Orbx England What Do You Think?

[Andydigital 93]

Blackrat try disabling any other third party landclass products you might have, I found that SceneryTech Europe made anomalies like this appear regardless of where I placed it in the scenery library list. It appears Orbx aren't excluding other landclass products properly leading to horrid views like this.

[Guest]

Apparently this is the centre of Manchester...

 

 

By coincidence I flew to Manchester yesterday and it certainly did NOT look like it does on your picture! You might want to follow Andy's advice or check what else is wrong on your PC.

[internerd 1]

 

Geoff

 

Yes Thankyou for that explanation. I'm tracking through the threads atm. That happened while I was on hiatus.

 

I guess part of the problem is that OrbX has developed for 'obscure' areas such as AU and NZ that they haven't really run into the problem of assimilated with other products. I was surprised at the development of ENG, given that they have good scenarios already.

 

Selfish me is hoping that they will be badly bitten and come back and work on more AU/NZ products. :sheepish: YBBN and YMML are frame whores and YSSY needs some love.

[lateagain 45]

Apparently this is the centre of Manchester...

Much Improved then :LMAO: :LMAO: :LMAO:

 

Sorry couldn't resist a joke. Seriously love Manchester to bits!

 

Hope the switch off works.

 

Geoff

[Grumpyrocker 8]

Generally I like the new look for England, for what it gives you it's very good value. However, it's a bit of a shock to find the large town you live in has been reduced to a small hamlet and a lot of the coast line has fields of wheat vanishing into the ocean.

 

If you live in the UK don't fly around your home town - explore a little - you will be a much happier bunny.

 

Apparently this is the centre of Manchester...

 

 

In fairness to ORBX I think you've got some other landclass product showing through. This is what I see...

 

 

Though really ORBX should have done a better job of excluding scenery below.

[Paul Golding 92]

I completely forgot about that when I linked. Yes the forums are private. Here's the cut and paste of the post I made there which resulted in the childish "warning".

 

It starts with me quoting the boss.

 

 

"John Venema, on 18 November 2012 - 03:08 PM, said:

What we are witnessing here is simply a parochial desire from UK customers to see their local "right" and they are getting the rude awakening about a landclass-based scenery product - you'll never ever see your house in the sim, your local pub, supermarket, industrial estate etc - simply because landclass tiles are 1km x 1km squares and as a result it is impossible to get it as accurate as a fully-photoreal product."

 

I was quite sad to see this response John. Yours is a straw man argument. I haven't noticed any posts here complaining that our "house in the sim, your local pub, supermarket, industrial estate" isn't in the scenery. Trying to deflect people with this kind of comment really isn't fair to your customers. I see plenty of posts saying that there are major errors in landclass placement - a genuine problem with this release. Choosing to argue with an issue no one has raised does no one any favours. not least ORBX.

 

.....and so on

 

To be fair grumpy, that was a pretty selective quote from the reply given by John. After explaining (in, I admit, possibly less than the best of diplomatic tones), John finished by saying......

 

"HOW WE CAN MAKE IT BETTER

- Get feed back from our customers about specific "obvious" faults and missing towns and features

- Fine tune the landclass placement

- Add landclass polygons to specifically force villages and towns to be in the right places (lots of work, but can be done)

- Add new types of landclass textures to cater for missing features (i.e. power station underlays with coal piles etc)

 

I hope this helps explain things a little better. Please note we are not surprised at your comments, nor offended or unhappy. We fully expected these comments and we've been there and done that many times before with Australia, North America and New Zealand. Rest assured our products do get better with time and the positive input and feedback from our customers."

 

Having followed this release over the weekend, I've seen plenty of posts from the ORBX team asking for details and screenshots of errors so they can get on with trying to fix them. Should they have been there to start with? I guess not in an ideal world, but then 'flightsims' and 'ideal world' are never going to be used in the same sentence.

 

It's a shame John comes across in such an abrasive maner because it can detract from the content of what he's actually saying........and this more often than not is perfectly reasonable.

 

Paul

[Grumpyrocker 8]

That's true Paul. But the reason I quoted that particular part - was this was the bit that was insulting and misrepresenting the criticisms It wasn't my aim to be selective in the pejorative sense - merely to show the part of John's reply I had a real beef with.

 

I was cross not because there were errors in the scenery - though this was disappointing - but because of the way John sought to dismiss the criticism as being "a parochial desire from UK customers to see their local "right" and they are getting the rude awakening about a landclass-based scenery product - you'll never ever see your house in the sim, your local pub, supermarket, industrial estate etc" when in fact it was nothing of the kind. Several of us actually went out of our way to explain that we understood the limitations of FSX but our issues were not related to that. John ignored this.

 

The irony was that in the support forum screenshots and details of such errors were welcome, yet John was acting like none of these were valid in the general forum. Paying customers have a right to say this product doesn't feel complete or properly tested without being told they aren't allowed such opinions are they wrong, but they don't even understand what the product does in the first place.

 

I don't earn much money. I try to spend it wisely. EU ENG represents all my spare cash for the next few weeks. Believe me if I'd bought any other piece of software that was in such a shoddy state I would have asked for a refund right away. Until John made his ridiculous reply I was willing to give ORBX the benefit of the doubt. But now I doubt the company's motivations, honesty and ethics - this product was not ready for release. I will be patching EU ENG when an update is released. But i won't be spending another penny with the company.

 

I should add that since yesterday, without posting there again, I've been suspended from the ORBX forum - I suspect due to this thread. So John's childish behaviour extends beyond what happens on his own forum.

[JaseMelbo 391]

To answer the OP.

 

Loving this scenery.

 

Not being from England I can't comment on any missing scenery from towns etc.

 

What I will say is that for $40 bucks.......... This is GOLD!!

