Hi everyone, i was thinking to purchase ORBX AU SP4 as i have few bucks to spend! It's a shame I did not get on time to the sale, but my room needed new paint! 

 

I mostly do GA flying, but at some point i'd like to try the light airliners (dash8) so i thought that a huge region will be the best.

 

I want to know your opinions against the other NA regions, mostly on performance, attractions and quality (Considering Central Rockies too).

 

I did some research and saw screenshots with mostly 15-20FPS on the counter, so this really push me back.

 

My sistem is not high end, i own a i5 3470 and a GTX 660Ti SC 3GB, but my sim is pretty light, and I'm planning to do a full reinstall of windows soon.

 

So thats it, thanks in advance!

 

Someone? :(

I have AU and it's a very nice region, perhaps not on a par with some of their later regions, though I don't have any American regions to answer your question directly so I'm comparing to European ones, but very nice and when combined with the OZx and Ant's Aussie Airfields freeware, it's a very good buy, especially on the basis of km^2 per dollar.  And the OZx airfields and farm strips are a good enough reason in themselves to own Orbx AU, especially if you like weird little farm strips and *ahem* "non standard" approaches....  

 

As for framerates, I don't have a particularly sim-optimised machine (specs in my profile) and I can get everything from butter smooth to slideshow, depending on settings.  You WILL have to compromise on settings to keep your frame rate high, but with GA or even the Majestic Q400 (one of the lightest impact high quality airliners going), you should be able to find a balance that works, and it can't be any worse than default scenery  :ph34r:

Well, I'll toss my two cents in... ^_^

 

Being their first region, the ground textures are perhaps a bit less refined than some of their latest, but still very good, and at least on par with PNW, in my opinion. Unlike the other regions, it doesn't automatically install terrain mesh, but they do offer a mesh download in their freeware section just in case you don't have one.

 

The other important thing to note is that unlike their other regions, they didn't touch the small GA airfields either. However, they really didn't need to, as there is many, many, many freeware airports that are designed to work with the region over at OZx.  A bit of work to get them all installed, but many of them are gems.  In addition to those, Orbx themselves offer 7 freeware airports for AU as well.

 

Anyhow, I quite enjoy it as a region; a lot of places to fly, some diverse scenery, and a lot of value for very little money.  I think it gets overshadowed these days by all of the newer releases, but I've always felt it's well worth it.

 

As far as performance goes, I've never had an issue keeping my frames locked at 30 over the basic region.  I do have a few of the payware offerings for the region though, and as is typical for older Orbx releases, they can be a bit harder on performance.

 

Edit:  I forgot about Ant's freeware offerings, but looks like it got covered by the previous poster!

 

 

 

 

Thanks both! You'd say that the performance on heavy areas (canberra, sydney? is similar than the newer regions (like San Francisco, Seattle)? Maybe the 'newest' technologies will make flying over these areas "smoother"

Thanks both! You'd say that the performance on heavy areas (canberra, sydney? is similar than the newer regions (like San Francisco, Seattle)? Maybe the 'newest' technologies will make flying over these areas "smoother"

 

Whilst not currently in a position to directly compare, not having San Fran or Seattle, I would expect your autogen settings to have way more impact than the technology differences.  In terms of FPS for similar areas at the same settings, I've not noticed a big difference.

I've been all over Orbx Australia in the Q400.  My hardware specs are nowhere near bleeding edge (not even as good as what you have) and I've not had any frame rate issues even in the more densely populated areas.

 

I highly recommend it and think it still stands up to any other Orbx region available.

I did hear they are working on their older AU airports to refine their performance, YBBN and YSCB are quite heavy on frames.

 

I find their PNW region is a personal favourite, amazing detail, you can fly VFR and follow roads, rivers and valleys from a real world VFR chart, and the collection of airports is quite extensive.

YBBN and YSCB are quite heavy on frames.

I have both airports, YBBN smashes my system, even with the detail turned down. No problems with YSCB, it is a nice airport to fly into... Of course I may be biased as it is my home town.

 

The great thing about AU is it is huge. Flying in the desolate outback is fun, coastlines are fun, so you get a whole lot of terrain for your dollar, especially if you are flying the Q400.

 

B.

I have also had horrible performance with YBBN. Very disappointing as I love the other Orbx sceneries I have.

Ian

YBBN and YMML both are hard airports on VAS and FPS. It took me 2 nights of work modifying those two airports to lower the VAS and gain descent performance. Now I can get a solid 25 to 30 FPS at them with descent VAS usage but it was a shame that I had to do all the modification myself after spending the money on them.

 

It's been years, but if I remember correctly,YBBN used up so much memory that if I tried to fly a circuit around the airport in the PMDG J41, I would almost get an OOM and the textures were very slow to load.

I've had Orbx since it's initial release through to it's current SP4 version, it is an exceptional release, and it conjunction with OZx which covers a lot of the smaller airports around Australia (available from aussiex.org and is freeware) add to enjoyable flying  I've flown around Australia in GA fixed and rotary wing aircraft over the last 30 years and Orbx is very accurate to the real world. I had problems with ORBX YBBN, YMML and YSCB until I upgraded to an i7-4790K because of it's resource hungry libraries, this fixed the problems encountered. I use it in FSX, FSX-SE and P3D2.5 with now performance issues.

 

In short,  go for it! you won't be disappointed.

Thanks guys! Last night i considered the NRM+CRM combo, as there is not huge metropolitan areas (FPS might not suffer) thoughts?

Another benefit to the AU pack is the really excellent AI aircraft freeware package. For Oz it includes both GA and Commercial aircraft. Go to the freeware page on the Orbx site and download. There is a pack for PNW as well, and it really adds a lot to busy areas like KSEA and KPDX.

Thanks guys! Last night i considered the NRM+CRM combo, as there is not huge metropolitan areas (FPS might not suffer) thoughts?

 

Well, I'm partial to NRM, since I live within it.  However, in all honesty it's probably one of the least desirable regions compared to their other efforts.  Lots of trees. :rolleyes:  There's a lot of rugged country included as well, but nothing really stands out.  There's a few areas which can be challenging performance wise as well; add CEF4 and almost any upgraded CYYC, turn on a bit of AI, and watch the frames dip... Another potential drawback is the lack of payware airports for the region; there's very little out there.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the region a lot, but that's only because I can fly to places I've been many times.

 

If your thought is to bypass AU because of performance concerns, I wouldn't worry.  AU is such a big region, with vast unpopulated areas in-between those brilliant freeware gems, that you'll easily be able to find somewhere to fly that won't be a concern in regards to frame-rates.  Truth be told, almost every single region has it's performance 'heavy' areas, especially if you turn up the sliders.