Basic XP11 Scenery Question

[JNS 106]

Hi.  I just purchased XP11 along with an SSD for it to try as an alternative to P3D which I have been using.  I'm wondering if there are any ready-to-go large-area scenery options similar to ORBX or Ultimate Terrain available for XP11.  It seems that mostly what I see people using is Ortho4XP which seems pretty much like a do-it-yourself option which I don't have the time or inclination to do.  This has somewhat disillusioned me and don't know now whether I will even try XP.  I probably should have researched this a little more first, but I guess I just assumed there would be something and hopefully, maybe there is.

Thanks

Jeff Smith

[Raven9000 272]

I'm confused as to whether this post makes me want to laugh, or cry...

[anden145 2,273]

1 hour ago, JNS said:

which seems pretty much like a do-it-yourself option

You've just summed up most sceneries and addons in X-Plane.

The whole X-Plane community is mostly do-it-yourself. It's rewarding when you got time and energy for it. You'll get a lot of bang-for-your-buck, so to speak. It takes a little time, to research what to do, how to install it etc...

Like they say - "Linux is only free, if your time has no value.". The same can be said about (most) X-Plane sceneries. There's a extremely friendly and helpful community there to help you out and answer any questions you might have. 

As I said, it can be (and is) really rewarding and X-Plane can look extreme gorgeous when combining scenery, shaders and weather addons... but you have to put in the time yourself... 

[JNS 106]

Anders, thanks for the reply.  Yes, I've seen some really nice stuff in pictures of X-Plane 11, probably as good or better than anything else out there.  I'll probably still give it a try to see how the basic sim feels, etc. and then go from there regarding scenery decisions.

And Carlos, your post confuses me, too.  Maybe a little more explanation, please.  :)

Thanks.

Jeff

[tonywob 4,768]

On 7/23/2017 at 4:40 AM, JNS said:

It seems that mostly what I see people using is Ortho4XP which seems pretty much like a do-it-yourself option which I don't have the time or inclination to do

Well, as others have said, there is not much in the way of payware for large regions in X-Plane, especially that there is nothing like ORBX Global or their regions because the scenery system is completely different, and in fact an ORBX region wouldn't work in X-Plane because it doesn't use landclass tiles and their workflow doesn't translate well into X-Plane.

As Anders has said, X-Plane is very much a DIY project, but with lots of help along the way from enthusiastic users. If you put some effort into your base sim, you will be rewarded, and it won't cost you any more money, just some patience.

I'm personally not a big fan of orthos that don't have any autogen, so I don't generate everywhere I want to fly unless I can make autogen for it. You can either layer the default autogen on-top of orthos or use something like Simheaven's ready scenery packages which uses W2XP to generate more accurate autogen. I have also uploaded a few scenery packages and airports (See my signature) that you can use in some regions with matching orthos.

Regarding making orthos, once you've learned how to use Ortho4XP (Which is basically clicking on a map and choosing some areas), it's actually really easy to generate anywhere you want, and takes probably 4 mouse clicks. Ortho4XP doesn't generate small areas, but rather large 1x1 degree tiles in one go, so you click on area you want to fly in on the map (or find the coordinates elsewhere), click generate, walk away and come back in 20mins or so, and you have ready-made scenery to fly in. It's actually probably easier and faster than going to an online store and purchasing it (and people wonder why nobody bothers to make payware orthos for X-Plane)

Many others (Mitch/Sesquashtoo is the local ortho master and hopefully he'll chime in) use the batch mode in Ortho4XP to generate entire countries in one go (The limit is disk space of course). It's as easy as marking out the country or state on a map, clicking generate and leave it going overnight (you can also resume later on).

 

 

 

 

[JNS 106]

Thanks, Tony.  Very informative.  I've decided to give it a go with the Ortho4XP.  Having read up on it myself and reading these replies I do think it is probably much easier than I first suspected.  Also, I do like the idea of being able to pick essentially anywhere and grabbing some scenery.  I'm a first-time XP user and starting with 11.   So I'll see what happens.  XP does seem to have plenty of things going for it.

Thanks again.

Jeff