ORBX World is here!

[CoolP 283]

That so?

 

Mmm, the only data some of my purchases asked for was a code. No always running client, no 'we'd like to enhance our services' phrase, setting up an excuse for scans of hardware, running processes. No account control, no binding of a ton of games to a single account, being open to be 'suspended' at any time. I can even sell that soft if I like.

 

Right you are, it's all the same. :rolleyes: Wait, could also be that some play it down for making room for that 'wave of the future'. Yeah, keep that erm.. wave. I'll take some good software and fair conditions instead.

 

Looking at the thread topic, I think that, so far, e.g. Orbx hasn't disappointed. Works in both ways, since their sales seem to be good and people mostly like what they sell. That's a win win.

 

Choices. If folks want the easy updates and closed stores, I think there's a Steam box coming up soon. Or take one of the already existing ecosystems on smartphones or consoles. A PC may stay open. Wasn't it you promoting exactly the same lately? :smile:

 

 

I can see it, the future. The ones buying software outside of such ecosystems will be marked as total badass. :lol: Weeeeee.

[kannwar 47]

Puzzling euphemism. Wasn't it you who called freeware devs 'selfish' lately? And now you are declaring one of the most intrusive DRM systems and one the most questioned platforms when it comes to customer rights, or not-rights, as a win win

 

Yes it was me saying that but like some others you didn't understand the broader point I was trying to get across and you have taken my words out of context. Also in general I intensely dislike DRM systems and consider them a waste of valuable money that could be better spent improving the game (we all know hackers get around it all anyhow). That said, Valve's implementation of it has managed to add value for me and I consider that a step forward. All other forms of DRM I've seen are naught but intrusive.

 

Don't get me wrong, you are free to do so. But, to me, it looks like the decoy of the easy usage is able to blind people about e.g. the terms of service or the fact that the thing collects data or just requires to (online) authenticate for simple single player sessions. Even with boxed releases.

 

Not sure about this - all of my purchases through Steam get downloaded and are associated with my account immediately. There are no further "activation" checks nor even a requirement for you to be online to play the game after you've launched it for the first time (see another post from the previous page). There are some games on there that do implement such checks I believe i.e. Assassins Creed 2 but such checks are at the behest of the game's developer/publisher and NOT Steam.

 

Some of your concerns about Steam are certainly valid in principle but so far I've enjoyed my use of the platform. I'm not sure what terms an account would be suspended under. Cheating in multiplayer maybe? Attempting to use pirated software?

[HiFlyer 9,423]

What I meant was credit card information, email addresses, purchasing history, etc. As for scans of running processes, I assume any dealer using DRM (poor things) is pretty much doing the same thing so its kind of a wash for me on that front.

 

If I really objected to clients and programs scanning my system, I could turn off steam as simply as turning off antivirus or malware protection or pretty much any other program that does that sort of thing when I don't want it running at a particular time. There's a toggle for booting at start-up (or not) and I don't see that as more intrusive than dealing with any other program like punk-buster or your average shifty God-knows-what-its-doing DRM.

 

Altogether its a pretty generic situation to specifically single out Steam for.

 

I'm even less worried about binding a ton of games to a single account in this instance. Last I knew, Steam had over fifty million users, and I'm gonna to assume their track record on wrongfully blocked accounts is average or better. (otherwise the screams would be echoing around the web) I've been using it for years and haven't had a single account issue besides being a doofus and forgetting my own password, though I'm sure it happens.

 

Thinking about it, I've had more account issues with small FSX vendors than I've ever had with Steam, so there's no smoking gun for me there. In fact, if FSX activation abruptly fubared (forever!) and I needed to re-install, I and all my add-ons would be in at least in as much trouble as losing my Steam account!

 

I have much more FSX stuff!! (Panics) :lol:

[GodAtum 69]

Im liking the look of the new GEX environments. Should I wait until ORBX World is released before I pay for GEX?

[lateagain 45]

Im liking the look of the new GEX environments. Should I wait until ORBX World is released before I pay for GEX?

Why would you ever buy anything until it had been reviewed and compared with similar products. There ain't no prize for having anything first ....and there's a lot of rewards for buying the later model (with all the fixes and patches) of ANY product?

 

I appreciate the frustration if you're looking at this specific but there's a lot of other areas that can bring something new to the Sim in the meantime?

 

BTW what DID happen to good comparative reviews.....

 

Geoff

[Guest Raul_Hernandez]

Im liking the look of the new GEX environments. Should I wait until ORBX World is released before I pay for GEX?

 

I have just updated my existing GEX EU and USA products to the latest versions (free of course), and the difference/improvement is quite striking, especially the EU version. I also bought GEX Africa & Middle East and it transforms this otherwise barren place in FSX, to the interesting part of the world that it really is.

 

I am very happy with the GEX approach, especially as it now has a 'central' GUI for all products - but unlike Orbx FTX, nothing has to be 'switched' for any region you want to fly in.

 

It looks great, and it just works. I own all FTX regions and most Orbx Airports but have now left the party, purely on account of the awful 'FTX Central' approach and Orbx's bizarre approach to not using proper registry entries, no unistallers, etc. That's just my take.

[Guest]

I own all FTX regions and most Orbx Airports but have now left the party, purely on account of the awful 'FTX Central' approach and Orbx's bizarre approach to not using proper registry entries, no unistallers, etc. That's just my take.

 

I stopped using Orbx also for now. I already stopped using the addon airports but after flying above Orbx England for a while with the PMDG 737 NGX (instead of the GA I used to fly) I wanted to fly into the rest of Europe too and I don't like to see various qualities of scenery during one flight... (Also one of the reasons why I stopped using the addon airports. Performance being another one.) I also started using ProATC/X and if you switch a region on or off you have to rebuild the database, which is annoying. (The same goes for FSC and other addons btw).

