I wonder if Orbx will ever wake up!

[bonchie 2,305]

We may not need Orbx, but some developer needs to step up to the table and do a ground texture makeover if it's possible. 

I'm in the middle of batching 36 ortho tiles, so I get it. They do look good in most situations (not all, but most). But the ability to fly in XP11 using default scenery but with vastly upgraded and more varied ground textures would instantly be a buy for me. 

[anden145 2,285]

1 hour ago, sd_flyer said:

P3D is a sect I used to be one of it's members  

How did you escape? 

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

Figure, need small airfield in Xplane plenty of tools at my disposal like blender to create or bake textures if needed. Then sketchup whip up something quickly, and Xplane has creators make everything from hangers to bbq to patio furniture to make your airfield unquie.  Really don't notice orbx when you can do some of work yourself or plenty of add on authors made cover the need quickly. 

[sd_flyer 6,042]

1 hour ago, Anders Bermann said:

How did you escape? 

By murdering P3D on my SSD  There is no other way...

[Paraffin 2,197]

1 hour ago, bonchie said:

We may not need Orbx, but some developer needs to step up to the table and do a ground texture makeover if it's possible. . 

I'd buy that. We could use more tree varieties too. 

It would be a risk as payware though, without knowing what Laminar has planned for seasonal changes, and when that will be rolled out. We're still in the dark about that, with only Austin's hints about what he'd like to do, without even knowing if it's possible.  If they go for the procedural approach instead of texture overlay like Austin has been talking about, it will impact everything in the scenery, especially landclass and trees.

Imagine spending a year or so on a new project to improve the ground textures and trees, and then finding out it doesn't work when the official version of XP seasons arrive. I'm kinda surprised we don't already have a good payware package for texture overlay-based seasons, but maybe this is the reason. Everyone's waiting to see what Laminar does? It could be a while...

[Parping Couplet 117]

In some ways I like it that there have tended to be separate developer specializations for XP11 and P3D. This serves to offer something unique to each sim, rather than an overall convergence that might ultimately lead to a spot the difference contest!

I've yet to make the plunge into XP11, but it will happen and I rather hope for a completely different experience from what I'm used to in P3D.

 

 

[JDWalley 354]

23 hours ago, YukonPete said:

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!

Orbx DID wake up.  They announced last year that they would be producing scenery for XP.  Then, apparently, Austin Meyer made some comments that rubbed John Vennema the wrong way, and they dropped any plans to support it.

[toprob 105]

6 hours ago, Parping Couplet said:

In some ways I like it that there have tended to be separate developer specializations for XP11 and P3D. This serves to offer something unique to each sim, rather than an overall convergence that might ultimately lead to a spot the difference contest!

Well, that's awkward:) I've just popped a screenshot on my site illustrating multi-platform support, with a blend of X-plane and Prepar3d. So my plan is to offer the same scenery no matter the platform... with a nod to point of difference, of course!

[YukonPete 586]

2 hours ago, JDWalley said:

Orbx DID wake up.  They announced last year that they would be producing scenery for XP.  Then, apparently, Austin Meyer made some comments that rubbed John Vennema the wrong way, and they dropped any plans to support it.

Sounds more like a child now!

[scotchegg 4,186]

Having spent some time with FSW recently it reminded me of how good some of the texture and autogen work from Orbx is, and how generic (and often poor) XP's is. but then you have to put up with the old bugbears of small LOD and blurries (albeit much better than FSX).

 

For me it's a real downer that Orbx pulled out of XP, doubly so if it's because of some petty ribbing from Austin.

[toprob 105]

2 hours ago, JDWalley said:

Orbx DID wake up.  They announced last year that they would be producing scenery for XP.  Then, apparently, Austin Meyer made some comments that rubbed John Vennema the wrong way, and they dropped any plans to support it.

I don't believe it's that simple, I'm never been a big fan of Orbx, but I do believe that they are an honest, sustainable business. This was more to do with being able to get in on the 'ground floor' of the new sims. This was welcomed by Aerofly, and also Dovetails Games, but I can't see that this would be possible with X-plane. John Venema has stated that to take Orbx to the next level, they need to make some commercial agreements. So they go from the retail market to supplying simulator developers with the base scenery. plus ongoing development. Makes a lot more sense than scrabbling for more retail customers.

Yes, both John and Austin are strong characters, that's what makes their businesses successful. Truth is that Orbx needs X-plane more than X-plane needs Orbx.

[GoranM 3,764]

6 hours ago, JDWalley said:

Orbx DID wake up.  They announced last year that they would be producing scenery for XP.  Then, apparently, Austin Meyer made some comments that rubbed John Vennema the wrong way, and they dropped any plans to support it.

Austin said, and I quote, "We'll welcome any developer to X-Plane, regardless what was said in the past."
It actually wasn't Austin that rubbed John the wrong way.  It was the community, repeating back to John, what John said 3 years ago.  "We'll never develop for X-Plane.  X-Plane has no future.  It performs badly on today's hardware."
The community didn't let him forget about that, and they basically said "NOW he wants to come to X-Plane when it's popularity is increasing."
That was all fact.  

Whether all that was the reason John abandoned X Plane for Aerofly...only John knows that. Austin doesn't rub anyone the wrong way.  You would be hard pressed to find a more helpful, accommodating, genuine person.

[tonywob 4,769]

6 hours ago, toprob said:

Well, that's awkward:) I've just popped a screenshot on my site illustrating multi-platform support, with a blend of X-plane and Prepar3d. So my plan is to offer the same scenery no matter the platform... with a nod to point of difference, of course!

