ORBX Global

[alainneedle1 97]

 

 

Agree, you mention TOS, no EULA today?

 

 

 

D'ont get me started...   ..... discussions should be about everything related to flying at Avsim no matter who's getting their panties in a bunch, internally or externally (outside Avsim).  

 

Again, if the discussion is civil and polite no restrictions or post hiding should  be necessary by the staff or the big boss, I don't think for one sec. that restrictions imposed on some sensitive subject or post hiding come only from Avsim's members misbehaving, IMHO it just does not add up. 

 

And for that reason, I'm out...

 

                

                                                                  

[simmerhead 885]

I see, may I ask what addons you have trouble with? Just for my own reference to what products I have to stay away from.

 

 

 

I missed that post, but now I got the answers I was looking for, thanks..

 

I had some troubles with France VFR, Earth Simulations Scilly Isles & Gurnsey, and I use UTX+GEX (The latter which is an obvious no no). I like to have the best of both worlds, hence I run both FSX and P3D. I even use FS2004 (Can't let go of the Aeroworx King Air 200).

[Kaboki 437]

I had some troubles with France VFR, Earth Simulations Scilly Isles & Gurnsey, and I use UTX+GEX

 

I have Earth Simulations Scilly Isles, Guernsey, Alderney and Isle of Man working great with FTX Global in hybrid mode, and they even work with FTX EU enabled. But what I couldn't get to coexist was France VFR and Earth Simulations because of the custom autogen was conflicting, they wouldn't coesxist even in default FSX.....

 

I ditched France VFR because Earth Simulations could coexist with FTX EU, because Orbx merged their autogen so they would work together. Well obviously GEX and FTX Global can never work together in harmony. But you got your reasons, and I won't argue with that, just sharing my expirience with the mentioned products...

[dogtrack 18]

Have never even considered buying into FTXG. Simply because I do not fly outside of purchased complex scenery products. Which given many years of collecting covers a considerable amount of mother earth. Also I am strictly GA. All of which renders FTXG superfluous, for me at least.

[dtmicro 1]

Orbx textures are pretty good, no doubt, and like many noted it will only get better. My one complaint is they haven't built enough variety in their textures yet, but that may be due to performance. They are using too many repeating textures in some places (the PNW pine forest one with the black checkerboard ground, that is used way too much across all their regions).

 

They also need to work on their rendition of mountains, sometimes their holgermesh looks like a holger-MESS. Probably harder to do in FSX than in some engines though, but we know it can be done properly because we've seen some mountains look great. The mountains in PNW don't really look that close to the real mountains (been there many times), they are too generic looking. The mountains in CRM in some places are better, but the Tetons are kind of messy looking close up.

 

If only we could see near Photo-Real mountains everywhere we go and have a better variety of textures, for now I'm holding off on FTX Global because I am already getting sick of some of the textures in Orbx's standard regions. They are good, but they need more variety.

[odourboy 1,289]

Orbx textures are pretty good, no doubt, and like many noted it will only get better. My one complaint is they haven't built enough variety in their textures yet, but that may be due to performance. They are using too many repeating textures in some places

 

You mean sort of like this?

[dtmicro 1]

Not quite to that extent, but you got the general idea. Is that screen you posted from Orbx or something else?

[rlkjmt73 7]

The thing is, is that Global only replaces the default textures from FSX.  Even without Global you would still get the "tiled" texture appearance.  I noticed this same thing the other night flying at FL320.  Matter of a fact, the above posted picture from odourboy looked just like what I was flying over.   Maybe it was the same area..ha

 

The FSX program calls for a certain texture at a certain area.  They would have to re-do the whole program in order to have more variety.

 

But, I sure like the FTX Global textures better than the FSX default.

 

Safe Flyin'

 

Rod

[mchavezv 6]

Hi, i am still hesitating whether buy ORBX Global or not.

Everywhere i can see nice screenshots, but to be honest thing which can fully convince me is comparison.

Same area before and after ORBX Global installation.

This kind of comparison i cannot find, does anybody knows where i can find it?, any link would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

IMO you should consider FS Global Ultimate Europe and America

 

The advantage is that FS include a mesh and arround 70GB of textures

 

I'm very very happy with FS Global Ultimate

 

And the price for both are around 100 euro, also you can get Asia too

 

http://www.fly2pilots.com/cms/

 

Hope this helps

[dtmicro 1]

@rlkjmt23
------------------------------

 

There are ways of simply programming a texture load with more textures without having to provide a sophisticated texture map for each individual area. For instance, by using border areas, cities, and other things to provide more variety they can apply different textures in different areas that border other areas. Also some of Orbx rock textures are too sandy/muddy and need more rock. I am sure it's more work, but they are spending too much time on flooding us with new mass produced airports for $30 every few days than they are on actually working on new textures.

 

They appear to still be using many of the same textures they created 2+ years ago?

 

So some of the objects at the airports are pristine (I know auto-gen is different), but the point is they definitely have quite a bit of room for improvement. A lot of these Orbx textures were not even hand edited, they were just images broken up by texturing and then using averaging, that is why the trees don't blend.

 

I've seen more advanced texturing even in some old PC games like Just Cause 2 (admittedly it has a better and more up-to-date engine), but the graphics cards are at least able to allocate about 1.5GB of memory to FSX, and those who are able to do UsePools=0 without artifacting mostly have the textures in the card's memory from my understanding.

