16 hours ago, GoranM said:

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.

Nah, you are missing what happened. Austin went on a facebook and mocked John about him reversing from his earlier comments (that you cite here) right before Orbx was going to release their "Project X." That happened in December. Then the plug was pulled almost immediately after that. The bad blood is real.

In some senses, the X-Plane community can be their own worst enemy. Did John deserve mockery? Probably (although when he made those comments, XP did legitimately have major shortcomings). He made some comments that didn't hold up over time. But running off a big developer like Orbx just to get some jabs in was just not smart.

And while it's easy to say XP doesn't need Orbx, we continue to sit here with almost no decent 3rd party airport offerings in that mold. Beli-X is nice and all but they've managed one release in the past 8 months.

its silly and immature for both parties.  judging by the behavior of many in our community, i'd say its not limited to them....

2 hours ago, bonchie said:

Nah, you are missing what happened. Austin went on a facebook and mocked John about him reversing from his earlier comments (that you cite here) right before Orbx was going to release their "Project X." That happened in December. Then the plug was pulled almost immediately after that. The bad blood is real.

In some senses, the X-Plane community can be their own worst enemy. Did John deserve mockery? Probably (although when he made those comments, XP did legitimately have major shortcomings). He made some comments that didn't hold up over time. But running off a big developer like Orbx just to get some jabs in was just not smart.

And while it's easy to say XP doesn't need Orbx, we continue to sit here with almost no decent 3rd party airport offerings in that mold. Beli-X is nice and all but they've managed one release in the past 8 months.

If Austin gave him a little needle about it, which I didn't see, but wouldn't be surprised if he did, then John had it coming.   As a "professional", John shouldn't have said anything negative about X-Plane. When asked about it, a better reply would have been "We won't be developing for X-Plane at this time, but who knows in the future".  Regardless what his feelings were about it.  

All that said, You just don't rubbish a man's life's work like that.  It made John look pretty silly.  Even at the time.  

As an end point...as I mentioned, I didn't see any comments from Austin mocking John.  But I DID see Austin post on the OrbX Facebook page that he will never turn away a developer.  Austin very rarely posts ANYTHING in public.  For John not to take advantage of a personal invitation like that...let's just say it appears John's pride is more important than his business decisions.  We all make mistakes.  But if John was humble enough to admit his mistake (saying X Plane had no future...pretty harsh statement to make about 20 years worth of a man's hard work) and apologize, he would have had a lot more admiration and respect from the X Plane community.  But it IS a shame

Orbx is garbage. I got so tired of their "offerings" FTX global can keep with ESP. Their local airports are nice but they're not the holy grail of scenery. Honestly don't care who caused what, I wouldn't have bought anything from orbx for x-plane. 

57 minutes ago, GoranM said:

If Austin gave him a little needle about it, which I didn't see, but wouldn't be surprised if he did, then John had it coming.   As a "professional", John shouldn't have said anything negative about X-Plane. When asked about it, a better reply would have been "We won't be developing for X-Plane at this time, but who knows in the future".  Regardless what his feelings were about it.  

All that said, You just don't rubbish a man's life's work like that.  It made John look pretty silly.  Even at the time.  

As an end point...as I mentioned, I didn't see any comments from Austin mocking John.  But I DID see Austin post on the OrbX Facebook page that he will never turn away a developer.  Austin very rarely posts ANYTHING in public.  For John not to take advantage of a personal invitation like that...let's just say it appears John's pride is more important than his business decisions.  We all make mistakes.  But if John was humble enough to admit his mistake (saying X Plane had no future...pretty harsh statement to make about 20 years worth of a man's hard work) and apologize, he would have had a lot more admiration and respect from the X Plane community.  But it IS a shame

When is that Citation going get done !!!

3 minutes ago, strider1 said:

When is that Citation going get done !!!

LOL!  Nice segue.  
Ok, without derailing the thread too much, let me get XP11 updates out first.  

