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?

 

I cannot answer your first question.

 

However I do just want to say again that I feel it's weird for them to have some of these problems people are saying they have.

 

I have all of Oz and Northern Rocky Mtns from Orbx. And while it's not photo scenery 95% of stuff is there. There's no missing towns or farms or anything. When my sister lived in Calgary i found her apartment building.

 

I'll probably pick up ENG because I won't notice the same things locals would, and I fly there quite often.

 

Best

Lee

I have all of Oz and Northern Rocky Mtns from Orbx. And while it's not photo scenery 95% of stuff is there. There's no missing towns or farms or anything. When my sister lived in Calgary i found her apartment building.

 

Now that IS concerning...

It was actually to do with the pre-sale of items at a 'discounted' price -- said items were later discounted even more a few weeks after its initial release. Alas the fanrage that individuals were being treated unfairly. This led to a "No more sales after this one" stance by the Orbx team.

 

It's all there, and it is a PR disaster. Amazing how some people can't learn from their mistakes.

 

Bryan.

I have all of Oz and Northern Rocky Mtns from Orbx. And while it's not photo scenery 95% of stuff is there. There's no missing towns or farms or anything. When my sister lived in Calgary i found her apartment building.

 

Well, that's simply impossible and not true. The scenery is landclass based and Orbx can NOT place every farm on the right location even if they wanted too, let alone the apartment of your sister. If you found some of these things to be in the right place then that is purely coincidence. Putting it like you do makes it sound as if this can be expected while even Orbx says this is NOT the case. So don't give people false hopes. ^_^ '95% of the stuff is NOT there' would be a better thing to say and even that is stretching things...

Well, that's simply impossible and not true. The scenery is landclass based and Orbx can NOT place every farm on the right location even if they wanted too, let alone the apartment of your sister. If you found some of these things to be in the right place then that is purely coincidence. Putting it like you do makes it sound as if this can be expected while even Orbx says this is NOT the case. So don't give people false hopes. ^_^ '95% of the stuff is NOT there' would be a better thing to say and even that is stretching things...

 

I must admit, that has always been my understanding also Jeroen, so when I hear such things I am surprised to say the least...

It's all there, and it is a PR disaster. Amazing how some people can't learn from their mistakes..

 

I imagine it's not just a PR disaster either, but that there's a financial self-inflicted wound too. I bought almost all of my Orbx stuff on special offer. Because I had all their US areas covered (I'm not really interested in Oz) with UTX/GEX, it was only the tempting price that made me go for it. Now I have all their North America areas and six or seven airports. However, I haven't bought anything from them for a long time. I'm not saying I would never buy anything at full price from them, because I have, but where Orbx stuff isn't on special, I buy a lot less of it. While I wouldn't imagine that I-am-the-world, I be surprised if a lot of others don't take a similar approach to their Orbx purchases..

 

Having said that, I thought at the time that the people who had paid more for the pre-order versions should have just voted with their feet on future pre-orders. I've never understood the people who have to have something as soon as it's out. I'm glad they do it though, because their pain usually means a more pleasant experience for me when I do eventually pull the purchase trigger.

 

With regard to the UK, roads and towns etc, when I first got UTX Europe, I conducted a simple test. Leaving the GPS off, I flew from EINC west across the Wicklow mountains to a town in County Kildare, using only the roads as a reference. I had no problem doing it. The roads and town were in exactly the right places. Now that GEX has updated textures that are, from what I can see, a vast improvement over what went before, the case for Orbx England is suddenly less than compelling.

 

I also don't like this hair-trigger banning business I keep hearing about. I am always reluctant to give my money to business whose practices I disapprove of.

 

H

 

In fairness to Orbx, though, I hunted down the location of one of their screenshots in Google Maps/Earth - just out of curiosity, and they were spot on with it. It was a shot of a DC-3 (I think) near a coastal down which I discovered was St. Ives in Cornwall. I was very impressed with that.

Well, that's simply impossible and not true.

 

Sorry guys, but Jeroen's exactly right. I have all of the NA regions, and I know much of the country represented by NRM, CRM and parts of PNW VERY well from the ground and air. Everything is NOT there, and in some of the early days of many of these releases some of the missing pieces have been pointed out in one forum or another - including, as I recall, instances where UTX/GEX had towns correctly placed that were entirely missing in Orbx. Some features were added or enhanced in subsequent SPs, but this kind of scenery will never have it all and I'm stunned that some believe areas as large as these ever did.

 

And yet I still like what Orbx is doing. Why? Mostly because, I've found the Orbx regions I have do a GREAT job of representing the FEEL of an area better than anything else I've tried. While UTX/GEX may have a few pieces that are more accurately placed, the intermountain west areas of the US only vaguely look like they should look with UTX/GEX. In Orbx areas feel and look right, and many (but by no means all) of the details are right too. And yes, they typically get better over time and with wider feedback. I prefer this approach of releasing with reasonable content, but obviously others don't.

