Notice for the moderators: I know I have posted more than 20 shots here but they are thumbnails, so please go easy on me and don't delete them!

 

 

Here's some shots of FTX Global Vector running on my system. Hopefully you can get an idea of what to expect. I've picked various areas that I have travelled to in real life and so am perhaps a little familiar with, as well as ones that are well off the beaten path of FS scenery developers.

 

All these shots were taken with FTX Global Vector running alongside FTX Global textures, FS Global Ultra terrain mesh and Scenery Tech Landclass. Sky/cloud/water textures are from REX4. I'm running FSX here under DX10 with Shade and SweetFX. All screenshots taken with the summer season selected.

 

 

First place we're visiting is Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia. This is the home town of my wife and a place I am very familiar with.

 

 

This is a corner of Europe that has been neglected for far too long by scenery developers. With the addition of Vector it actually looks pretty good now. Belgrade is built at the confluence of the Danube and Sava rivers, and this is now captured quite well with the new vector scenery. I think you'll agree the autogen night lighting introduced with the FTXG textures looks very good indeed now we've got more roads populated. These shots do highlight one of my criticisms - the blending of the road textures is pretty poor. The road encasements are way too big and make the roads stand out too much. I believe this can be adjusted with a terrain.cfg edit, but to be honest I'd prefer it if we were provided with a tool to do this like the one supplied with UTX.

 

 

The next place we're off to is Montenegro, in particular the Adriatic coast - Boka Kotorska, or the Bay of Kotor in English.

 

The town of Igalo can be seen here, but the neighbouring town of Herceg Novi (both popular holiday resorts) appears to be missing.

 

Likewise the eponymous old town of Kotor - founded as a trading outpost by Venice in the middle ages - is missing here.

 

Vector here has captured the coastline pretty will and the major roads are there. What lets this area down is the landclass. Hopefully OpenLC will be more accurate here, especially as the area overall is too lush and green.

 

 

The next stop is Egypt - the Suez Canal.

 

The northern end of the canal at Port Said.

 

Moving south down the canal to Ismailiah.

 

The Great Bitter Lake.

 

The southern end of the canal at Suez.

 

Again much the same here. Vector has done a good job of getting the shorelines more accurate, and adding in major roads. However, once again a better landclass is needed. The green areas are maybe a bit too lush here, and I remember the eastern side of the canal was pretty barren desert as far as the eye could see.

 

 

Salalah in Oman.

 

And Fujairah in the UAE.

 

Same story here - the coastlines are improved and there are more roads, but the landclass is perhaps a bit off, too much deep, lush green.

 

 

Next stop is Goa in India.

 

This is actually pretty good, very similar to how I remember it. The coastlines are pretty good, we've got roads now and the textures don't look at all out of place.

 

 

Now the island of Penang in Malaysia.

 

Again a very good represenation of the island, very close to how I remember it. A pretty good detailed coastline, roads and the textures look pretty good. The causeway that connects the island with the mainland is just a vector road though - no 3D bridge object.

 

 

Continuing south we reach Singapore.

 

Again the roads are perhaps a little too stark, need to shrink that encasement and blend them better. You can also see one of the other problems that Vector has here - that is misalignment with default scenery objects. Some of the buildings (I think in Clark Quay) are now in the water, and the roads run through some of the other landmark buildings. The night lighting is still pretty good with all the roads now. Vector has done a pretty good job of depicting the rather complicated coastline around Singapore. The landclass needs some improvement though - the industrial areas of Jurong (lots of shipyards) has a big jungle in it!

 

Crossing the oceans and continents now we zoom across to the Falkland Islands.

 

If you're familiar with the islands you might recognise this is Blanco Bay and the Port Stanley area. As you can see, Stanley, is missing! There aren't any roads (well what passes for roads in the Falklands anyway) and the terrain is overall too green. There are also too many trees. Anyone who has been to the Falklands will tell you the place has virtually no trees. So what we have here is an improved coastline, but that's about it. We need roads here, as well as a much better landclass.

 

Heading north we come to Montevideo.

 

Not much to say here other than it's an improvement over what we had in the sim before.

 

 

Heading north still further we arrive at Ascension Island.

 

Small island. Pretty lush green vegetation. Pretty much how I remember it. We've got roads on the island now but absolutely no sign of any buildings or habitation. The area around the airport should be dark brown earth with little nor no vegetation. Again we need a landclass fix here to get it accurate.

 

 

Now that's us almost done. Just out of interest I thought I'd post some side by side comparisons of FTX Global alongside a full fat FTX region. In this case I've taken the place in England where I currently live and the place where I grew up.

 

Above Biggin Hill EGKB looking north towards London. FTX Global.

 

And the same with FTX England.

 

Now looking east into Kent from Biggin Hill. FTX Global.

 

And the same with FTX England.

 

Finally, just off the north Kent coast, looking at the town of Herne Bay, with Canterbury in the distance. FTX Global.

 

And the same with FTX England.

 

 

I hope the above has been informative and of some use for those curious about FTXG Vector!

Very informative shots ! Thank you. I think their product is interesting for FSX users and for all the places where there's no better scenery.

 

But don't forget, OpenStreetMap roads, railways, rivers, power-lines, (or "vectors") and a decent worlwide (or "global") landclass and mesh is nothing new for flight simulation. It's a default feature in X-Plane 10 since a few years. Before that, in X-Plane 9, we were using open-source tools like XPOSM and OSM2XP to import "vectors" or objects from OpenStreetMap. So it was high time for FSX users to be also able to use this great database.

 

If you find errors in OpenStreetMap, missing streets or rivers, feel free to report bugs or "Notes". No one knows your local area better than you:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

 

You can also be part of the community and improve the places you know. It's very easy:

http://goo.gl/Dwjl1v

This must have taken a lot of time to do.  Thanks for posting.  What plane is that over Belgrade?

Very informative and well presented. Have you posted this on Orbx forums?

This must have taken a lot of time to do.  Thanks for posting.  What plane is that over Belgrade?

 

I was curious myself to see what difference it made after installing and noticed nobody had posted any proper shots or first impressions. These were quite literally first looks for me as well. It took a couple of hours perhaps. The aircraft is the freeware Edgley Optica from www.classicwings.net

 

 

 

Very informative and well presented. Have you posted this on Orbx forums?

 

I don't post over at Orbx, but feel free to link this thread if you want. Given the drama that has gone on surrounding this release I'm glad I made these pics as they show that there are plenty of places around the world where Vector really does work and reall does make a difference. With more polish and refinement this will definitely be a must have scenery addon for those who want to fly outside of North America or Western Europe.