I definitely don't think ortho photos are the be-all end-all but I just can't go all in on land class-based stuff unless the coloration in really unique areas of the world gets much more accurate.

I don't know how they do that but I just know I fly all over the Pacific Northwest, Idaho and Oregon and the coloration and the look of the landclass scenery is just never very accurate and it ruins it if you know anything about flying in those areas in person. 

 

 So until then I will be generating my own orthophotos so that at least at some amount of altitude things look exceptionally accurate.   I know Austin likes to talk about the "plausible world", but that really just doesn't work for me unless it's an area I don't personally know… Once you know all about an actual area from the air and how it should look, the "plausible world" very quickly looks terrible.

 

One final thought… If you are flying VFR, things being in the right spot and looking how they're supposed to look is absolutely essential to the experience.  It doesn't need to be plausible it needs to be accurate. 

1 hour ago, irrics said:

I definitely don't think ortho photos are the be-all end-all but I just can't go all in on land class-based stuff unless the coloration in really unique areas of the world gets much more accurate.

I don't know how they do that but I just know I fly all over the Pacific Northwest, Idaho and Oregon and the coloration and the look of the landclass scenery is just never very accurate and it ruins it if you know anything about flying in those areas in person. 

I live in that area -- Olympic Peninsula WA state, closest GA airport 0S9.

I do a lot of my sim flying out here, and up the BC coast to Alaska, with occasional diversions into Western Canada, depending on where FSEconomy assignments take me.

I know what you mean about the colors for landclass, but part of that is the Summer-only seasons. I'll trade that gladly for what the UHD terrain mesh does for mountain flying up in this area. I spend a LOT of time flying into little airports in mountain valleys up here because that's the kind of bush flying I like. The only thing I miss is Winter snow in the mountains, especially in upper BC and Alaska. But that hits everyone in X-Plane with Summer-only seasonal terrain, including the ortho users. Just different strokes, here.
 

Quote

One final thought… If you are flying VFR, things being in the right spot and looking how they're supposed to look is absolutely essential to the experience.  It doesn't need to be plausible it needs to be accurate

I agree, but we have the essential VFR navigational guides like roads and railways with either the landclass or ortho approach, as long as there is a constantly updated OSM-based autogen. I don't fly VFR based on what buildings are on the ground. It's based on geographic features like mountain passes, roads, and railways.

Or to be honest, flying a flight plan loaded in the GPS and then looking outside to make sure the ground matches the flight plan!

The sad thing is customers on the orbx forums get shut down with the post being deleted if its not in praise of orbx. I posted this question and it was deleted within an hour! I then posted it here. Not listening to customers concerns is never a good thing. Yes I know they can't accommodate everyone's thoughts and opinions and they don't have to agree or do anything but deleting a post just because they don't like the question? well.........That says a lot!

17 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I live in that area -- Olympic Peninsula WA state, closest GA airport 0S9.

I do a lot of my sim flying out here, and up the BC coast to Alaska, with occasional diversions into Western Canada, depending on where FSEconomy assignments take me.

I know what you mean about the colors for landclass, but part of that is the Summer-only seasons. I'll trade that gladly for what the UHD terrain mesh does for mountain flying up in this area. I spend a LOT of time flying into little airports in mountain valleys up here because that's the kind of bush flying I like. The only thing I miss is Winter snow in the mountains, especially in upper BC and Alaska. But that hits everyone in X-Plane with Summer-only seasonal terrain, including the ortho users. Just different strokes, here.
 

I

 

Come on over to Idaho

The landclass scenery doesn't even remotely resemble the out the window view. 

Summer especially (very brown). 

 

I agree that it's more tolerable over on the west side of the cascades in general. 

 

I just find find the entire concept of "plausible" frustrating. It's 2017. I want more accurate scenery. 

16 minutes ago, irrics said:

I just find find the entire concept of "plausible" frustrating. It's 2017. I want more accurate scenery. 

