Most of the forum discussion I have seen on this topic are a few months old.  Am wondering if I should buy some of these OpenVFR products (terrain, mesh, autogen) e.g., for Europe/Germany.  They look pretty good and seem to integrate well with FTXG.  Have heard that they don't look so great at low altitudes, however.  What is the consensus?  Should one go ahead for these (they don't seem to be very expensive) or should we wait for the full FTXGlobal with OpenLC, Vector and Pilots Mesh?

I'm using OpenVFR germany with FTXG and I'm very impressed with the results. There are a couple of demos for free that you can use to get a good impression.

 

What OpenVFR is, is openstreetmap data made usable for FSX/Prepar3d, so accurate roads, rivers, lakes and coastlines. It will most likely be the same data FTX Vector will use. There may be some optimization in FTX vector for performance. The amount of openstreetmap data in large cities can have an impact on performance and memory usage. I've found that OpenVFR japan runs into trouble in large cities, I had less of an impact problem with OpenVFR germany.

 

OpenVFR will not have much impact on how the FTXG landscape is rendered, this is much more dependant on the landclasses. It mostly just adds a more accurate and dense layer of roads over the landscape.

 

 

The amount of openstreetmap data in large cities can have an impact on performance and memory usage. I've found that OpenVFR japan runs into trouble in large cities,

 

The main problem here is that OpenVFR gives you ALL roads, so even small ones in cities and you can't turn them off. This has the side effect that autogen is pushed out of the city and roads are fighting for space. This is why OpenLC will only give us the main roads. This will also prevent slowdowns above cities.

 

BTW OpenVFR isn't only roads: you also have OpenVFR landclass and OpenVFR autogen and what not: in fact imho it's not really clear what every addon offers. The site lacks proper information.

 

And about OpenVFR being cheap: that's true when you only buy a package or two. When you however want to buy OpenVFR for all of Europe it will cost you a few hundred bucks and a LOT more than the upcoming FTX Vector and/or FTX OpenLC!

Thanks for the comments.  I will probably just wait and see what FTXG with OpenLC+Vector+Pilots looks like. I generally like to avoid getting scenery products from too many different developers on my machine.

J van E, you are correct, OpenVFR terrain does also update the landclass in certain areas. I haven't looked into the other products they have. I think their autogen product would probably be more useful in combination with photoscenery.

 

BTW, I found a solution to the performance problems of OpenVFR Japan, the road detail is seperated in 3 files. cvx_asia_japan_RDX_0.BGL, cvx_asia_japan_RDX_1.BGL, cvx_asia_japan_RDX_2.BGL. By renaming RDX_2 the performance becomes much better and the roads that are lost are so minor you'd probably wouldn't want them anyway.

 

And yes, I also try not to think too much about how much scenery I bought has been made redundant by FTX global.