Black marble is indeed most impressive, and it covers the entire world. However, is Vector really needed if a user has a decent mesh installed? By vector, do you mean that the lights follow the roads accurately uphill & down dale as they say? If it does, then would the only benefit for my immersion be the 3D bridges? Don't get me wrong by my use of the word "only" - there is an absolutely huge amount of illuminated road bridges in the world!!

Thank you Kevin
Black Marble Base brings the versatility to FSX/SE, Prepar3D v2-4 (if not better) that XP has when it comes to night lighting and road system,

our Vector Pack adds all the missing vector road data worldwide as native sim vector data!
we bring all the paved roads that exist in the world into sim with Vector Pack!

there is no need for special mesh or any third party addon's,
this is all drawn over default Sim with our Data loaded,

this is our Vector data foot print (FL350) over the LA area,
(note there is not a single texture in this image! every single line you see here is drawn live by sim from real vector data!!!)

...but my name's not Kevin... 

i know its you Mark
dealing with too many things at once,
...how embarrassing, i must be getting old!

No worries, we're all getting old. 

So as I understand it, the black marble lighting will conform to whatever mesh is underneath, be it stock FSX or a higher resolution add-on, yes?

The Vector addition will give me not only the lighting, but also the actual road network the lighting belongs to - those roads being visible in the daytime, correct?

Cheers.

that is correct Mark
Black Marble is not dependent on anything to work correctly; out of the box,
Vector adds in all the missing data we need to see from the air to match our maps and road stories 1:1 to real world layout and road network,

I can see me having to save up the pennies! 

Thanks for the explanation, Chris.

I no longer use Orbx Vector and instead only use Black Marble Vector.

The only reason I might consider ORBX Vector is because I use Freemesh X. ORBX Vector will flatten the airports and rivers etc. but I'd need to get FTX Global along with it. Major expense. Sooner buy Black Marble ;)

On 8/14/2017 at 1:21 PM, warbirds said:

I no longer use Orbx Vector and instead only use Black Marble Vector.

I notice that my FPS is running low since I installed Black Marble, I wonder if I need to turn off Orbx Vector also.

you are probably running double lights from another 3rd party addon,
turn these lights off from their respective manager,

also you should reduce your "autogen vegetation density" slider to sparse!

please guys we cannot track or respond to support issue efficiently off our official support forums!
we cannot guarantee your issues will be answered or even picked up with the amount of topics here on AVSIM,
for technical issues or any assistance with our products please visit our support forums,

7 hours ago, FSXtreme said:

I notice that my FPS is running low since I installed Black Marble, I wonder if I need to turn off Orbx Vector also.

I removed Orbx Vector and replaced it with Black Marble Vector and gained some fps. 

PMDG 747 view from virtual cockpit at default startup airport, clear day noon - with Orbx Vector 33 to 36 fps - with Black Marble Vector 42 to 46 fps - with neither one active 45 to 48 fps.

These are results from my pc setup and may differ from yours. Note: in all three test Orbx Global and OLC North America were active. 

7 minutes ago, warbirds said:

I removed Orbx Vector and replaced it with Black Marble Vector and gained some fps. 

So you removed Vector completely?  Higher FPS would make sense since Orbx Vector covers roads, coastlines, rivers and such whereas BM Vector, as far as I know, only covers roads.

Yes completely, got tired of losing that many fps. It is just a matter of what you would rather have, I would rather have better fps, better and more roads and Xplane style nights.  There is no right or wrong it is just personal preference. 

8 minutes ago, warbirds said:

Yes completely, got tired of losing that many fps. It is just a matter of what you would rather have, I would rather have better fps, better and more roads and Xplane style nights.  There is no right or wrong it is just personal preference. 

Yeah, I get that.  I have had it disabled for some time, though, I do enable it from time to time when I'm not flying big iron.  Now that ORBX has the code, perhaps, they'll look at some of the inefficiencies and do some cleanup.