Before you buy anything from ES have a read though this first and it's not just the installer.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/431905-anyone-with-experience-of-earth-simulations/

 

Draw your own conclusions.

That's the same link I just posted David...and yes, please do read it through to the end. 

 

and it's not just the installer.

 

 

What else is it then David? 

Well your servers are not the fastest. Look at the SS I posted, not good when you want to DL and get flying asap. 104mb in 13 mins!

 

I just DL 41Gb from MSE in 2 hours.

Isle of Man ( EGNS ) does not use default textures Manny. See screenshots here.  Here's two recent comments we've had from those that should know.

 

WOW!  EGNS looks awesome.  I had bought your earlier Island and my comment was based on that. This one looks nice.

 

Maybe I need to revisit.

 

The thing about installing VFR France first and then your scenery is helpful.. Maybe I should revisit that too.

 

But since I cannot uninstall Orbx just for VFR France, I may have to ignore France. 

 

The Q I have is, if I reinstall Earth Simulations and/or install this new Isle of Man (I am now interested in getting this), would it install properly with Orbx?

 

Thanks for your post.

Hi David

 

So you are in fact still referring to your dislike of the installer afterall....unless there is something else you'd like to comment on. 

 

I have no idea why you saw such a slow speed, but it isn't the norm. To prove the point I have just taken my own screenshot seen below. 

 

You can clearly see I've just downloaded a whole 11GB in a little under 44 minutes, averaging 4382kbs.  I'll sometimes see faster...I'll sometimes see slower depending on the day. Check the date/time at the bottom of the screenshot to show I've only just conducted this experiment. Also you should know that our servers are located in Germany, whilst I live on the rural Isle of Wight located just off the south coast of England...so it's not as if the server is located in the next room or anything like that. You've simply been unlucky David. :(  for which you have my deepest empathy, but we can not take the blame for the slow speed you experienced.

 

Hi Manny

 

Orbx deliberately missed Isle of Man from their FTX England product after realizing that we were about to release a product covering the Island. I answer to your question, Yes,  ES and Orbx co-exist just fine. 

WOW! EGNS looks awesome. I had bought your earlier Island and my comment was based on that. This one looks nice.

 

Maybe I need to revisit.

 

t.

Manny,

You can take a look at the recent Avsim review of the A2A C172. All of those sceenshots were using ES IOM and several highlight the extensive details of EGNS.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/page/index.html/_/reviews/aircraft/a2a-simulations-c172-trainer-r1878

 

Regards,

Ray

Hello Earth Simulations.

No offence taken. However I believe you are under the impression that my problems with ES scenery stem from installing Uk2000 scenery of the Channel Is. with that of your own. This of course is impossible as UK2000 Channel Islands scenery is only for FS2004 and my misfortune with ES scenery was endeavouring to install it in FSX, and particularly at the end of satisfactorily installing at least 250GB of other software scenery. So you can perhaps understand why I was so aggrieved at having to start afresh with a complete reinstall. No, as previously stated, I unfortunately believe it is the fact that some ES scenery does not sit comfortably with either ORBX or UK2000 on the same computer and my interest is solely to make fellow flightsimmers aware of my experiences.

In respect of the laborious install procedure through your website, well, I am glad to see from other posts that I am not alone. I came to the conclusion that your website and install procedure had been set up with one purpose in mind, to prevent pirating and certainly not for the convenience of the flight simmers. It may interest you to know that as a member of a flight sim group for 3 years, I believe that 95% of the 40 members are not interested in pirated copies, aware that further development depends on purchasing the software.

However, to conclude the discussion, I wish your company and its future well, but I would ask you to remember that there is more to a continuing successful business than simply short term selling of the product.

Hi

 

fact that some ES scenery does not sit comfortably with either ORBX or UK2000

 

OK...so I seriously doubt by now that I'm going to be able to convince you otherwise Crackfire,  but have to say for the benefit of others that you are wrong on both counts. We are indeed fully compatible with Orbx. There is no case I can think of where we need to be compatible with UK2000 for the reasons already stated. But running ES and UK2000 on the same system is completely possible and is indeed one of the most common combinations of scenery used by a majority of our UK customers...as long as it's not exactly the same airport we're modelling of course, where only one or another can be chosen.

 

came to the conclusion that your website and install procedure had been set up with one purpose in mind, to prevent pirating and certainly not for the convenience of the flight simmers.

 

 

Honestly...Nothing could be further from the truth. Our intention was to build an installer that would make things as easy for our genuine customers as possible. I think the best way to show you this is for me to link you to another video I've just made which demonstrates how activation of our products actually works.

 

 

Whilst we do have effective anti piracy measures in place ( such as file encryption and other methods of checking ) None of it is seen by you, and none of it acts as a hindrance to a genuine customer. 

 

A member named Simmerhead made a  well thought out and polite reply in the other recent thread discussing Earth Simulations here . Much of it I'd agree with, with the exception of the second paragraph.

 

 My problem is with all the copy protection and bloatware side products (ESI included). Once you have accumulated a fair number of addons from various developers these add up to make a mess beyond my wildest imagination of chaos

 

 

There are currently around 25 separate sceneries available from Earth Simulations. Assuming we had used a traditional "Click/next/click/next type installer"  for each of these sceneries you would now have 25 separate programs to store and manage. Add to that the issue of more files providing updates or enhancements for each of those sceneries as they become available leading to a greater "mess" trying to keep track of them all. 

