I wonder if Orbx will ever wake up!

[YukonPete 580]

I really enjoy my ORBX products but when are They going to wake up and support XP? The good news is just about every other developer is moving to include XP11 but not Orbx. They choose a beta sim AFS2 that has no add-ons.  This dumbfounds me!

[bonchie 2,305]

Never. It's personal and no one can convince me otherwise.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

They know something...

[YukonPete 580]

4 minutes ago, Ron Attwood said:

They know something...

And the other developers moving to support XP11 don't? 

[Davidrebolton 42]

If only they would make an Orbx Global XP11 equivalent!!, for areas without Ortho

[bonchie 2,305]

5 minutes ago, Davidrebolton said:

If only they would make an Orbx Global XP11 equivalent!!, for areas without Ortho

The fact that no one has done this yet leads me to believe there's gotta be some underlying technical issues.

Any addon developer who produced such a texture replacement addon would instantly sell more copies than any other XP addon to date.

 

[DJSean 4]

1 minute ago, bonchie said:

The fact that no one has done this yet leads me to believe there's gotta be some underlying technical issues.

Any addon developer who produced such a texture replacement addon would instantly sell more copies than any other XP addon to date.

 

Yeah there has to be some underlining issue..

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

21 minutes ago, bonchie said:

Never. It's personal and no one can convince me otherwise.

That's only one factor. The main reason that ORBX is not presently interested in XP is that the XP community has produced so much freeware scenery that the market for ORBX products is somewhat limited. What does surprise me is that 3rd party developers who specialize in big airports haven't really embraced XP either. After using XP11 since the initial beta (and XP10 before that), other than MrX6's scenery (which are now payware), the cupboard for commercial quality big airports is still rather limited. I guess that's my NA bias showing, but I keep hoping that the airport offerings will broaden.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

But how do you really feel?

[YukonPete 580]

Those of us who actually use XP know how beautiful she is   And I really like P3Dv4.Its spectacular.  But I have no interest in a Beta sim ( AFS2 ) with no add-ons 

[Paraffin 2,197]

I believe Orbx  isn't making scenery for XP for two reasons, and neither of them have anything to do with personal animosity between company CEO's.

1) I think this is the main one. It's possible to copy-protect payware aircraft and utilities that operate with plugins in XP, because the plugins can include authorization checks.

Scenery in XP doesn't work that way, it's a completely open file system with no built-in DRM. As long as that's the case, it's going to be a tough sell for a company like Orbx that has a lot of product they want to sell in a DRM'd format. 

2) The fact that XP already looks darned good all over the world with Laminar's approach to landclass and OSM-based autogen, combined with the Gateway system for user-created airports and WED to create them. On top of that, it's easy for users to create their own ortho-based scenery as well.

What's left for Orbx? I think they could sell a few "jewel box" airports like those highly detailed small GA airfields. But we already have outfits like Beti-X already doing that (and I suppose, taking a risk on the copy-protection front).

If Austin decided to include a built-in DRM scheme for scenery, I'll bet Orbx would jump into scenery for XP in a hot second. Thankfully, we enjoy a more open system for scenery creation in this simulation.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

44 minutes ago, bonchie said:

... that the market for AFS2 addons is more lucrative than XP11.

I do agree with you on that point. ORBX's embracing AFS2 was done instead of XP11 and was selected solely to prop up a flight sim that is presently more of a VR photo simulator than a flight simulator. But if the VR market ever takes off (so to speak), ORBX will have a winner. But at the moment the online tech "gurus" are now starting to savage the present VR technology. Some recent inflammatory articles:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-why-and-when-vr-will-fail

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/84440.html

http://techspective.net/2017/05/26/prevent-vr-becoming-next-3d/

These are probably the same people that also said the iPad would be a complete flop.

But did ORBX snub XP-11 in favor of AFS2? I should remind them what Charlie Brown once said:

 

[strider1 575]

Beti-X is on the slow train, they have only made two airports in the last 2-4 years.

I think the main reason is # 2. I would love to see some of their regional scenery ! I am not sure how interested I would be in any of their airports since their is plenty of freeware airports !  I think Austins FU comment rubbed Orbx the wrong way.

[strider1 575]

3 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

I do agree with you on that point. ORBX's embracing AFS2 was done instead of XP11 and was selected solely to prop up a flight sim that is presently more of a VR photo simulator than a flight simulator. But if the VR market ever takes off (so to speak), ORBX will have a winner. But at the moment the online tech "gurus" are now starting to savage the present VR technology. Some recent inflammatory articles:

https://www.pcgamesn.com/how-why-and-when-vr-will-fail

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/84440.html

http://techspective.net/2017/05/26/prevent-vr-becoming-next-3d/

These are probably the same people that also said the iPad would be a complete flop.

But did ORBX snub XP-11 in favor of AFS2? I should remind them what Charlie Brown once said:

 

I have AFS2 and it's kind of cool but the flight dynamics suck and the orthos are low in res.  Now that we have orth4xp why bother ? I think the p3d crowed that hates XP would flock to it maybe. Speaking F-Simulators there another one in the works by the Infinity flight devs if I remember correctly. It's going to based on orthos too. 

[dal330200 216]

I'm kind of the opinion that there isn't much of a demand or need for ORBX to get involved with X-plane as there are many options available already.  What X-plane needs is good weather, good AI and seasonal textures, among other enhancements.  Maybe ORBX could put together a product that includes seasonal textures as a selling point, but I just don't see them finding a niche in X-Plane to dominate as they have in P3D and AFS2.  Of course, they may be able to do some airports...