I understand that, including the appeal of high-res ortho scenery. Especially for anyone who flies over areas they know well in real life. The way I fly, orthos just don't work at low altitudes. And I fly in areas I've never been in real life, like New Zealand or New Guinea where there aren't decent orthos anyway, and I don't have real-life experience to compare it to. 

 But the beauty of X-Plane is that we can choose either one of these scenery methods. Best of both worlds, but you have to choose which "world" you want.  

2 hours ago, irrics said:

 

Come on over to Idaho

The landclass scenery doesn't even remotely resemble the out the window view. 

Summer especially (very brown). 

 

I agree that it's more tolerable over on the west side of the cascades in general. 

 

I just find find the entire concept of "plausible" frustrating. It's 2017. I want more accurate scenery. 

+1  I live in Whitehorse Yukon and its covered by Orbx Southern AK. I find Orbx Southern AK is just a basic interpretation. I've lived here 12 years so I notice the differences. But it is better then the default P3D.

I was taking a brake from P3D while they sorted out the V4 issues.  I was missing my Lionhart Kodiak Quest with GTN 750 (not trying to offend anyone, but the Thranda doesn't seem to compare) so I migrated all my Orbx license numbers from FSS and downloaded every thing again (for what felt the one millionth time).  

I fired up a flight from Bella Bella to Prince Rupert, and wow!  I couldn't believe how bad it looked compared to X-plane. Really was disappointed in the "popping up" of the mountains and how, well, fake it looked.  

Give me better ATC and a good bush plane ( with GTN 750, pretty please) and I will never go back to P3D!

2 hours ago, ckelly14 said:

I was taking a brake from P3D while they sorted out the V4 issues.  I was missing my Lionhart Kodiak Quest with GTN 750 (not trying to offend anyone, but the Thranda doesn't seem to compare) so I migrated all my Orbx license numbers from FSS and downloaded every thing again (for what felt the one millionth time).  

I fired up a flight from Bella Bella to Prince Rupert, and wow!  I couldn't believe how bad it looked compared to X-plane. Really was disappointed in the "popping up" of the mountains and how, well, fake it looked.  

Give me better ATC and a good bush plane ( with GTN 750, pretty please) and I will never go back to P3D!

There are some good bush planes in XP like the Soulmade Simulations DHC-2 Beaver. The Carenado C208b Caravan isn't bad (not perfectly matching the numbers but visually it's very good).

However the two I mentioned, and many others, are v10 models that haven't been updated for X-Plane 11 yet. Carenado planes will be full-price upgrades so it's best to wait for the v11 versions. I don't think the upgrade policy has been announced on that particular DHC-2 yet. 

STMA (Shade Tree Micro Aviation) has a fleet of payware bush planes and some of them have been released in XP11 versions. My personal view on these planes is that they're something of an acquired taste, depending on how you feel about the balance of eye candy to flight accuracy. They tend to have good flight models, but the 3D cockpit graphics often aren't up to current standards. 

Regarding the GPS, note that X-Plane has a good (if not 100% perfect) default model of the GNS 430 and 530, so that's what you'll usually find built into the panel of the smaller GA and bush planes that include a GPS. It also works as a pop-up. You can get a payware GTN 750 from Reality XP that works in XP11, but on most planes that will be a pop-up only, unless it's been integrated into the 3D cockpit panel (not sure which ones have this).

Laminar is working on a new default G1000 that should arrive soon. I've heard that planes from Carenado and Thranda (and others) that use that model will convert over to the Laminar version when it arrives. I think the G1000 will be fitted to the default Cirrus jet, so we'll get at least one free version to play with when it arrives.

Meanwhile, while we wait for v11 versions of some of these planes, do you like flying helicopters? X-Plane has some very good helicopters (and the best helicopter flight modeling of the civilian sims, in my opinion). My favorites are the payware X-Trident Bell 412 and the payware Dreamfoil Bell 407, both XP11 compatible (be sure to buy the v11 version from Dreamfoil). There is also a good freeware Bell 429.

Thanks for the info.