 

There's a lot of negativity floating around but I'm sure any glaring faults will be fixed with a patch very soon.

 

And all the default airports have had a touch up. They look great. Gatwick really surprised me.

 

Jas

[Guest]

- Add landclass polygons to specifically force villages and towns to be in the right places (lots of work, but can be done)

 

 

Hm, that one surprised me... so they haven't done that yet...? Did they rely on some automated system or something? You would expect forcing villages and towns to be in the right place would be one of the FIRST things you would take care off... Very odd. Lots of work yes, but you would think they would have done all this during the last year? And that 'but can be done' doesn't sound too reassuring...

 

Anyway, I think I need to take back a few things I said about the people who were expecting too much. My apologies. I am beginning to see that even basic things which I took for granted as being correct aren't as they should be... There is indeed more wrong then just a building here and there...

[FlyGeordie 17]

To those who are joining in the chorus of "some folks expectations are unrealistically high" I'd point out that this is nothing more than an assumption on your part? :huh:

 

Umm, couldn't that be a challenge to any post, made on this forum ?? ....... we're all making assumptions!

 

Come on .... it is a £26 product hugely enhancing the ground textures of England, if you expect local VRP navigational detail for the whole country of England, I'd say your expectations are too high.

 

I mean, absolutely none of the FTX packages provide like for like representation of the ground they cover ....... but they significantly improve FSX, and offer a convincing environment.

 

On a separate note :-

 

...... regarding the John Venema comment, that "what we are seeing here is UK customers expecting ...[etc etc]" .....

 

Shouldn't that be some UK customers ???

 

I love the product and am happy with it, but I don't like people making mass generalisms that "every UK customer" is parochial and expecting to see their house in it.

 

Come on John .......

[Grumpyrocker 8]

I wonder how often one has to say it. No one is requesting local VRP navigational detail.

 

Look. A company sells a product that aims to add feature X and feature Y to FSX. Feature X and feature Y are supposed to be in exactly the same place. In the new software in a very large area feature X is offset by some distance from feature Y. In effect each location appears twice, once in the form of feature X, the other as feature Y. This is a mistake that the company admits to.

 

It's that simple.

 

Meanwhile other companies are selling products where feature X and feature Y do appear at the same place as they should. And no I don't mean photoscenery.

[Blackrat100 33]

Ooh! That's better - Thanks.

I got rid of Ultimate Terrain.

Everything is so much better and as I had expected it to be.

 

Strange, UT2 was quite a long way down the list but still affected Orbx...

 

Excellent.

[lateagain 45]

There's a lot of negativity floating around but I'm sure any glaring faults will be fixed with a patch very soon.

 

There is also a request for feedback on issues. The devs cannot possibly be expected to have local knowledge and often available satellite imagery itself is missing detail at certain levels. I don't understand why the process of updating and patching, which is comon in just about ALL products as well as software seems to uniquely cause such hostile debate with sim software.

 

If people do not identify issues AND help the devs identify them and just sit on their thumbs waiting for someone else to find and fix stuff not much will get done.

 

"HOW WE CAN MAKE IT BETTER

- Get feed back from our customers about specific "obvious" faults and missing towns and features

- Fine tune the landclass placement

- Add landclass polygons to specifically force villages and towns to be in the right places (lots of work, but can be done)

- Add new types of landclass textures to cater for missing features (i.e. power station underlays with coal piles etc)

 

The offers there.

 

The only negativity I see is those criticisng the critics?

 

Any design project, artistic and/or technical goes through a series of reviews and criticisms as part of the development process. If the developer is interested in improving things that logically means improving that which is wrong, overlooked, poorly rendered or missing.

 

If folk are happy with what they've got then why not enjoy it? Why come and attack those who've identified issues? Personally I'm enjoying flying the scenery and giving it a critical appraisal at the same time. I've posted here and PM'd Keith with some observations. If folk don't have the local knowledge they can still ask here if they think something doesn't look right.

 

The very density of settlement and population per Sq mile in the UK was always going to make it a tough region to do well but with the willingness of the developer to improve what can be improved all feedback must be useful.

 

Geoff

[Capt Richardo 12]

I am a 1st time Orbx owner with the England package ... is normal for an Orbx product to have issues and for so many people to be unhappy or is it just a case that there are alot of 'local users' who have picked up faults in their areas that they know well?

[Rocky_53 1,593]

Hi Rich, following on from your post, I'd just like to jump in on this one guys. As an ardent Orbx supporter, I'd like to say that while I agree with a lot of what has been said I also believe, on reflection, that what John Venema posted is perfectly reasonable. OK, he's not noted for his bedside manner, but then again I must admit I thought his response was all in all perfectly OK. I think he is right about our expectations of the scenery, it will not replicate everything as we know it and to expect that is just unrealistic. We are effectively too close to the scenery and this was in fact something that has been discussed elsewhere over on the Orbx forum. Armed with this premise I took to the air from my local airport (EGGD) and immediately flew over our village and down the valley to where we used to live. Yes, I was disappointed and yes, I believe there are some failures, especially as has already been mentioned, villages that are in the wrong place or even non existent. There were also roads missing and no 'extra' work done to Cheddar Gorge, one of the country's best known tourist areas. BUT, if we did not live in the UK, we would not know, we would be completely unaware of any of these failings. As I flew around the UK, I have become slightly disillusioned with areas such as the Lake District, with houses and trees half way up mountains. This is the kind of area which extra attention should be given, surely. But, as I say, perhaps we are all too close to things. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to justify JV's comments or support the scenery, just trying to be objective about things. BTW, some of the tree colours are unrealistically green IMO... but overall, IMO, it is a MASSIVE improvement over any other landclass product on the market.