Future Release Strategy

[PingPong 60]

Orbx has a commercial operation that few are privy to, maybe some of their airport choices reflect trickle down from that limb of the company?

 

I have always thought that the airport selection was a little tightly spaced, especially in and around Seattle where the scenery is at its densest.

[lateagain 45]

Geoff, trust me, they know what they're doing. They have a roadmap.

Of course they have Ron I guess if they've got all the current best creators on board this thread is "peeing into the wind"? However they're leaving themselves open to anyone who wants to compete?

 

Still this wasn't in the spirit of a dig at them. Rather that we discuss choices that someone ought to consider and also look at what others have already produced, or might have in production. Of course we all have bills to pay. That's lifes harsh reality and no one's going to turn down the offer of a £€$ or two for their work unless they're very well off. However the spirit and pleasure of freeware has (IMHO) kept Simulation up there through endless genre of Game. I'm inspired by 1st fltsimguys comments on having a go myself. SWMBO however has another agenda for me.... Still ...never say never

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Of course they have Ron I guess if they've got all the current best creators on board this thread is "peeing into the wind"? However they're leaving themselves open to anyone who wants to compete?

 

Still this wasn't in the spirit of a dig at them. Rather that we discuss choices that someone ought to consider and also look at what others have already produced, or might have in production. Of course we all have bills to pay. That's lifes harsh reality and no one's going to turn down the offer of a £€$ or two for their work unless they're very well off. However the spirit and pleasure of freeware has (IMHO) kept Simulation up there through endless genre of Game. I'm inspired by 1st fltsimguys comments on having a go myself. SWMBO however has another agenda for me.... Still ...never say never

 

Once you get the hang of it, enhancing an airport with additional objects and usual airport clutter and adding a few more trees, shrubs....and other things that you would normally see at an airport it is possible to spend maybe two hours and bingo you have an enhanced airport with more life.

 

Beyond this with some more experience it is possible to create some additional elements like adding a road, shopping mall nearby town stuff to give the whole area a better look. Perhaps I'll take a moment and show you a before and after look on one of mine. You could also take a look at my freeware CAM3 which I designed using freeware objects and some of my own as a good example of what can be done quite quickly.

[GHarrall 494]

What program do you use to add the elements?

[lateagain 45]

What program do you use to add the elements?

Good point Glenn.

 

Sadly the Tutorials section of the site has no tutorials at all on Scenery adding ?

 

Anyone fancy writing one? I'm happy to help. With ZERO knowledge my contribution would be merely to try out the instructions and point out where they don't seem clear ....but with over twenty years working in education I do have quite a bit of experience of helping folk start from scratch.

 

Geoff

[Misha Cajic 0]

Either buy Instant Scenery 2 from Flight1 or use the default FSX SDK object placer. Quite hard to use though.

[lateagain 45]

Hi Misha,

 

Thanks for the tip. Just watched the Demo video for Instant Scenery2 and read the review of the beta version on here from 2007. It looks like a realy useful utility for a number or reasons. Even if you don't want to create your own scenery the ability to remove some of the really dumb autogen that pops up all over the place makes it worth it's weight in gold? How many fields do you know here the autogen puts trees all round the strip causing ludicrous approaches. Check them out in Google Earth and no such trees exist!

 

Only criticism I'd make from the video is that the scaling of some of the custom objects seems pretty appalling?! Next time I see a sheep as big as a horse I promise to post a picture here!!! :Thinking:

 

Are the custom objects reskinnable and/or rescalable?

 

Not really delved into the SDK yet so that'll be a first learning stop.... :good:

 

For the project I mentioned above objects are, to say the least sparse. It's mostly about textures and scrub vegitation and the odd fence line. Some convincing dirt road textures would help too.

 

Right now I'm waiting to pick up a friend who's just arrived at LHR so I'll read more whilst they recover from their jet lag.

 

Geoff

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Hi Misha,

 

Thanks for the tip. Just watched the Demo video for Instant Scenery2 and read the review of the beta version on here from 2007. It looks like a realy useful utility for a number or reasons. Even if you don't want to create your own scenery the ability to remove some of the really dumb autogen that pops up all over the place makes it worth it's weight in gold? How many fields do you know here the autogen puts trees all round the strip causing ludicrous approaches. Check them out in Google Earth and no such trees exist!

 

Only criticism I'd make from the video is that the scaling of some of the custom objects seems pretty appalling?! Next time I see a sheep as big as a horse I promise to post a picture here!!! :Thinking:

 

Are the custom objects reskinnable and/or rescalable?

 

Not really delved into the SDK yet so that'll be a first learning stop.... :good:

 

For the project I mentioned above objects are, to say the least sparse. It's mostly about textures and scrub vegitation and the odd fence line. Some convincing dirt road textures would help too.

 

Right now I'm waiting to pick up a friend who's just arrived at LHR so I'll read more whilst they recover from their jet lag.

 

Geoff

 

Sorry I missed the question earlier.

 

My recomendation is to buy Instant Scenery 2. Its worth every penny. All objects from freeware or payware sceneries are available to be called upon for placement.

 

All objects are scalable so you can make monster big sheep or little tiny bitty ones....lol, You can modify the elevation of objects so they sit above, on, or below the ground...which all can be useful.

 

You can set up when the object appears, like scenery complexity setting....you can give it no crash feature.

 

You probably should use Sbuilder to make flattens (although there are other tools) if you want to add additional elements near the airport where the terrain is not flat but you want to add say a missing shopping centre area which I just did for Roseburg in Oregon where the Orbx scenery is missing the major shopping centre just north of the airport. You can slap in a bunch of shopping centre buildings, parking lot with lines and toss in a bunch of cars and presto..it looks more real.

 

Just to add, the other program that you would most likely benefit from is ADEx (Airport Design Editor) you can do all sorts of great things with this program to enhance airports and scenery.

 

cheers.

[dave2013 1,123]

I have ORBX Australia and absolutely love it. It's great to hear that they'll be doing scenery regions for Europe, and I'll be buying the UK once they complete all the regions for it.

 

The only disappointment for me is the rate at which these scenery regions get produced/released. At this rate, it will be several years before the U.S. and Europe are completely covered, which would be nice being that I primarily fly airliners on long routes.

 

This isn't a criticism, but simply an observation that is somewhat disappointing to me. However, it is nice to know that we'll eventually have beautiful and accurate scenery for the U.S. and Europe.

 

I still hope that ORBX can manage to speed up the production time of these scenery regions, or produce much larger geographical areas at the same rate.

[paulhand 15]

Looking at the UK the idea of dividing the Country into countries rather than regions as the photoreal sceneries have done seems weird enough but then to announce three fields all within 46 miles of one another along the South Coast seems bizarre?

 

 

 

Just seen this thread - I reckon Ron is spot on with his "we'll do the closest airports" theory. So nothing bizarre in the choices: a quick look at the map will show that EGHR Chichester/Goodwood Airport, EGKA Shoreham/Brighton Airport and EGHI Southampton International are, coincidentally I'm sure, the closest fields to ORBX Galactic HQ in Havant... saves money on the research trips...

 

 

Anyone got any good quality (other publisher) recommendations for the FTX NA regions, Oz or NZ?

 

 

 

I might be stating the obvious - but have you downloaded all the OzX fields for Oz? There's pretty much every strip in Australia in there - and all matched to OrbX.

 

Cheers

Paul

[lateagain 45]

Hi Paul,

.

I suspect you've hit the nail on the head about their being "local". Mind you a pretty poor reason really being as so much imagery and airfield information is available without even getting up from your computer. After all most small fields you could photograph every wall of every building and still be in the pub for a long lunch? Much of the rest of it in the UK is covered by extremely high res satellite imagery?

 

As I said earlier I'd forgotten OzX, and discovered that there'd been a further update since my last download.

 

I've looked at a few freeware fields in various libraries but few seem as good as OzX? That may mean I'm looking at the wrong stuff?

 

Geoff

 

I still hope that ORBX can manage to speed up the production time of these scenery regions, or produce much larger geographical areas at the same rate

Quality takes time! I've been involved with a project creating a UK route for MSTS. It's taken 6 years! However there's nothing out there to touch it. That degree of detail in a large area takes time and you only have to look at the ludicrous desert that FSX ships with standard to see why scenery add-ons have been such a big part of the hobby?

[paulhand 15]

As I said earlier I'd forgotten OzX, and discovered that there'd been a further update since my last download.

 

Whoops - so you did. Must have skimmed past that in my excitement over my geographic insight on the location of Havant!

 

I think you're right that there's nothing to touch OzX but I think many of these guys are now doing payware for OrbX hence the lack of freeware for NA.

[quadraspleen 7]

Geoff,

 

re your search for good freeware NA stuff; take a look over at http://return.mistymoorings.com/ (if you haven't already) I think it will appeal to the model railway builder in you and also at http://stuff4fs.com/open.asp?JS=TRUE, which is BC stuff, but still well within the PNW area..

 

There is a good bit of freeware from Jon Patch and Holger Sandmann, who also does stuff with/for ORBX over at http://www.jonpatch.ca/flightsim/ but I'm guessing you know that too?

 

I agree it's a shame that Ozx don't seem to be doing to PNW/NA what they did with Oz, but they did do a few small fields in the Ozx NA 1.01 which I'm guessing you have?

 

best

 

jake

[lateagain 45]

Cheers Jake,

 

I'd forgotten Misty Moorings and "stuff4fs" is new to me .

 

Geoff