Sadly, I've seen many developers just use the utility FS2XPlane, tidy it up a bit and then sell it as a conversion. Such conversions are often poor quality and perform and look worse than the original. To natively support X-Plane and to get my vote as a proper conversion it should:

• Have the original 3D models remapped, optimised and exported out again properly for X-Plane. Unlike in FSX where 3D models can have multiple texture sheets, this isn't possible in X-Plane. The utility FS2XPlane simply breaks up each model per texture sheet. 
• Add in HDR lighting and maybe even PBR. This may involve removing out baked in lighting, adding normal/spec maps, etc..
• Fix terrain issues that may arise. X-Plane has a different mesh system, which can lead to issues such as floating buildings, especially when the entire airport is generally one 3D scene in the editor that was designed for a specific mesh.

I believe UK2000 did a correct conversion for their first UK X-Plane airport and I've seen others such as Icarus/LatinWings KSAN which are superb. I've very glad to see this approach and I'm sure your airport/city conversions will be just as good and I look forward to trying them and hopefully it will get some renewed interest in New Zealand which needs some love in X-Plane (A lack of interest from users and other devs was one of the reasons I abandoned my ortho/matching 3D models scenery for the area)

-----

Lots of people mention regions and ground textures from ORBX in X-Plane. X-Plane has a completely different scenery system than that of ESP which uses tiled textures with annotated objects. Even if someone were to modify the ground textures in X-Plane, it would look no different that slapping down ugly looking orthos with badly matched autogen. I know of many who have tried to do this and failed because it looks ugly and the issue is that the overlaying 3D objects and roads don't match the textures at all. A good place to start in X-Plane would be for regionalised autogen, but I think the future of scenery lies with orthos and exactly matching autogen (Just as with what ipacs are doing as well). Once you've flown over orthos with realistic autogen, it's hard to go back to generic looking scenery again.

 

 

[wolke85 150]

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

Lots of people mention regions and ground textures from ORBX in X-Plane. X-Plane has a completely different scenery system than that of ESP which uses tiled textures with annotated objects. Even if someone were to modify the ground textures in X-Plane, it would look no different that slapping down ugly looking orthos with badly matched autogen. I know of many who have tried to do this and failed because it looks ugly and the issue is that the overlaying 3D objects and roads don't match the textures at all. A good place to start in X-Plane would be for regionalised autogen, but I think the future of scenery lies with orthos and exactly matching autogen (Just as with what ipacs are doing as well). Once you've flown over orthos with realistic autogen, it's hard to go back to generic looking scenery again.

No matter how exactly ground textures and autogen will be looking/appearing in XPlane in the future - it would just be a great move, i think, to have a clear pattern, that will - at least most likely - be standard in XPlane over the next years ahead when it comes down to scenery design. I think that this would really make things easier and clearer for everyone. Because allthough i love it, i honestly have to admit, that i am not that sure if a commercially sold flightsim should be mainly depending on freely available orthos to generate convincing scenery within itself. Let's please remember that freely distributed high quality orthos are not available for all areas worldwide. Therefore some kind of solid scenery-design-framework, that does not mainly/solely rely on orthos and yet still allows developers and users alike to create even larger high quality sceneries for XPlane (such as the ORBX regional sceneries for instance or the releases of the UTX series for FSX/P3D), would be really great to have. The AlpilotX-meshes for instance are a good example of what can be achieved within XPlane on a larger scale scenerywise, even without using orthos. So why not trying to go a little further here and make it possible to generate convincing generic textures and autogen as well? And as Aerofly FS was mentioned: This is a great example of what i am trying to say: Aerofly looks super fantastic at those areas where good photoreal ground layers are available, but falls short as soon as these areas are left behind. Maybe i am forgetting something here, but after all the years of flightsimming something tells me that - at least for the next years ahead - the option to design convincing(!) generic sceneries could/would still be very help- and useful for developers and users alike, especially in XPlane, which has - overall at leat - proofen, to be a  flexible and yet reliable flightsim-platform

[Paraffin 2,197]

8 hours ago, wolke85 said:

No matter how exactly ground textures and autogen will be looking/appearing in XPlane in the future - it would just be a great move, i think, to have a clear pattern, that will - at least most likely - be standard in XPlane over the next years ahead when it comes down to scenery design. I think that this would really make things easier and clearer for everyone. Because allthough i love it, i honestly have to admit, that i am not that sure if a commercially sold flightsim should be mainly depending on freely available orthos to generate convincing scenery within itself.

That's my view as well. Especially since I fly in so many areas where there is no ortho coverage, and I'm 100% allergic to seeing squashed buildings and poor shadows/lighting effects with orthos. An individual airport can be hand-tweaked to avoid that, but it's just too obvious elsewhere in the areas I fly, and the low altitudes I'm often flying.

As I've said before, I think there is a wild card on the horizon with whatever Laminar is planning for seasonal changes in the scenery. Austin has deprecated orthos in the past, and he doesn't like the texture overlay approach for Winter scenery. He clearly aims for XP's base scenery to steer clear of that approach. We may not see seasonal changes until XP12 at this rate, but I would be surprised if whatever he's planning for seasonal changes is compatible with ortho-based terrain. From what we've heard so far, it's going to be tailored for landclass + OSM autogen, like the current default scenery. 

That said, I know the ortho approach is very popular, especially with those coming over the fence from FSX/P3D. And the sim does support that with free source material, so people will continue to use it. We're going to be seeing lots of conversation about this, regardless of what anyone (like me) thinks of alternative approaches. I just hope we continue to see improvements in autogen building varieties, tree varieties, etc., that can work with both scenery approaches.