 

I may have to look at GEX. I never liked how it looked in the past. I'd like to see some comparison shots between the old and new GEX Europe... Orbx World is still interesting, but well... the price...

[Pe11e 812]

I never liked how it looked in the past. I'd like to see some comparison shots between the old and new GEX Europe...

 

+1

 

Comparison shots would be great!

 

Sent from my U8815 using Tapatalk 2

[CFIJose 5,485]

There were some pics added Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the FTX forums. I love the FTX textures.

 

I'm looking forward to this upgrade and can't wait to see a new Caribbean.

 

The new GEX textures are an improvement over the older textures, but as soon as FTX Global is released, it will be the end of GEX for me.

 

I hope that ORBX considers an end to the FTX Switcher. I hope that it becomes an enable or disable regions type configurator. I don't see a reason for switching regions, when the whole world is an ORBX World.

[Kaboki 441]

I hope that ORBX considers an end to the FTX Switcher. I hope that it becomes an enable or disable regions type configurator. I don't see a reason for switching regions, when the whole world is an ORBX World.

 

I think Orbx have the region switcher for a good reason...I don't think they have it there just to annoy people, and I believe If they could they would have removed it a long time ago.

I also hope someday they might find a way to avoid the FSX limitations and find a way to remove the switcher...but until then I can live with how things are now.

[CFIJose 5,485]

I think Orbx have the region switcher for a good reason...I don't think they have it there just to annoy people, and I believe If they could they would have removed it a long time ago.

I also hope someday they might find a way to avoid the FSX limitations and find a way to remove the switcher...but until then I can live with how things are now.

The switcher is also a configurator for placing the scenery where you want it. I see a need for that feature, but don't see the need to switch regions once the world is an ORBX World.

[oldbear 33]

I have just updated my existing GEX EU and USA products to the latest versions (free of course), and the difference/improvement is quite striking, especially the EU version.

 

I'm curious. I love GEX USA but avoided Europe because the textures looked so pale and washed out, expecially with regards to northern European landscapes which are much darker. I just looked at the GEX website and things don't look that different. Maybe they haven't updated their gallery images?

 

Edit: sorry, this doesn't really belong in a ORBX thread but I wouldn't mind knowing where to find some up-to-date screenshots

 

Ian

[lateagain 45]

I'm curious. I love GEX USA but avoided Europe because the textures looked so pale and washed out, expecially with regards to northern European landscapes which are much darker. I just looked at the GEX website and things don't look that different. Maybe they haven't updated their gallery images?

 

Edit: sorry, this doesn't really belong in a ORBX thread but I wouldn't mind knowing where to find some up-to-date screenshots

 

Ian

Hi Ian,

 

Well it isn't the ORBX forum nor even the Unofficial ORBX forum here at AVsim and for that reason your request and all the other comparitive posts are perfectly valid. The official ORBX forum can have it's own rules but this is a flight sim forum and comparissons between products from different publishers are what any consumer of any product would seek?

 

You wouldn't buy any other product without comparing what was available.

 

If anyone has the latest version and could post some screenshots using the ORBX World preview locations so that we have a comparison I'm sure you'd earn the gratitude of many fellow flight simmers?

[Kaboki 441]

The switcher is also a configurator for placing the scenery where you want it. I see a need for that feature, but don't see the need to switch regions once the world is an ORBX World.

 

John Venema quote:

 

"We are also looking to simplify FTX region switching so that only the autogen trees and building textures are swapped in/out by FTX Central but all our regions can remain active concurrently. This would allow continual flights between the USA and UK for instance, with only trees and buildings being affected"

 

 

It's with the autogen the problem leys, yes they will sort it out so you can fly from one region to anhother and get correct ground textures and landclass but in order to get the correct autogen buildings and trees for that region you'll have to switch no matter what. It's an FSX limitation with the autogen files.

 

So e.g when you fly from NA to Oceania and have NA activated you would get the autogen trees and buildings for NA when you fly in Oceania, and not the correct autogen for Oceania, for that to happen you still have to switch even with FTX Global....you see -_-

 

Earth Simulations tried to avoid this switching with their scenery by making a tool that merged the different autogen files, but if you have that scenery and tried to get it work with other scenery you'll see that it didn't work out very well....

 

Orbx used that tool to merge their autogen files with ES Channel Islands scenerys with their EU england scenery, but It didn't work out for me, instead of getting the ES autogen trees I got orbx trees and stuff in ES scenery and some of the buildings got mixed with Orbx autogen buildings, didn't look so good. So I hope they just hold on to the switcher because it seem to work out better than merging those files, unless they make a better tool than ESMerge

[kmagelie 6]

Another quote from Venema in the Papua New Guinea thread:

 

We will in fact create a whole new front end app for FTX Global which will:

 

- Make FTX Central redundant, you can keep all Orbx regions active at once

- Choose which tree and autogen set to use (we will see if we can code a DLL to do this dynamically for you)

- Automatically check for patches, SP1, updates for all Orbx installed products when connected to to the internet, then let you choose which to download

- Control the 3D lights on/off, links to Aero and the Lights Tweaker

 

At least, this is my wish-list

 

We need to plan how to implement this and then I need to hire a coder to write the app.

 

I want FTX Global to act as the overriding front end to Orbx which manages everything for you. That means if you purchase an older region off DVD which still uses FTX Central, when you run the FTX Global app it will automatically "detect" a new region has been installed and ensure the corrected files are put into place so all regions can remain active at once.

 

Basically if you use the FTX Global app to launch FSX you can always be assured all your Orbx products are up to date and all regions remain active at once.