More attacks against OrbX by NickN over at Flight1

[William J.S.S 173]

Is this seriously going on in this hobby?

 

 

Sent from my Apple communications device.

[jymp 168]

I'm with Nick all the way, he has helped the sim community too many times to count.

[Christopher Low 5,354]

 

 

a simple reinstall of FSX will restore everything

 

Nobody should have to reinstall FSX because a single product is released without an uninstaller.

[Guest]

Nobody should have to reinstall FSX because a single product is released without an uninstaller.

 

I know, but, besides the fact you don't have to do this (Orbx is working on an uninstaller AND even NickN apparently found a way to restore things), what I meant to say is that this isn't the end of the world. NickN is talking as if Orbx has done a crime against humanity. FSX is only a game we play for fun. Some people seem to have lost track of reality: there are more important things to get so revved up about. ^_^

 

 

I'm with Nick all the way, he has helped the sim community too many times to count.

 

So everything he says is absolutely right...? ^_^

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Hmm, some interesting comments here. From how I understand things, unless I'm mistaken, Nick N and JV have not had the best of past relationships and so it hardly surprises me to read this kind of stuff from Nick N. I think with the greatest respect to Nick, and I do appreciate, like many others, what he's done for the simming community, but he really needs to get to grips with things.

[wizzards 99]

"JEALOUS "plain and simple ,Fligh1 will lose sales of GEX UTX etc to Orbx ,GOOD Orbx is a better product in my  opinion,what type of man (company)throws a paddy and  starts belittling a competitors superior product on the internet ,they are even  stupid enough to give free advertising to orbx on there site by whining about Orbx product on their site ,JV should send them a bottle of bubbly!,they should stop whining and produce a superior product if they can,basically shut up or put up  ,this crowd  were daft enough to waste time arguing belittling  and bulling people over their products and P3d ,Orbx had an idea and just kept quite, worked away, and came up with a very big money earner for there company which is What business is about ,flight 1 need to change their thinking before it is to late ,Man up flight1 you have made yourselves look silly in my eye,s and lots of my fellow simmer,s  eye,s ,but that does not matter to you we are only your customers,they live in the past ,do not want change but sadly for them  past glories don,t pay the rent !

peter

[fwerff 70]

I know, but, besides the fact you don't have to do this (Orbx is working on an uninstaller AND even NickN apparently found a way to restore things), what I meant to say is that this isn't the end of the world. NickN is talking as if Orbx has done a crime against humanity. FSX is only a game we play for fun. Some people seem to have lost track of reality: there are more important things to get so revved up about. ^_^

 

 

 

So everything he says is absolutely right...? ^_^

 

No, but it does give the guy some (a lot of.....) credit you have to take into account....

 

Nick does not act as if OrbX has done a crime against humanity. What he is talking about is OrbX creating a non-SDK compliant basis in FSX which they control and which gives them a competetive edge over other developers which might considered not to be fair at all times and which potentially forces users in the future to use OrbX products in stead of products from other developers.

 

The dilemma we face here is whether we continu with the 7 year old FSX program as is, or do we want (allow) a developer to change some of the core files to improve our beloved sim even if this is at cost of other addons (we already have or ever could buy) and developers.

Just as an example; suppose OrbX comes up with a a new core file mod which renders weather addons like REX, AS2012 and OPUS useless and is only compatible with an OrbX developed or supported weather program.... would you then just blindly follow OrbX and throw away your REX/AS2012/OPUS/etc??

[cvearl 60]

Quite the rant...

Can you imagine if A2A started saying things like this against Realair? No me neither. Lol.

 

Sigh.

[bonchie 2,305]

No, but it does give the guy some (a lot of.....) credit you have to take into account....

 

Nick does not act as if OrbX has done a crime against humanity. What he is talking about is OrbX creating a non-SDK compliant basis in FSX which they control and which gives them a competetive edge over other developers which might considered not to be fair at all times and which potentially forces users in the future to use OrbX products in stead of products from other developers.

 

The dilemma we face here is whether we continu with the 7 year old FSX program as is, or do we want (allow) a developer to change some of the core files to improve our beloved sim even if this is at cost of other addons (we already have or ever could buy) and developers.

Just as an example; suppose OrbX comes up with a a new core file mod which renders weather addons like REX, AS2012 and OPUS useless and is only compatible with an OrbX developed or supported weather program.... would you then just blindly follow OrbX and throw away your REX/AS2012/OPUS/etc??

That won't happen as Orbx has always worked with other developers to ensure other products work together and they don't isolate their own products.

 

But, as it is, can anyone provide a list of other addons Orbx is supposedly breaking?

