Can Someone Please Summarize Relationship - Black Marble, Orbx, UTX

[1st fltsimguy 466]

I have P3D4. I have everything Orbx, Global, Vector, Regions, Airports some 90+, OpenLC and UTX.

I am intrigued about Black Marbles suite of products. I will not invest a penny for their products unless I understand the implications, basically answering my questions below.

Myself and most folks own combinations of Orbx Global, Vector, Regions, Airports, OpenLC and some like me use UTX (because we think its better than Vector).

I have tried to follow the Black Marble release thread and the Black Marble "is this how FTX Vector should be setup" tread by Chris Bell.

Right now I am totally and utterly confused as to:

1. What products for Black Marble to buy. Respecting #2 below?

2. What to do with Vector, OpenLC and UTX to ensure that during the daytime I have the wonderful setup I currently have and yet gain the benefits of Black Marble night lighting?

And I don't want to be turning this or that on or off when flying between day and night.

Personally, I think Black Marble should have acquired all the Orbx and UTX products and worked out all this stuff before releasing their products.

Can someone who knows about all these products summarize the situation.

[Skywolf 992]

I am with "1st fltsimguy" on this one.  I am super confused also by Black Marble products.  I went on the website, I see separate prices to add for base, vector, 3d bridges, and cars? and what is up with 1 year and 2 year price? super confusing.  Please can someone take lessons from Apple and tell me clearly on what each product is and what one needs.  And does this new product make Night scenery products obsolete? 

Would like to see Fltsimguys answers answered first as he has asked all the main points.

 

[SpiritFlyer 987]

No answers either but am intrigued, just following...

[Chris Bell 165]

i see you now

19 minutes ago, Chris Bell said:

indeed we are

its a tricky question you ask,
its bee explained on our forums here
https://forums.chrisbelldesigns.com/topic/207-black-marble

and on Black Marbles Homepage here
http://blackmarble.chrisbelldesigns.com/

to be blunt there is no relationship between our products!
we each do our own thing complying to SDK practice to allow interaction with one another,
if you're asking how do they interact; thats emerging information is constantly being updated on our forums,
you can keep track on whats happening and what people are reporting back,

there not much tweak to do other running our installers and applying settings,
there was a pesky issue with ftx excluding landclass and autogen object we recently posted the solution,

here is Mike's Dec with Black Marble Vector, FTX  vector, Global, and open LC,
all the questions you asked in answered in a video

 

[Chris Bell 165]

12 minutes ago, Chris Bell said:

Base will bring our road veins as far as the eye can see, but its not the same without Vector!
sure you could get by; without vector Black Marble is using only existing native sim vector data,
where Vector renders the whole world with accurate lighting footprint thats created from accurate vector data! not random textures with annotated lights on them or randomly scattered trees as lights,

we render the view you see from vector data only! no textures!!!
what you see below you is real and accurate road data being drawn live, no textures are involved here!
our data is also very uniquely crafted and matches Sim native data format and structure;
which allows us to load massive amount of data with minimal impact on your Sim,
as usual like with all our work so far; other developers will use our logic as it seems to be working beyond expectations 

[Chris Bell 165]

4 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

1. What products for Black Marble to buy. Respecting #2 below?

at the least Base and Vector Pack,
if you want more eye candy; Traffic will place cars on every single Vector road we have!
if you want more eye candy; we popped all the bridges around the world from flat 2 dimensional;
to 3 dimensional extrusion bridges (these work over photoreal) that weave n and out as they are in real life above ground!

if you take a the time on our forums and Black Marble homepage you will find all this info and much more!

4 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

2. What to do with Vector, OpenLC and UTX to ensure that during the daytime I have the wonderful setup I currently have and yet gain the benefits of Black Marble night lighting?

see this post please
https://forums.chrisbelldesigns.com/topic/348-is-this-how-ftx-vector-should-be-set-up/?do=findComment&comment=3857

4 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

And I don't want to be turning this or that on or off when flying between day and night.

you don't need to do that anymore with Black Marble!

[Skywolf 992]

Thank You Chris!!!!

That video and your explanation is awesome.  Seriously, that video is mindblowing!!!.  I can't wait to try this product in VR!!!

Are there any plans for a demo to see all of these features in action?

[Chris Bell 165]

Thank you Sky

as impressive as it is; this is all Mike's doing,
we had nothing to do with that video production!

what we showed on our pics and video is 1:1 in everyone's Sim now!
as you can see you don't need to do more than installing Base + Vector Pack to enjoy a spectacular night views!

since Mike's video few more have surfaced as well; all from happy customers,
Quasar posted an hour long video not too long ago with Black Marble and Night Environment side by side!

[warbirds 555]

Wow,  a hundred and sixty big ones ----

How does the full package maxed effect fps?

[Skywolf 992]

I am sold on the product by watching these videos!!! I can't wait to try it. I have owned the licenses of previous night scenery products and loved them.

Thank you for creating this global product.

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

3 minutes ago, warbirds said:

Wow,  a hundred and sixty big ones ----

How does the full package maxed effect fps?

I'm on neither side of the fence on this product...haven't made up my mind since I've never been happy with night flying in P3D.  Not sure if Black Marble raises the bar enough yet.  I will say that 160 would be far less than the Night Environment regions when you add it up.  Still...a lot of money but less than it might have been.

[Chris Bell 165]

15 minutes ago, warbirds said:

How does the full package maxed effect fps?

its as conservative as a system such as this can be! (im not avoiding the answer is zero!)
not a single customer had complained about FPS issues; not one!
everyone are stunned with Black Marble when they see all the lights with 0 FPS hit!

there were less than handful of customers who freaked out on us before we had time to resolve this ftx issue,
they all got their money back! and i expect them to re-buy again now!

we all work hard for our money; if you try us and you don't like our work
if you ask for your money back you will be refunded, no questions asked!

 

[warbirds 555]

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking of the car add on and if there were a lot of cars on most roads it should hamper performance and wondered how much it would. 

[Chris Bell 165]

10 minutes ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

I'm on neither side of the fence on this product...haven't made up my mind since I've never been happy with night flying in P3D.

Gregg stop being a "Negative Nelly" and jump in the water 
(if you didn't like Black Marble see my post above)

[Chris Bell 165]

11 minutes ago, warbirds said:

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking of the car add on and if there were a lot of cars on most roads it should hamper performance and wondered how much it would. 

we added traffic data for every single roads we rendered vector with! bi-directional!
it could if you run 100% traffic on all our vector roads,
you must use this carefully, a 40%-65% on all roads will be just fine,

in some extremely heavily grid areas it may be more noticeable; but then again you have all the controls you need to mitigate any performance issues,
you can reduce in Sim traffic slider and it will reduce traffic (all our data is native to sim!)
you can switch on and off traffic based on roads classes; it doesn't have to be all on to begin with!

even 100% is not as bad as you might think,
on my poor laptop here im running at 100% traffic with Vector here,