Orbx England What Do You Think?

[Dirk98 354]

From the FSX Alt menu World -> Scenery Library, check/uncheck scenery and carry on, that's how I took the two shots above.

 

This is workable. Not a big deal while in flight (provided a complex add-on plane doesn't ctd)

 

Thanks,

Dirk.

 

I managed to have FTX AU and FTX NA enabled at the same time through some painful terrain.cfg modifications and hacking between the BGL files - I would probably manage to fit FTX EU in the middle, but that's not my job, that's Orbx's job. If i can do it, why can't they?

 

Was there a discussion on how to do that in details?

 

Thanks,

Dirk.

[Andydigital 93]

 

 

I disagree. Switching sceneries between radically different regions within FSX is the only way to have the kind of local realism with such high fidelity standards that ORBX achieves. It is a small price to pay for having the areas around Cairns, Milford Sound, Darrington and the cliffs of Dover each looking so individually life-like and spectacular.

 

I admit it's certainly not as ideal as reality. But who has real airplanes to fly to these real parts of the world as often and as freely as we do with FSX? It is what it is, and it is the best there is for what it is. Right? B)

 

Kind regards,

 

I'm sorry but you are wrong, all the default files that ORBX replace can be appended to rather than replaced, that's what the SDK tells you to do, but they (Orbx) chose to ignore it because it was too much work for them to make a program to make the appendixes properly without breaking any other scenery, Earth Simulations managed it though.

 

 

 

 

From the FSX Alt menu World -> Scenery Library, check/uncheck scenery and carry on, that's how I took the two shots above.

 

That isn't helpful if you use AI traffic, every time you go into the library manager and remove a tick then click the OK button FSX reloads the scenery OK but it doesn't wipe out the previous iteration of traffic before loading a new copy, so you end up with twice the amount of AI traffic, go in again and you get three times the traffic and so on. The only traffic package that it's effected like this is UT2 because that traffic is destroyed every time the sim stops for anything that brings up a menu. Changing the traffic sliders doesn't help either because it's a bug, you have to reload the flight which breaks many complex aircraft anyway.

[kannwar 47]

That isn't helpful if you use AI traffic, every time you go into the library manager and remove a tick then click the OK button FSX reloads the scenery OK but it doesn't wipe out the previous iteration of traffic before loading a new copy, so you end up with twice the amount of AI traffic, go in again and you get three times the traffic and so on. The only traffic package that it's effected like this is UT2 because that traffic is destroyed every time the sim stops for anything that brings up a menu. Changing the traffic sliders doesn't help either because it's a bug, you have to reload the flight which breaks many complex aircraft anyway.

 

And that's precisely the sort of thing I was worried about. I sincerely hope that when they start going into Europe they design things in such a way that you can have all the UK regions (that they are planning) and the European ones enabled at the same time and fly between the different European nations seamlessly. As most of my flying is in this part of the world it is of prime importance to me - I'm less concerned about being able to have Europe and USA enabled as I don't fly to that part of the world and don't intend to.

 

The fact that ENG comes under FTX Europe in their management software is a positive suggestion that the UK and all their future European regions will indeed work with each other but I suppose only time will tell.

[pow0011 8]

I'm just curious on how a company can develop a certain region and screw with another in a different continent.

[SteveW 1,792]

That isn't helpful if you use AI traffic...you end up with twice the amount of AI traffic.

 

Seems odd results you are having. With ORBX ENG enabled, some Ai traffic underway injected with the SDK method, I went and unchecked all my ORBX. When I got back to the sim, the stock scenery was back and an Ai Cessna found the taxi (the parking spot was gone) and continued to the start of the runway, ATC seemed not to notice the changes.

.

[Andydigital 93]

Like I said UT2 or traffic injected via Simconnect is not effected. The vast majority of traffic packages for FSX use bgl based traffic, not Simconnect.

[flying_bob 38]

The switching of regions has been an age old discussion when I took it up when flying from aus to America. YES you can fly from Aus to America.

