JV has now posted a rant in the forum blaming the customers for his deceptive marketing of Vector. He says we've been spoiled with FTX regions and need to shut up. Really? Why do we we continue to buy products from this joke of a company? I no longer will.

 

Mark,

 

I'm trying to understand what your point or goal is in posting this.

 

Is the company a joke, or is it one person?  So, what you're stating is that everyone that works in that company is a joke.  Come on.  Assuming that you're chiming in on the "Vector" discussion, you're also saying that Pilot's is a joke, as Pilot's and Orbx is working together to make this product for the FS community.

 

I may sound like an Orbx supporter, well, I am, along with a lot of other companys, as I really enjoy their scenery add ons. I buy their products, or not buy their products, because of the product, not a person.

 

And, I'm a supporter to a lot of other company's that are or have developed FS software.  And, they have their moments in rude comments back to their customers.

 

I'm not condoning JV for what he said, I'm just asking you to explain yourself more, instead of getting on a forum and "bashing" a company(s) for what one [CEO] stated.

 

AVSIM Staff, I think this thread should go away as it started as verbal abuse and as an accusation.

 

Rod

In addition, if I am not mistaken, the manual for the product in question was made available some time ago. This is the common practice these days so would be first port of call should some due diligence had been undertaken.

I am going to be very careful what I post here, as I don't want to get into a personal debate about JV, but not everyone ferrets through forums. PMDG even stated that. Believe it or not, only a small percentage of a customer base read forums before buying.

PMDG catered for that, by not having a customer running into a brick wall after purchasing. All the info required is on the product page. Orbx should have allowed for that.

There are some on the Orbx forum would buy a dog xxxxx if Orbx supplied it, but not everyone is on their forum.The buck stops at the FSS store, and the store alone. Not the forum.

This post is bad news IMO.  How someone manages their company should not be a subject for debate when it comes to flight simulation addons.  We are venturing into vexing territory here.

 

Regards

jja

This post is bad news IMO.  How someone manages their company should not be a subject for debate when it comes to flight simulation addons.  We are venturing into vexing territory here.

 

Regards

jja

 

Totally agree.....that's why I stated above to the AVSIM Staff that this topic needs to go away.

 

Rod

 

 

How someone manages their company should not be a subject for debate

Jim, it is not about how a company manages, but how the CEO used abusive language in his frustration  with his customers.

Having said that, the title of this thread is very harsh, and I hope the mods will change it. It started abusive, but it has remained quite civil, so far.

 

 

Uhmmm, no it doesn't.

http://www.orbxsyste...ector/?p=649286

 

Just out of curiosity, do you actually have Vector?

 

I do, and I posted some screenshots here on Avsim:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/430547-ftx-global-vector/

 

Pics from quite a few locations around the world, none of which have any major errors.

 

Vector isn't perfect, far from it. It's clearly been rushed to release and needs a lot more polish. Right now it's a very rough diamond.

 

What's really telling is the thread where everyone was having a go at Orbx and bashing vector got to eleven pages of replies and over 13,600 views. My post that shows Vector actually working pretty well had no replies and less than 250 views. It confirms my belief that a lot of people here aren't really interested in seeing the product working properly, they want to see it not working properly and then create a manufactured outrage and drama over it.

 

I just want to enjoy my sim as much as I can, and Vector might just turn out to be one of the most important scenery enhancements to come along in years. Unfortunately I think there's a very vocal group who just want to see Orbx fall flat on its face.

 

Quite sad really.

 

 

How someone manages their company should not be a subject for debate when it comes to flight simulation addons. We are venturing into vexing territory here.

 

Let me put this into historic context; how people run their companies (including me and AVSIM) have been subjects of discussion here (and elsewhere) since day one in 1987 or so. Do Ariane, PSS, American Airlines, Microsoft and others come to mind? They should.

Totally agree.....that's why I stated above to the AVSIM Staff that this topic needs to go away.

 

Rod

Why Rod ? Apart from the title and the first post, why should it go away ?

Even in the smaller areas that UT / UTX covers, it wasn't perfect on first release.

 

 

Now that's an understatement. It took to version 1.6 before everything was fixed in UTX USA. Is that an indication of poorly contrived software? Absolutely not. It says more about the nature of vector and land class data than it does about UTX's use of it. First of all, most of the raw data originally comes from government orthoimagery projects. Even the vaunted Google "took" much of its mapping data from readily available government databases. Now what is wrong with that approach? First of all, different governments have different approaches to acquiring and editing orthoimagery. Even if you can create a standardized database of images, then you have to worry about projecting them properly. Once the images are all converted to a common projection, you can either use your own image processing apps to tease out the various land class types and vectors or you can again rely on some government effort that did the same. For example in the US, the database of waterbodies is the National Hydrography Dataset  (NHD). The land class database that's commonly used is the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). The United States Geological Survey (USGS) also provides mesh datasets, which they refer to as Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). Is that level of data available globally? Probably not. And then there's OpenStreetMap which is an open source approach that relies of the availability of free satellite imagery. And you know what they say about the value of something that you get for free.

 

What you should get from all of this is that even after someone like either Scenery Solutions or ORBX takes the data from any or all of the above sources, they still have to doodle around and convert it to the arcane format that ACES used for FSX. Even that step is fraught with introducing additional errors. And that's why it took six updates for UTX USA to get as close as possible to the real world land class and vector information. And in the intervening time from the initial release of UTX USA 1.0 to the release of 1.6, land class information changed (either because of on the ground changes or because new data became available).

 

All this begs for patience, with regard to these types of information.

Totally agree.....that's why I stated above to the AVSIM Staff that this topic needs to go away.

 

Rod

 

And if we don't, that will make us the bad guys, right?

So what's the actual problem with ORBX Vector? After reading all this bashing I'm still not sure why I shouldn't buy it. 

Lucky for us fsx/p3d simmers those who like to vote with thier wallets all the time will cause the slow death of the sim on those platforms and push up prices for the rest of us ^_^

 

 

That's a very bold accusation sir. 

 

All this begs for patience, with regard to these types of information.

 

 

Jabloom

 

Whilst I agree everything you state in your post, the issue is not about landclass errors/bugs.

 

Its simply about individuals - paying customers - (rightly or wrongly) realising that a further addon (that isn't cheap either) is required to maximise FTX Vector.....only to be given, imo, a pretty awful response from the CEO when complaining that suggests the customers are to blame for not researching enough.

 

I know he's known for his "abrupt" attitude...but I think it reflects really badly on Orbx and can't see it ending well.

 

Seasons Greetings

 

Steve

So what's the actual problem with ORBX Vector? After reading all this bashing I'm still not sure why I shouldn't buy it. 

 

That's the best post in the whole topic. And probably should be asked again, as I am going to lock this thread as it is going to go nowhere but downhill.