I presumed and was under the impression OpenLC would give us better landclass, period. But there is more to it! JV posted the following on the Orbx forum:

 

"OpenLC will indeed come with many Gigabytes of unique custom textures. The Baltics demo shipping with FTXG comes with 483MB of unique textures alone.

Think of openLC worldwide areas as Orbx "mega-regions" which contain hand-made LC and unique textures, but not all the other FTX region goodies like coastlines, roads, mesh etc.

By the time openLC is complete we will likely have added another 8-12GB of new Orbx textures to your FTXG installation but most areas of the world will look distinctly unique and more accurate."

 

I think that's GOOD news! While FTXG may be a bit too generic for some, FTXG plus OpenLC will be more interesting then some of us thought! Add the roads and coastlines of UTX to it all and you may get half way to 'real' FTX regions! Of course you still won't have the custom buildings, upgraded airports, etc. so there is more then enough reason to (get some of) the FTX regions anyway, but I do like this news!

That sounds great, I've always wanted more variety between textures used in different areas than what FSX provides by default... 

 

I will definitely get OpenLC areas whenever they start releasing them. 

Good news indeed. This means that we can get the right textures for each region and not a compromise because of the lack of choice in the default textures set.

It is so obvious that I still don't understand this hasn't been done before. :unsure2:

I've been hoping for a long time that ORBX would do something like this, i.e. make scenery regions that are really large but less detailed and with fewer features than their smaller scenery packages.

 

I think J.V. had actually mentioned that they were considering making a product like this a few years ago, but I had given up hope after not hearing anything for a long time.

 

Anyhow, what fantastic news!

Good news indeed. OpenLC sounded a lot like they were just making easy money with OSM data, when anyone can download the free tools to convert the data for FSX/X-plane format.

 

 

Will eagerly await to see how much of an difference the OpenLC addon will make.

I will definitely get OpenLC areas whenever they start releasing them.

 

 

Yes, the nice thing is the options you now get: I will buy FTXG for sure for an overall quality improvement, then I will buy OpenLC for regions I fly in every now and then but for which I don't really need FTX regions, and I will buy the FTX regions for those area's I like to fly often. All this makes waiting for a FTX regions I really like to have less hard! Instead of having two options in the past (FSX default or FTX regions) I now have 4 options (FSX default, FTXG. FTXG with OpenLC and FTX regions. Where FSX default isn't a real option obviously... )

JV just posted the complete news about OpenLC on the Orbx forum:

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/61436-ftx-global-openlc-worldwide-areas-rollout-plan-details/

 

It's too much to repost here, so check it out!

 

Europe will be first, which I am very happy with!

That's once again great news from ORBX! Thanks for the HU.

 

I will definitely get at least Europe (and hence I'm glad that's planned ot be the first one ).

More good news: the price of an OpenLC region (for instance the entire Europe) will be 19 AUD at most. Maybe cheaper, depending on the region. That's a steal.

 

I am also very happy with the priority Europe is getting. FTX Norway South, OpenLC Europe first: this is going to be great!

What does it mean by open landclass?

I *THINK" it means it's just a landclass add-on that can be used with any texture set or addons.  Like scenery-tech landclass which can use default FSX textures or gex or whatever you want.

 

As opposed to their other scenery products which provide every scenry component as an integrated package like PNW or Orbx England which is mesh, land-class, vector data, textures, and autogen for a specific area.

It comes from the data source, Openstreetmap, which is Opensource map database where anybody can add information and edit it based on satellite images from other sources like google maps, bing etc. 

 

 

(also governments can add big chunks of their own map data into OSM if its compatible)

I *THINK" it means it's just a landclass add-on that can be used with any texture set or addons. 

 

Not any texture set.

 

 

 

What probably has not been made clear is that each openLC pack will come with its own additional set of unique textures to enhance the FTXG textures already installed. In other words, you will need FTXG installed for openLC to work (they won't work stand-alone)

 

Source

ok, thanks guys

It comes from the data source, Openstreetmap, which is Opensource map database where anybody can add information and edit it based on satellite images from other sources like google maps, bing etc. 

 

 

(also governments can add big chunks of their own map data into OSM if its compatible)

 

J.V. says they use dozens of other sources besides just OSM. You'd have to as OSM would do no good in many of the OpenLC regions they are releasing because of lack of coverage

 

What those sources are, I have no idea. I'm sure he'll say eventually.