 

So IMHO, they need to stop focusing so much on airports and work on re-vamping mountain textures and blend-zones, that is where they are the weakest. I am impressed by Orbx's ability to model in 3D using polygon friendly techniques, but I am not impressed as much by their texturing (Some of it is good, some of it not).

 

If I were at Orbx, I would release a new texture pack and sell it for another $50 to $100 or something, call it HD Texture Enhancement. I think we need more variety, as good as Orbx stuff is, sometimes I feel like flying Photo-Real because of the better textures like in TP.

[odourboy 1,289]

Not quite to that extent, but you got the general idea. Is that screen you posted from Orbx or something else?

 

That screenshot is FTX Global. Flying over the mid-western USA at FL230. I keep hearing that the soon to be released vector and landclass products will improve this sort of repetitive tiling. I am dubious - but hopeful.

 

Frankly, I have a bit of a love-hate going on with FTX Global. IMHO opinion it's strengths are night lighting and beefed up autogen. The rest is just okay for me. Note that once it's installed, unlike GEX, UTX, REX, FEX... there's no 'off' switch. If you want to use DX10, you'll have to invest another $33.60 for SteveFX's Scenery Fixer or Orbx 3D lights mess up your daytime urban scenery. If you use UTX, you'll need to do a hack to your terrain.cfg to get the vector lights to work (I invested quite a few hours to get this working to my satisfaction: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/419199-no-vector-road-lights-with-utx/page-5#entry2822241 ).

[dtmicro 1]

I agree with you, my comments on Orbx are mostly based on experience with all regions except Alaska and Aus.

 

I tried MSE 2 but it didn't really float my boat.

[dtmicro 1]

I have Earth Simulations Scilly Isles, Guernsey, Alderney and Isle of Man working great with FTX Global in hybrid mode, and they even work with FTX EU enabled. But what I couldn't get to coexist was France VFR and Earth Simulations because of the custom autogen was conflicting, they wouldn't coesxist even in default FSX.....

 

I ditched France VFR because Earth Simulations could coexist with FTX EU, because Orbx merged their autogen so they would work together. Well obviously GEX and FTX Global can never work together in harmony. But you got your reasons, and I won't argue with that, just sharing my expirience with the mentioned products...

 

 

Out of all non-Orbx stuff you've purchased, what would you recommend for a change of scenery out of those listed. What is your favorite non-Orbx scenery?

[rlkjmt73 7]

@rlkjmt23

------------------------------

 

There are ways of simply programming a texture load with more textures without having to provide a sophisticated texture map for each individual area. For instance, by using border areas, cities, and other things to provide more variety they can apply different textures in different areas that border other areas. Also some of Orbx rock textures are too sandy/muddy and need more rock. I am sure it's more work, but they are spending too much time on flooding us with new mass produced airports for $30 every few days than they are on actually working on new textures.

 

They appear to still be using many of the same textures they created 2+ years ago?

 

So some of the objects at the airports are pristine (I know auto-gen is different), but the point is they definitely have quite a bit of room for improvement. A lot of these Orbx textures were not even hand edited, they were just images broken up by texturing and then using averaging, that is why the trees don't blend.

 

I've seen more advanced texturing even in some old PC games like Just Cause 2 (admittedly it has a better and more up-to-date engine), but the graphics cards are at least able to allocate about 1.5GB of memory to FSX, and those who are able to do UsePools=0 without artifacting mostly have the textures in the card's memory from my understanding.

 

So IMHO, they need to stop focusing so much on airports and work on re-vamping mountain textures and blend-zones, that is where they are the weakest. I am impressed by Orbx's ability to model in 3D using polygon friendly techniques, but I am not impressed as much by their texturing (Some of it is good, some of it not).

 

If I were at Orbx, I would release a new texture pack and sell it for another $50 to $100 or something, call it HD Texture Enhancement. I think we need more variety, as good as Orbx stuff is, sometimes I feel like flying Photo-Real because of the better textures like in TP.

 

Yes....I fully understand what you said (wrote).  It would be fantastic if they, or someone, would, or could, create better textures.  And, in my opinion, since FTX Global is still very new, someone, somewhere, may create them in the future.  And what I think that Orbx has done is a great start for the FS community when it comes to airports, regions, and now the world, and, I think they will get better.  It'll just take time. 

 

Too bad Microsoft won't go back to FS and revamp the whole program to allow the textures not to look so "tiled".  It would make the world, from above, look a lot better (more realistic).  But, I don't think that'll happen.

 

Anyways, I've been enjoying FSX more since purchasing not only Orbx FTX Global, but Orbx regions and some airports.  I started flying FS since, I think, about '83 or '84.  It still amazes me how not only FS has gotten better, but the computers (my first computer was a Commodore 64 with the 5 1/4" disk drive and the cassette drive..ha).  Oops better stay on the subject.

 

Safe Flyin' Everyone,

 

Rod

[Guest]

 

 

I keep hearing that the soon to be released vector and landclass products will improve this sort of repetitive tiling. I am dubious - but hopeful.

 

You keep hearing that because it is true. FTX Global replaces default textures but does nothing with the land class which takes care of where the textures are placed so that means that where default textures show repetitive scenery, FTX Global will also show repetitive scenery. You only get to see different textures, that's all. OpenLC will remedy this by completely rearranging all textures plús also adding more new textures. Vector will also take care of some more variation but OpenLC is the main add-on to look at for this.