At certain time of the year Southern California can be quite green, especially after the first rains of spring.  I am certainly looking forward to flying in some of the areas not covered well in other sceneries.

All of Vegas will be included. Hoover Dam as well. They have the entire area map on their site. Can't wait!

 

 

Don

The shots over at the ORBX forums look spot on.  Finally, Las Vegas and Los Angeles done right! 

 

Really looking forward to this release.

Color correction is not finished yet.  

 

Yes CA does have 4 seasons and some are VERY green, but current drought conditions have the state looking more like a desert with the exception of golf courses and the very wealthy who seem unconcerned about our water problem which is a little odd (can't buy what isn't there so eventually that waste philosophy will come to an end).

 

On the plus side, for photoreal products for CA you can probably get away with a single season.

 

With that said, SoCal does indeed look amazing ... the use of road/vector really brings the region in close alignment with PR.  Many of the elements appear to be PR of the area but of course lots and lots and lots of buildings.  Beach areas (coastline) is extremely well done and water blending is very impressive.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Color correction is not finished yet.

 

Yes CA does have 4 seasons and some are VERY green, but current drought conditions have the state looking more like a desert with the exception of golf courses and the very wealthy who seem unconcerned about our water problem which is a little odd (can't buy what isn't there so eventually that waste philosophy will come to an end).

 

On the plus side, for photoreal products for CA you can probably get away with a single season.

 

With that said, SoCal does indeed look amazing ... the use of road/vector really brings the region in close alignment with PR. Many of the elements appear to be PR of the area but of course lots and lots and lots of buildings. Beach areas (coastline) is extremely well done and water blending is very impressive.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Not sure if you can comment on this but I notice a lot of those frame killing marinas in the preview shots. Have they reworked those since Northern California?

I'll post video late this week ... just need to make sure I get permission.  

 

Cheers, Rob.

You answered your own question, you'll use one or the other.

 

If your flying airliners in the area you might want to use your MSE for better performance, but use the ORBX package if your flying low and slow where performance isn't such an issue. Either way its up to you or which ever you prefer. Personally I don't buy their regions anymore but buy some of their Global airports since I mainly fly airliners and the regions are not much of a value for me and just drag performance down.

Which airports are you using that don't require a region?

 

Love their airports but not really interested in the regions.

 

Thanks,

Mark

Which airports are you using that don't require a region?

 

Love their airports but not really interested in the regions.

 

Thanks,

Mark

AFAIK, Global airports works just fine w/o FTX Global installed. 

I thought they did but in fact they don't They work in a sense that at the airport you get everything (but you'll need at least one Orbx region to activate the trees). But my experience with EGE is that since I don't own FTXG, textures far away from EGE are blocky - I guess something about the land class between FTX and UTX.

 

I'm not sure why land class 100's of miles away from EGE would be affected but it is.

 

So to clarify yes the airports will work but you'll need at least one region to activate the scenery features (in essence you'll need FTX Central) like autogen trees. Also the big Orbx airports (RDD PSP EGE MRY) obviously won't blend well with default or non FTX scenery.

I have to admit that I was leaning towards not buying SoCal - which would make it the first North American region I would pass on.  Why?  Because I absolutely love the way my donationware Blue Sky treats the California desert regions - something landclass scenery fails at miserably.  Wetter mountains areas and some of the wetter valleys not so much, but if ever there was an area that screams for photo, it's the desert regions of CA and the SW in general.  But now I'm wavering, as it seems SoCal will offer much of the desert regions as photo.  The desert screen shots look most excellent so far.  So now I'm intrigued and optimistic.

 

At this point I wouldn't get too worked up over color balance as there are a number of variables in the examples that we're not privy to.  Remember that Orbx regions do feature 4 seasons, and we don't know what seasons these were "shot" in.  Further we don't know anything about the systems that were used or those systems' settings.  Most (perhaps all?) of the shots I've seen so far are done in P3D and there's some discussion on the Orbx forums about color shifting with HDR on in P3D.  And so on, and so on.

 

I'm also pretty sensitive to color issues and run a hardware calibrated display and find most areas in full-fat regions to be quite good.  NorCal, for example, generally matches my expectations and experiences in the area, especially in summer.

 

Scott

There is most definitely a difference in the color render between P3D HDR and FSX.

Got the ok to share a quickie video tour around some areas of SoCal and NV.  This is still Beta ... no road traffic yet.

 

 

I was using some very extreme graphics settings at 3840 x 2160: High Graphics Settings

 

Weather is ASN.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Very nice Rob, thanks for posting. What an ambitious project, kudos to Orbx.

 

Did you get a chance to fly over furnace creek out in Death Valley? Curious to know how that looks!

 

Cheers

Martin 

Hi Martin,

 

No, didn't check out furnace creek ... lots of locations I'll explore more, but it's still Beta with more adjustments to come.

 

Cheers, Rob.

Great video Rob.