 

All of this is not to say that many of the specific issues being raised aren't valid. It's just to point out that some of the assumptions being made on previous regions aren't exactly on target and yes, I do think at least some of the expectations for England are a bit too high.

 

Scott

I'd say that FTX England has plenty of hand placed 'points of interest' to keep it interesting, and that's where my own expectation sat.

 

Within England, us 'Northerners' often moan about being forgotten and treated as second class citizens, but within Newcastle-upon-Tyne in FTX England, I was very pleased to see the Millennium Bridge (blinking eye, tilting bridge), and also cruise ships parked at the Royal Quays terminal, down the River Tyne at North Shields.

 

Now, I would have liked more (like the famous Tyne Bridge, on which the bridge in Sidney, Australia was a upscaled copy of, and St James Park Football Stadium)...... but still, I am happy that there is some regionalization. And apart from 'points of interest', the main improvement I saw within the Newcastle area was massively better placed houses; running in parrallel and at correct scaling for the many rows of terraced housing in the city.

 

I am very impressed in general with my 'home' area, within FTX England. :smile:

 

I have to be honest, I then took off from London City, and apart from some nice custom objects (the 02 area/Millenium Dome, Gherkin, etc, etc), I thought the main ground textures and general feel was rather blurry, grey and drab. (and no that is not representative of the real London!).... it just didn't look as good.

 

....but I suspect that, in general, the "FTX" type feel, works better with more rural, less dense areas than it does for large urban city sprawls.

 

My only real complaint is that all of my trees across the area, have a slightly strange black edging around them. (Like a huge felt tipped pen border around each tree!)..... I hope this can be improved upon because for the time being I have deactivated Orbx Trees because of it.

I was tired last night/this morning when I made my 'refund' post. Today I don't feel as antagonistic. Still gonna wait for an SP though. :wink:

You all need to read this, it's the best article written on the subject....

 

You all need to read this, it's the best article written on the subject....

 

Good piece - thanks for posting it.

 

H

Good reading Alain...

Phew! Reading this thread had me running the whole gamut of emotions! I hate them! I love them! I love it! It's wrong! No it's great! My house isn't there! Where's my local pub?!

 

I live in Geoff's second set of pics, in Poole - and it's not right but I don't really care..Bomo looks a bit crap, too, and the Purbeck's, West Dorset etc. a bit ropey, but again, I don't really care..

 

It is streets ahead of default FSX; It costs less than GEX/UTX (which I don't have anyway); It was cheaper than Au and PNW, so that's good..

 

I like it so far, and tbh..I am flying a plane; that's why I play FSX not Train Sim..I don't like VFReal - I have the huge number of DVD's for S. Eng..uninstalled it..And it cost me £49!

 

It's a bit of software and whilst I totally see why some ppl have been and still are aggrieved, I can't quite equate it with some of the emotion I see, but hey-ho..

 

I expect it'll be patched, but aren't all softs now? It's the new way; we are the BETA testers; not just for FTX, but also for Apple; Microsoft and pretty much every game developer out there..there's a common thread: time=money. In software development, too much of one=not enough of the other..

 

I was a bit surprised to see FTX England so soon..I was expecting it to take at least a year from its' announcement..When was it announced? (I don't know exactly, but it can't have been more than 6 months ago?) Perhaps the rent is due on the shiny new offices in Hampshire :smile:

 

For me, I am really glad to see ORBX concentrate on my home region, and yes: it has opened my eyes to what landclass-based scenery is all about, but with patches, and add-ons (like Misty Moorings as someone suggested earlier) it will come of age..

 

Jus' trying to be positive, you know..there's enough real bad stuff going on all over the place atm..try to keep a sense of perspective...it's a game

 

/me ducks and runs off :biggrin:

 

Off to fly Air Hauler from my new home base in EGHL Lasham (couldn't afford Bomo :smile: )

Isn't the central issue that this is the first time a lot of Orbx customers very familiar with their own turf have been able to comment on the accuracy of a region?

 

What we're witnessing is the unraveling of an urban myth that this landclass-based approach is always completely accurate.

 

I also think JV's response has been generally reasonable this time. He's having to deal with people who have wildly ambitious expectations from ENG - in other words that they've bought a three dimensional representation of what they see in photoscenery for about 40 bucks. We know from experience that FTX regions always improve, in actual fact way above and beyond what one might reasonably expect to see.

 

I'm still enjoying flying the Legacy over ENG. Just not looking too closely at the minutiae, which I think is sort of how Orbx scenery works, isn't it!

Isn't the central issue that this is the first time a lot of Orbx customers very familiar with their own turf have been able to comment on the accuracy of a region?

 

So it would seem. Good point too.

 

The point was made about PNW earlier, too..It gives the feel of a place very well (and does so very well with ENG, I think)

 

Looking at other "real" representations out there, mostly of airports, but often of the surrounding area, they are usually very resource hungry on the dog that is FSX..Obviously, I'm not talking about the misplacement of whole towns etc but the lack of "real" detail in large areas..You'd probably have to turn it all down/off anyway :biggrin: