handeling of John's company I'm hoping nothing but the best for his family, I wish his wife will make a complete and full recovery, all my prayers are with you and your family John.

[pow0011 8]

Yes +1 with his wife.

 

UK? David! Run for your life!

[lateagain 45]

On a personal level I'd add my best wishes to John and his family with regards to health and recovery from any ill health. I've very vivid and distressing memories of seeing one of the best blokes I ever worked under being stressed to the point of collapse by pressures beyond his control and how his determination to protect others lead him to be unrecognisable to those who didn't know him as well as myself and a few close friends.

 

The plans for the future sound great and obviously being a lapsed UK PPL I'm delighted to hear of the plans for UK and European expansions. That's tinged a little with a current saddness at what's befallen the UK GA scene recently. One of the UK's top flying training organisations and one that operated from Denham, where I learnt to fly has ceased trading etc. I only found out after a recent visit to a pub close to Denham where I was staggered top find the circuit "dead as a Dodo". Sadly my research shows that it's one of a good few. The recession and fuel prices have hit hard.

 

The UK has a wealth of GA airfields and many with interesting and challenging approaches. Most because of Air Space restrictions and noise abatement rather than "terminal" physical obstructions ...however the CAA's wrath might be as "terminal" to your "flying career" as any rock .........should you fail to comply with said restrictions . Any VFR portrayal of the UK should have air space restrictions portrayed as dilligently as mountains are in the PNW?

 

I'm pleased that John has seen the sense of handing over the forums to others to control. A little sad that he hasn't really acknowledged that maybe he got the "bans" wrong? ..but hopeful that if ORBX want to keep some of the restrictions on their own forum, that at least they'll allow reference to this one? At least that way any discussion about other products in relation to ORBX products can be fruitfully continued?

 

As for pricing policy.... well the market will dictate that? ....whatever, whoever says what about it? Price it right and it will sell. Price it wrong and..... start reading that new lease carefully! :LMAO:

 

Bit disappointed with the new aircraft choice. Nought wrong with it but a more complex "bush" type would have been a plus? As this all started in Oz a Nomad was top of my list.

 

Geoff