ORBX woes - is it just me?

[rooitou 119]

3 hours ago, JimmiG said:

However to be fair it's their own official forum, running on their own servers and moderated by their own staff. So it's as much part of their store front as it is a forum for discussing their products.

Perhaps if you posted asking for help instead of "expressing your displeasure", they'd be more willing to help

JimmiG, I get that it is their forum and they have the right to moderate it. And I would avoid that forum if that was at all possible. But it isn't. There is NO other way to communicate with ORBX, they have shut themselves behind that foul barrier. If I have a problem with an Aerosoft product, I raise a ticket and speak my mind. Someone from Aerosoft replies very quickly and often very politely. They even send a follow-up e-mail asking you to rate the person who helped you, for crying out loud! There is no need to go screaming and shouting on some public forum, hoping that someone may or may not hear your plea.

I have "asked for help" on the ORBX forums more than once and some of those polite questions remain unanswered to this day! The others get answered with comments like: "if you come to this forum more often, you would know what's going on", or "I'm tired of saying this again". For Pete's sake, we don't all live on the forums and only go there once in a blue moon, looking for help, not to be cyber-bullied.

You can also rate Aerosoft products on any webstore and speak your mind. ORBX used to have that when they were on the FlightSimStore. Now they have no rating system, there is no ticket system, there is no e-mail system. There is zero transparency and zero chance of talking to the company directly. ORBX may as well be a cult, sitting behind a barbed wire wall somewhere in the Australian desert and only those who chant the mantra and praise the leader are allowed in.

[Lenny777 299]

Absolutely despise the fact they don't have Paypal.  I bought a couple of their airports and have had trouble with them (ENHF particularly as it still hasn't been ported over to P4).Thinking of uninstalling the whole ORBX stuff. I've simply added vector to P4 because waiting for their update on a centrally important product for P4 is ridiculous.  UTX would be the other option.

[Zuendholz 50]

I think exactly like you @rooitou . You are not alone with your opinion. Not praising their products, or say something critical results in a ban or they simply delete your topic..

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

20 minutes ago, Lenny777 said:

.....  I bought a couple of their airports and have had trouble with them (ENHF particularly as it still hasn't been ported over to P4).Thinking of uninstalling the whole ORBX stuff. I've simply added vector to P4 because waiting for their update on a centrally important product for P4 is ridiculous.  UTX would be the other option.

Sorry, but moving scenery products to V4 before they have been released for V4 is simply asking for trouble.. and if you do, it seems a bit silly to come here and complain about it..

[Lenny777 299]

42 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Sorry, but moving scenery products to V4 before they have been released for V4 is simply asking for trouble.. and if you do, it seems a bit silly to come here and complain about it..

It's not silly it's desperation! No really. I've had no trouble with vector and so I'm not complaining about that. I've had no "trouble" regarding it I have had trouble with the above noted airport. And my further complaint has to do with their payment system. And why not complain here? This kind of "discussion" is shut down over there.

[jmig 100]

1 hour ago, Lenny777 said:

It's not silly it's desperation! No really. I've had no trouble with vector and so I'm not complaining about that. I've had no "trouble" regarding it I have had trouble with the above noted airport. And my further complaint has to do with their payment system. And why not complain here? This kind of "discussion" is shut down over there.

Orbx airports often have moving people. That is one of the problem sources with moving airports over to V4. They have stated repeatedly on their forums and that information has been disseminated to forums, such as this one. Until they can work out the issues with people mover and other objects, the airports will not work in V4. 

To try and use the airports, then complain is refusing to accept responsibility for one's own actions. Bert used the term "silly". A different term starting with the same first letter comes to my mind. 

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

I absolutely despise the way Orbx refused my payment of £30s worth of postage stamps as well! The swines!

I ended up having to pay with my debit card. I mean, what kind of company are they?

[rooitou 119]

2 minutes ago, Ron Attwood said:

I absolutely despise the way Orbx refused my payment of £30s worth of postage stamps as well! The swines!

Ron I have no idea what you're talking about, but it is hilarious!

[MartinRex007 390]

Because of where I live I have limited internet download speed and monthly quota so moving over to the new system and having to download all my Orbx products again to transfer license just wasn't possible, so I have also stopped buying any Orbx products since the new system, but only because of my internet limitation. I wished they still offered something like in the past for folks like me, but I suspect for the majority of folks it works fine.

Cheers

Martin

[Ted Striker 338]

16 hours ago, MartinRex007 said:

moving over to the new system and having to download all my Orbx products again to transfer license just wasn't possible

Martin, if you are using FSX or P3Dv3 and have your downloaded FSS installers and the key codes you can still reinstall all your ORBX products with those installers without having to re-download everything, even if you have already transferred your license. I just did this 6 months ago.

