I didn't test this, but do FTX Regions included all 4 season?

 

Yes they do; unfortunately not always very accurately! When FTX PNW was first released the hard winters in my area of Vancouver Island were correctly (99% of the time) depicted as snow free. Orbx has since updated (I forget which patch) the info to include snow for this area in hard winter!! :mad:

 

 

Yes they do;

 

Well at least they do include all seasons ... I never really understood what the "Hybrid Mode" was all about when having Regions installed with Global -- is there some issue when moving In/Out of a Regions or moving In/Out a Region to a Global area?  Thought I read some information about known limitations/issues with region transitions?

 

Rob

Nope, that's openLC. Not the same as a region at all

Northern California will be released soon. Perhaps that's what he meant.

 

Hybrid was needed because each region replaces uses it's own autogen lookup tables. The problem was most obvious flying out of the uk region into Europe. Hybrid adds all the autogen to the same table and doesn't overwrite other developers autogen if that developer cooperated with Orbx and provided their file names and locations.

The Regions are much more detailed. 

 

How often will you fly Australia vs. the rest of the world? If you fly Australia most of the time, I'd just start with the Australia region, and then get Global/Vector when you feel like braching out internationally. 

 

Another thing to consider...Do you do mostly airliner, or low-and-slow GA flying? If you do mostly airliner, the regions might be a bit overkill if you're at FL300+ most of the time.

Regardless, if you fly Australia a lot, either tube or GA, I would go ahead and just get it (AU region). The price is really good considering it covers the entire continent. Each of the North America regions is priced roughly the same as the entire AU product.

FTX Global will provide a marked improvement to your ground textures and autogen  throughout FSX.  Global Vector will provide more accurate coastlines, waterbodies and roads, but only as good as the OSM data provides which varies a lot by country.  None of the above compares to the accuracy of an FTX region.  

 

The Australian and NA regions in particular are outstanding, but I can't speak for the UK or New Zealand regions, as I do not own them.  The landclass in the regions is manually adjusted and integrated with photoreal scenery for some prominent features. The redone airports in the NA regions are worth the price alone.

 

Even if you add Global as an overall upgrade to the sim, I would highly recommend you start to add some regions - at least try one so you can see the added value.

 

 

I never really understood what the "Hybrid Mode" was all about when having Regions installed with Global -- is there some issue when moving In/Out of a Regions or moving In/Out a Region to a Global area? Thought I read some information about known limitations/issues with region transitions?

 

In Hybrid mode all installed FTX regions are active and so you can fly from one to another if you want to (like from Oceania to Europe). However, due to limitations a few little things in the FTX regions will be different/missing. If you want to see really everything a region has to offer, you should enable that region and not FTX Global with hybrid. Now when you enable that region you will still see FTX Global outside of it but this time a few little things in FTX Global will be different/missing.

 

So:

 

- FTX Global without hybrid: FTX Global will be as it should be and no regions are enabled.

 

- FTX Gobal with hybrid: FTX Global will be as it should be but now ALL regions will be enabled too, however there will be a few things different/missing in them.

 

- FTX region enabled: the enabled region will be as it should, the other regions will be off, and now FTX Global will have a few things different/missing.

 

I usually fly within a country or a small area so if possible I always enable the region I am flying in and I only swith to FTX Global whenever I fly outside a region.

 

 

I usually fly within a country or a small area so if possible I always enable the region I am flying in and I only swith to FTX Global whenever I fly outside a region.

 

Thanks for the explanation Jeroen.  So if I understand correctly, it's really a .BGL conflict covering the same area and trying to retain AutoGen rather than going the photo scenery route?

 

So some of the "missing" things in a Region might be the 3D lights? 

 

Or this not accurate?

 

Thanks, Rob.

 

 

Or this not accurate?

 

I searched for an old post of Holger on the Orbx forum and this is what he had to say:

 

 

The FTXG hybrid mode makes compromises in three scenery components:

 

 

1. Autogen textures: our regions have custom vegetation and building textures. Since any autogen object can only display one texture at a time we had to (see my note below). It actually doesn't mean that you'll see European textures everywhere in New Zealand or North America

 

2. Slope textures: many landclass textures in FSX automatically change to another type (e.g., rock or forest) on steeper slopes. At which gradient and to what texture has been adjusted differently within each FTX region. Since for each landclass those slope changes are defined globally we had to find a single common denominator for each class.

 

3. Class-to-texture assignments: Since some classes in FSX have specific desirable combinations of parameters we've sometimes changed (from default) which texture is called by a specific class. However, most of these changes don't have global effect so you will only see them within a given Orbx region.

 

Note: Holger made a typo in point 1: a part of the sentence seems to be missing. He says "Since any autogen object can only display one texture at a time we had to" and then it ends, so I think he meant to say they had to make choices and so you will see less or no custom autogen in regions with hybrid mode enabled. 

 

Anyway, the differences may seem minor to some but I rather see the regions as they are intended!

 

 

Anyway, the differences may seem minor to some but I rather see the regions as they are intended!

 

So for a longer flight that crosses FTX Regions (but doesn't touch on a FTX Global area) it's best to turn OFF FTX Global and just use the FTX Regions (aka NOT hybrid mode).  But if I plan to flying in/out of a Region then use Hybrid mode.

 

BUT, night lighting is only available in FTX Global so if I turn off Global and only do regions I will not get any night lights?

 

Does this sound accurate?

Regions have their own custom night lights, whether or not you have FTX Global installed.

 

 

So for a longer flight that crosses FTX Regions (but doesn't touch on a FTX Global area) it's best to turn OFF FTX Global and just use the FTX Regions (aka NOT hybrid mode).

 

Only if the FTX Regions you are crossing are all grouped together in either North America, Europe or Oceania. If you were to go between different grouped FTX Regions, then hybrid mode would be the way to go.