ESI was designed to avoid that exact situation by being a single program installed on your system that will deal with all of the products and all of the updates. ( past and future ) One installer to deal with potentially unlimited products and updates. To me at least, that makes a lot of sense.

Regrettably, my experience with Earth Simulation software scenery is not good, and from Forum comments I have read, I am not alone to suffering CTD's after installation. I have Scilly Isles(OK), Alderney and Guernsey, the last mentioned a particular problem.

It does not seem to sit happily with either ORBX or UK2000 scenery but perhaps a more powerful computer might solve my problem. The installation procedure alone is a complete headache and I know of other flightsimmers that think likewise.

Sorry to be so negative, I particularly enjoy the Channel islands so I would be delighted to learn of more positive experiences.

I have almost all the OrbX and UK2000 sceneries and every earth sims scenery. I've never had any compatibility problem with them. As long as you simply put them in the right order in the scenery library they all work spectacularly together right out of the box. Never had any install problems with any of them

 

The only slight issue I ever had was compatibility with some of the France VFR sceneries initially, but I was supplied with the autogen files merged to solve that problem and the fix was posted on their forum.

 

I'm sorry to hear anyone else had probs but I didn't so maybe there was something else with other users PCs or FSX tweaks? :s

 

Cheers k

EGNS looks amazing! I might reconsider.

I would be really grateful if yomeone could tell me whether the ESI tool should add the scenery to the FSX database automatically, as this was not the case on my first attempt at installing...

 

It is really hard to see if/where one is going wrong...

 

I am getting a good 1500Kb/s out of my DSL16000 connection (the max I have ever seen was around 1700Kb or so), but 12.9Gb still takes 2+ hours...

 

A

What exactly happened when ES Isle of Man finished downloading, Andrew? Like all other ES scenery packages, it should then have started the installation process. If I remember correctly, one of the most important aspects of this is to make sure that the installer correctly identifies the path to the folder where FSX is installed on your PC (since some people do not install to the default location).

 

 

Whilst I understand the concerns of some people, it saddens me to see a thread like this. I think that I have come to know Darren and Vicki reasonably well since I joined the ES forum when it first appeared in 2009. I have purchased every one of their products to date, and I have not been disappointed with any of them. They are top quality titles worth every penny. The installer has its detractors (which I can understand, considering that I actually prefer individual installers for each package), but it is not as bad as some people are claiming. Most of the software that I have purchased from ES has downloaded and installed without any issues whatsoever. The only time that I experienced a problem was with the original TreeScapes (the installer "stalled", so I had to install the trees manually). However, this was a relatively straightforward task, and Darren got me up and running quickly.

 

As others have pointed out, Darren and Vicki are a husband and wife team trying to produce the best FS software that they can. The fact that they deliver what are arguably some of the very best products available for FSX is a testament to their determination, hard work, and sheer talent. I for one am extremely grateful for the products they have made, and also the help and generosity that they have provided over the past five years. They are a credit to the flightsim community, and they deserve the utmost respect.

 

As for download speeds, my connection currently has a maximum speed of around 11Mbps. This has been achieved every single time that I have downloaded a product from the ES servers. Now, I am aware that some of you have super duper mega connections that the rest of us can only dream about, but I consider being able to download 11GB in 2 hours as pretty good, particularly when reliability is part of the package.

 

 

The words above are not aimed at you, Andrew. I saw your post, and then read the first page (mostly posts from January, where Darren is trying to defend himself and his company). I will try my best to help you with your problem, because ES Isle of Man is the best scenery package installed on my PC.....bar none.

Cheers for your reply Christopher, I appreciate it...

 

The download speeds I praise, as I am getting as best as I could expect from my connection... I suppose my issue is with the Installer itself. I work in the IT as an admin and systems manager and have worked with some of the more bizarre content protection and installers out there.

 

I bought on the recommendation of yourself and others on various sites. I had been toying with the idea for a time, but what finally swayed in favour was the use of the scenery in the recently released Airline2Sim Q400 training videos that I picked up recently.

 

I am currently pulling the local ESI pack, in the hope that I can get it to install that way more successfully. I was a little worried that my FSX install had been shot, but found that replacing the autogendescriptions.spb that had been pulled out of the autogen directory in FSX restored FSX' functionality...

 

I am now waiting for the download to finish again... :(

 

A

Hi Andrew, I assume your recent post earlier today was related to your other post on another thread, and that you're up and running now? If not, let me know and I can post you a list of scenery library entries you should have I also run sceneryconfigeditor and I've found that when you 'save' the configuration file it actually saves it as a new and different cfg file, whereas if you 'save-as' it saves over the existing scenery.cfg

 

Cheers K

Yes, thanks for the help...

 

I am up and running now... I can only guess that I had an issue either with a German FSX install, or it is related to the way I have been using SCE. Whatever the actual cause of the problem, I am now running without any issues... took a bit of hand-editing and tidying up, but all's well... as Shakespeare put it

 

Looking forward to some legs into and out of EGNS in the Q400 now!

 

 

A