 

Because all mine work fine and everyone else seems to be having no problems either, whether it be airports, landclass addons, or mesh. I've heard one mention of some freeware VFR scenery having some issues. That's it.

 

Basically NickN is overstating his case trying to gin up fear for business reasons.

[fwerff 70]

That won't happen, and as it is, can anyone provide a list of other addons Orbx is supposedly breaking?

 

Because all mine work fine and everyone else seems to be having no problems either, whether it be airports, landclass addons, or mesh. I've heard one mention of some freeware VFR scenery having some issues. That's it.

 

Basically NickN is overstating his case trying to gin up fear for business reasons.

 

I'm not saying it will happen. I'm merely stating the plausible fact that if an addon based on the FSX SDK makes a call to a FSX core file that has been modified by OrbX, the risc does exist that the file-call is not compatible with the modifications.

I am no expert by any means, but I do think lot's of people here dismiss NickN's concerns to easily as being a hoax driven by fear of competition.

Sure, the impact of FTXG on GEX sales will be of concern to NickN (quite understandebly) and I do agree Nick could polish his blunt and harsh statements somewhat (although JV is also a master in being blunt and harsh!).

All I'm saying is to distill the facts out of the discussion and make up your own mind about the possible consequences now and in the future.

Personally, I haven't worked it all out myself and I may still come to the conclusion I find OrbX' way to be very acceptable for me and buy/install FTXG.

[Stormtrooper 7]

I think instead of ranting perhaps him and his crew should hit the drawing board for the "next big thing"

[robmw 22]

I just want to say that I don't think this is a fuss about nothing unless one only ever intends to use FTXG. One of the great strengths of FSX is it's extendability but there are core elements, as specified in the SDK, which if changed will have effects on anything that is using the SDK. Orbx have made changes to these core files from the beginning to great effect but have always to date allowed these changes to be reversed in an obvious way through FTX Central. So why didn't they do the same with FTXG? I was fully expecting a new FTX Global option in FTX Central alongside the original region switches plus the old default option to return everything back. The option to backup textures at install time is an incomplete remedy and even that relies on the user to manually copy the textures back to the right place. IMO a separate uninstaller (when available) isn't really the same thing as having that option in FTX Central.

 

I believe a major issue with FTXG is that it has addressed the problem of landclass texture calls shared by certain regions of the world (present in default FSX which can result in inappropriate textures being shown) by remapping certain of those texture calls - JV describes this in his FTXG posts at the Orbx forum. Unless another product knows about these changes they will have unexpected consequences on the product, and yes we are talking about global add-ons like GEX. Developers might not always want to work together on such things, particularly if one side is forcing the change away from the published standard that everyone can agree on (the SDK).

 

Although I have fixed this problem for myself I want Orbx to return the default option to FTX Central where it belongs. And yes I would still like to be able to use GEX if that's what I decide.

 

To be honest none of this is really new and I've fixed similar problems in the past caused by the occasional freeware and payware add-on I've used. What is different is that Orbx are a big player in the add-on market and for some reason didn't deal with these changes to core files in the way they have previously.

 

(BTW I can imagine that A2A might be quite upset if RealAir were to change a core DLL that supports gauges for example to implement some new feature they couldn't do any other way but which broke how gauges work for others. Fortunately that won't happen because the inner workings of the FSX gauge code aren't modifiable but in the case of landclass the relevant BGLs can be recompiled and the effects may be quite subtle in another product until the user notices that something doesn't look right and blames that product even though it isn't the cause!)

[Don t moderate me this way 882]

I'm not saying it will happen. I'm merely stating the plausible fact that if an addon based on the FSX SDK makes a call to a FSX core file that has been modified by OrbX, the risc does exist that the file-call is not compatible with the modifications.

(...)

 

 

And my understanding is this risk will increase as soon as openLC comes into play:

 

As long as FTXG simply replaces default FSX textures it can't do much harm. But as soon as new ORBX landclass comes up, with the intention of splitting a single landclass-to-texture call into a number of calls with a couple of texture variants, waking up dormant landclass types and activating additional texture types to feed those, the situation might aggrevate.

 

At least that's my layman's interpretation of how textures and landclass work in FSX.

 

ORBX's cleanup of the FTXG issue, accomplished via "the switch" in FTX Central, before the first release of openLC, is what I'm wishing for.

[airernie 263]

On the upside; NickN's rants may been the reason for the FTXG uninstaller. 

 

After all, if a vendor intends to iinclude an uninstaller with their product they usually do so with the original release.

 

Not always, but usually..

 

Ernie

[daniel_pt 30]

mehh... I could care less if FTX alters some core files from my FSX and doesn't have an uninstaller. I ain't gonna uninstall it... :|