Lee, I haven't bought it (yet), as the Republic would leave open an ugly piece of default Northern Ireland scenery. And the NIR region is way too small to justify its price (no payware quality airport included, as opposed to FTX Wales and its Cardiff rendition).

 

Too expensive in my book to cover the complete Irish island with two separate FTX regions (yet ... last year's holiday sales changed my view on WLS dramatically).

 

Judging by the screenshots and other simmers' feedback they (IRL and NIR) seem to be at least the same (high) quality as FTX Scotland. Unfortunately, neither the Rep nor NIR feature custom mesh, which is pretty unusual regarding the FTX regions' design concept.

Thanks Olli, something to consider I guess.

Hi Echofox,

Yes, EU England does display Blackpool Tower and many of the seaside piers are also included!

Cheers,

Mal.

Hi Mal, any chance you can post a screen shot of the piers at Blackpool as I think I must be going mad! are all 3 showing on your setup?

Hi Brian,

 

Not very successful with screenshots I'm afraid, but I can confirm that the North, Central and South piers are depicted in Orbx UK England, a bit simplified, but they are there, maybe one of the other chaps might submit a screenshot?

 

Cheers,

 

Mal.

Thanks Mal, I think I need to check my setup....again!

Ok So here is the ORBX representation of a few well known piers in the UK. As you can see they are representations and not detailed models. 

 

Southend Pier (longest in the world)

 

Blackpool Tower and Piers

 

Brighton Pier

 

Ryde Pier on the Isle of Wight

I do have PNW, but have not really explored it yet. I'm having a devil of a time trying to download the PNW 5.0 patch (my provider is useless). 

I must admit, that I did go back to photoscenery briefly after reading a glowing review and it convinced me to retry it. But ... I spend most of my time at or below 3,000 ft and the Orbx scenery just looks so real. I have tried VFR navigation using roads, lakes and rivers and have done so very well. But the photo-real/Orbx decision really chewed up my brain for a couple of weeks! My conclusion was this:

 

Both are not 'accurate' representations. That's a fact.

 

1) Some buildings or 3D landmarks that should be there in Orbx are not, although in photoscenery, there are almost NO 3D landmarks. Spotting villages and towns in photoscenery is hard at a distance because they look like grey fields, Orbx gives them vertical height, you know its's a city/town. 

 

2) Actual places, fields, building shapes, locations colours of mudflats, etc are perfectly mapped in photoscenery. I love that. I flew over Doncaster racecourse, and saw the annual funfair was in town -I've been to that! But, of course, the funfair is ALWAYS in town ... but seeing actual lakes, beaches, buildings, meadows that I've visited is fantastic and thrilling. But I'm flying a plane VFR, not looking at Google Earth, so finding landmarks is more important. 

 

3) Finding my way. Flying arounf Gen X photoscenery with Northern England Landmarks installed, plus Power add-on, gives me some 3D landmarks, but not very many. When I see one, I got very excited, whether it was included with Gen X, or an add on like Eaerth Simulation's Needles Lighthouse. Orbx is filled with these geographic identifiers, and from my perspectiive, trying to learn the skills of pilotage and VFR navigation, these 3D waypoints are very important to me, especially coupled with accurate locations of roads and rivers and windfarms. 

 

When I started with FSX in November I told myself I would be a photoscenery afficionado, but I've moved my position since then. 

When I started with FSX in November I told myself I would be a photoscenery afficionado, but I've moved my position since then.

 

Thanks for posting an update, it's been interesting reading as I too am going through a similar experience. Since getting back to flightsim a year ago, I've been using GenX for my England scenery along with Treescapes, and had expected that to remain the case.

 

A week ago I bought UTX Europe to enhance my flying abroad and once I saw the improvement with that, I ended up buying FTX Global. I love it, combined with UTX (now I have UTX USA too) it looks so much nicer and feels more real. I disabled GenX for a couple of days to do some flying over England with FTXG/UTX and it's been really enjoyable and made it more fun to fly VFR. When I re-enabled GenX yesterday it was a bit of a shock as it looked so flat and washed out, so within a couple of hours I had reverted back to FTXG/UTX.

 

Your points about the accuracy of both types of scenery also struck a chord and I've found that with the roads and water from UTX I've been able to navigate fine while at the same time enjoying vibrant colours and flying over houses and other autogen.

 

It seems I too have changed my mind about photoscenery, and now I'm sold on FTX I'm now wondering whether I should go the whole hog for my UK flying and invest in FTX England.

 

Cheers

 

 

Yes, EU England does display Blackpool Tower and many of the seaside piers are also included!

 

Can't wait for Orbx to release installers for P3Dv2.2 ... I used to live very close to Blackpool ... Cleveleys, schooled at Rossall (circa 1972).