I got banned for pushing the subject.

I understand the reason why they did it to ensure each region have it's own unique trees etc etc.. but as another poster said, there are other ways to get past this.

Still changing regions is crapp even more now that England is also added to the bunch. I bet there are a lot of people who will fly from NA to England and visa versa.

 

I cant believe ORBX still continue with this practice...! It just do NOT make any sense.

[Andydigital 93]

I'm just curious on how a company can develop a certain region and screw with another in a different continent.

 

They screw other packages up because they swap out core scenery file components with their own rather than appending to the files like they are supposed to do according to the FSX SDK. One such file is the autogendescriptions.xml, they remove the original and replace it with there own. If some other scenery package had done the correct thing and appended to the autogendescriptions file it will no longer display properly (example roofs look wrong, autogen disappears completely, etc) when FTX Central is not in default mode. This is true for a couple of other important index files too which are swapped out by FTX Central.

[flying_bob 38]

This is workable.

 

Not a big deal while in flight (provided a complex add-on plane doesn't ctd)

 

 

Thouigh it is workable, it should not be necessary to manually change regions.

Absolute crappy system they use..

[Andydigital 93]

 

 

Thouigh it is workable, it should not be necessary to manually change regions.

Absolute crappy system they use..

 

It's not always workable though, see my posts on this page, especially #212

[SteveW 1,792]

I tested all other traffic and seems unaffected, Africa was fine, I went there with ORBX ENG enabled. None the less it seems 90% of scenery needs some kind of set-up. We need scenery built to a set of standards and avoid ever having to change settings. In the meantime why not fly within the confines of scenery. I didn't think to myself "great I've got ORBX ENG, let's fly to Timbuctoo". I have made flights keeping within the scenery but I do want to fly to France, Ireland, and Scotland now.

[Andydigital 93]

It may look alright but I can assure you the traffic quantities do double, have a look at the total amount of aircraft in Traffic Explorer included in the SDK and you will see two of everything after you have made a change in the scenery library manager and clicked OK. Make another change and click OK and you will see three of pretty much everything and so on. It's not a new phenomenon it's been happening since FSX beta days. The most obvious change is the reduction in frame rate and stuttering, it progressively gets worse because of the increasing load the AIplayer.dll puts on the sim.

[Guest]

 

The switching problem shows that Orbx is focusing on GA. That's also why they only release smaller airports nowadays and no big ones anymore. There aren't many GA flyers that would want to fly from one region to another...

[FlyGeordie 17]

I don't like the "FTX Central" ethos, and having to select areas. But I must admit, I thought it was a necessary evil.

 

It's interesting to read Andy and others' posts stating that with a different approach (appending) it would not be necessary. If this is the case, Orbx need to make it a part of their strategy for their regions to move away from the 'area selection' ethos, and deliver something better. But Mr Venema may dig his heels in here, and if people get banned for just suggesting and pushing to make the products better, well ........... you may as well forget it! ...Shame the ego always gets in the way of things like this in life.

 

I've never been too bothered about changing FTX areas midflight until now .... But as SteveW said, ENG is a small country, and a LOT of people will be wanting to hop to other countries. (I fly ENG - NORWAY a lot)..... still, it does sound like Europe is one zone, so maybe not an issue, apart from long-haul, cross continent, atlantic etc.

 

The switching problem shows that Orbx is focusing on GA. That's also why they only release smaller airports nowadays and no big ones anymore. There aren't many GA flyers that would want to fly from one region to another...

 

I agree with this completely.

[garydpoole 183]

Just don't go to Africa with FTX-EU enabled...

 

Glad i saw this at a friend's before purchasing it. Meh. It's ridiculous having to enable and disable scenery while flying... They surely can do better than that....

 

 

Sorry if this is a daft question, but as someone who has never purchased an FTX product and is considering purchasing England, what implications would this, if any, have on flying into Europe and back whilst using UTE and GEX ?

 

Thanks

 

Gary