I've had a few advert emails this morning from the ORBX forum regarding their Germany region. The shots are just incredible, e.g.

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/120046-germany-north-around-edlt/

 

I wish someone would put this amount of work into the X-Plane scenery for Europe (Even my W2XP with photoscenery fails in comparison). So many things tempting me back into P3D (Especially the recent release of Narvik) :-). 

 

 

If I had thousands of dollars to spend on scenery etc for P3D and I was assured I will no longer run into memory (VAS) issues no matter how detailed the aircraft were I would move back to P3D. Until then I won't touch it. Too many times I have had flights crash half way through due to OOM's. I will not let this frustrate my Flight Sim gaming experience again. I am quite happy now with the z18 Photo scenery I have now in X-Plane and have had countless flights with no memory issues

 

Having said that it does look gorgeous though ;-)

I agree FTX Germany looks really stunning. They must have invested a huge amount of work towards it knowing that German simmers are even harder to satisfy than some others  :smile: (I foresee they still won't be satified.)

 

I don't think W2XP is bad overall. However, where FTX Germany seems to really shine -  and this does matter - are the POIs, and in this respect XP Germany - despite some local projects like the Germany VFR sceneries - still falls short. 

 

 

Glenn, I can only speak for myself, but I NEVER had an OOM with P3D3 during the last year (or even longer). Granted, I only fly GA, however, I use really fat sceneries,all ORBX Regions, Vector, FSDT, FB, FT airports and the like.

 

Kind regards, Michael

Beautifull shots indeed Tony ...

 

We keep bouncing between platforms :-)

 

Zulfi - our India Mesh expert, has also created FSX mesh for a region of India with success.

 

I am waiting for the release of FSLabs A320 for P3D to decide if I'll invest on the Professional license. Meanwhile using the latest version of Peter's A320 in XP10 :-)

These ORBX stuff does look great, wonder when they will think of Asia. Well most of the sims have Asia missing from 3rd parties.

 

 So I embarked on a journey to make India an India in a sim. I have made the FSX / FS9 mesh LOD11 with forests using Sbuilder and openstreetmap. need to do the coastline as they are way off .

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

I'm not, I rather have a fat wallet than a fat sim. I'm perfectly happy with what XP offers and it's only going to get better. Having said that,  pictures do look stunning and the guys at ORBX really do a beautiful job on scenery.

The shots from ORBX look great, no question about that. I fly both P3D and XP and one thing that always stands out are trees - the FTX ones are excellent and varied, while the ones in XP are, err, not quite as good, to put it mildly. I think better trees in XP would do much towards better looking scenery.

 

But. :wink: While the rural regions look great in P3D, the landclass based urban areas are far less satisfying IMO. It works reasonably well for North American areas, where most cities are arranged in blocks, but for european areas with it's twisting and turning roads and rows of buildings, they all look like random cut-outs somehow grouped together. The result is "an artist's impression of" but usually does not resemble the real thing.

With W2XP it's possible to see the actual buildings, or at least something resembling them. This is a massive help for VFR navigation! Also, the 3D roads, bridges, streetlights and so on are amazing during a final approach. Car traffic is a lot better in XP compared to FSX/P3D as well.

 

Also, don't forget that the screenshots on the FTX website are always hand-picked examples of particularly nice places (obviously, they're advertising something). But even in some of the best FTX regions such as New Zealand or Alaska there are places that get less attention and don't look half as good.

 

In the end I'm hugely grateful to the developers of W2XP, Ortho4XP and other scenery tools for their work. While the results are not always up to FTX level of quality, they are highly competitive IMO and available for all users for free.

 

 

(By the way: I wish the weather engine would get more attention in XP. Active Sky 16 is incredible and the primary reason for me to go back to P3D. Let's hope XP11 will improve in this area!)

I agree, and this is why I'm constantly switching back to P3D because of the same reason. Add-ons for P3D is so much better. I keep trying to convince myself that X-Plane will be my only sim of choice, but it's hard to not come back to P3D. Even if I end up with OOMs. It's just that much better looking to me. The only thing I really like about X-Plane mainly is the night lighting and the 64bit foot print. But I'll hand it to P3D for everything else. 

 

There's something about X-Plane that makes it feel dull and lifeless. It's the overall look and feel of the sim. The colors, the "style". I know it can be changed and what not. I own Maxx-XP and SkyMaxx Pro, and multiple 3rd party add-ons to make it enjoyable, but it simply isn't doing it for me. Since I like to fly tubeliners a majority of the time, there's nothing on X-Plane that I seem to enjoy. I've tried FF 777, 767, 757, A350 XWB, JarDesign A320, A330. Each one seems to be lacking something and I can never get the complete package that I get with add-ons like PMDG and Aerosoft.

 

I have both sim installed, but I find myself constantly coming back to P3D. 

What good is a scenery such as the one's ORBX makes when they just get demolished by constant blurries?

I don't have problems with blurries. Mine are sharp.

ORBX has always made good scenery, but the performance hit is always a factor and the costs for small regions adds up fast.

I had nearly all ORBX regions except Australia and many airports. While they are good and add much depth to the sim (especially when flying low & slow), it's still FSX/P3D. X-Plane is so much better for what I like to do in a flight sim, that neither Orbx nor PMDG, Flightsimlabs, RealAir, LevelD etc. could ever pull me back to FSX/P3D.

 

If and when Lockhheed Martin or Dovetail (or somebody else) release something totally new without trying to keep backwards compatibility, I might change my mind. But until then  we will surely use  X-Plane 11 and see how it develops.

I've had a few advert emails this morning from the ORBX forum regarding their Germany region. The shots are just incredible, e.g.

As long as you don´t know the area, yes. Then they get a pretty good general impression. If you know the area the normal reaction is Nope. It doesn´t fit.

I've had a few advert emails this morning from the ORBX forum regarding their Germany region. The shots are just incredible, e.g.

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/120046-germany-north-around-edlt/

 

I wish someone would put this amount of work into the X-Plane scenery for Europe (Even my W2XP with photoscenery fails in comparison). So many things tempting me back into P3D (Especially the recent release of Narvik) :-). 

 

I was lured back into PD3 when seeing the screenshots of ORBX Socal, especially since I live in CA. The screenshots were a lot nicer then the experience. I hated how the terrain textures would load as you fly. The high-resolution textures eventually appear after some delay but not untill you were practically flying over them. Even then it was nothing amazing. I would have to slide the slider all the way to the right to get the same level of visual eye candy that I get in XPX, but that would kill my performance. Then you need to purchase ADD-ON aircraft, clouds, airports, ORBX FTX BASE, FTX Vector, FTX Open LC, to make it look descent. That gets a little expensive ! All those ADD-ONs would exasperate the texture loading and OOM errors. + all the tweaking to get everything to work together. No thanks ! And the fealing of flying on rails. 

 

Aerofly 2 is a better alternative with a lot of potential !