Ted

[MartinRex007 390]

Hi Ted, Yes I have copies of all my original purchases from FSS when I first bought them. My understanding is if I go with FTX Central 3 it will try and re-download them all again from FSS in order to get the license transferred. I suspect like you said I could just not worry about those because I do have the installers and just go with any new purchase through FTC Central? Might try that?

Thanks - Martin

[Ted Striker 338]

Martin, I installed global, vector, NA Landclass and all the USA regions into P3Dv2.5 using my FSS installers. After that I migrated everything to FTX Central 3 and then used FTX v3 to update the products that it said needed updating. It only updated them and did not try to download the entire products again. I am now fully up to date with all my ORBX products with FTX Central 3. I am still able to install ORBX airports I have with my FSS installers and FTX Central 3 will update them as needed. I thought I might would have to run the migration tool again every time I installed another airport but so far this has not been the case. I would expect this method to work with P3Dv3 also if the FSS installer was made for P3Dv3. I would not expect it to work for P3Dv4 as none of the FSS installers were made for P3Dv4.

There is a stickied post on the ORBX forums that describes how you can copy your ORBX folder from P3Dv2.5 and paste it into P3Dv3 then run FTX central 3 for any updates needed in P3Dv3. This saves the time of having to download and/or reinstall all the files. I do not know if you can copy your files from P3Dv3 to v4 using this method. The airports and vector are not ready yet for P3Dv4. You will have to check the ORBX forums for information on this.

Any new purchases have to be downloaded and installed with FTX Central 3.

For those wondering why the heck are you still using P3Dv2.5? I have all my ORBX products and GA planes installed in P3Dv2.5 and use this for low and slow GA flying. I have GEX/UTX, all other airport scenery, and all my airliners installed in P3Dv3 which I use for airliner flying. I found that I have a lot less scenery problems when I keep ORBX separate from all my other addon scenery.  I have been too busy to install P3Dv4 yet but I expect that I will move ORBX to P3Dv3 and GEX/UTX to P3Dv4.

Hope this helps,

Ted

[MartinRex007 390]

Thanks for the info Ted, I'll look into it! I'm also still using P3D 2.4 for some of the same reasons you're still on 2.5. I have a lot of Orbx products which work great on 2.4 and I use a lot of addon scenery from RTMM and fly mostly GA. I suspect sometime next year I'll upgrade my system and install v4.

Thanks again

Martin

[rooitou 119]

1 hour ago, Ted Striker said:

Martin, I installed global, vector, NA Landclass and all the USA regions into P3Dv2.5 using my FSS installers. After that I migrated everything to FTX Central 3 and then used FTX v3 to update the products that it said needed updating. It only updated them and did not try to download the entire products again. I am now fully up to date with all my ORBX products with FTX Central 3. I am still able to install ORBX airports I have with my FSS installers and FTX Central 3 will update them as needed. I thought I might would have to run the migration tool again every time I installed another airport but so far this has not been the case. I would expect this method to work with P3Dv3 also if the FSS installer was made for P3Dv3. I would not expect it to work for P3Dv4 as none of the FSS installers were made for P3Dv4.

Ted, where were you when I was looking for help on the ORBX forums!? Man, this is the kind of information I needed instead of being overwhelmed by 1000 stickies, forum threads and patronising comments by forum administrators. It still sounds pretty convoluted but a heck of a lot better than downloading for days. I never tried this because I never knew this was an option and uninstalled ORBX about six months ago after yet another "update" put my computer out of action for hours to do a download. I've always assumed that I cannot use my flight-sim while FTX Central downloads, right?

You have exactly the philosophy that I have; one install with only ORBX and the other with all the other Aerosoft, SIM720 etc stuff, because some of them don't play well with ORBX. In my case I had FSX for other 3rd party add-ons and P3D3 for ORBX. But at the moment my P3D3 is just bare-bones after the ORBX rage-quit.

[Ted Striker 338]

3 hours ago, rooitou said:

Ted, where were you when I was looking for help on the ORBX forums!?

If you go back 6 months to a year on the ORBX forums you will find that I was asking questions about this and never got a straight answer. In fact what I read their said you could not do it. It was Jim Young here that told me he was able to do it so I tried it and it worked. Hopefully ORBX will not change it as it is very convenient for those with slow internet connections. I have a fast connection but at the time I was trying to reinstall all of my ORBX products they had just switched over to FTX Central 3 and a lot of people were having download issues with the new ORBX store. I understand that is corrected now so if you have a fast internet connection you can re-download their full products quickly now.

Ted