Does anyone recommend Black Marble?

[GSalden 4,653]

Black Marble is the best you can get regarding nightlighting. I own it and also I have Night Environment and FTX Global. I have disabled all FTX lights in favor of BM and Ne. More realistic than BM and NE you cannot get.

 

 

 

 

[SAS443 1,707]

That's some nice FS2004 flashbacks from the screentshot @GSalden

If that's the best P3d can muster for night lighting I can understand part of the frustrations some purchasers have with this product. 

I am not a fan at all, looks very unconvincing, especially that intersection in the foreground.

[HighBypass 2,339]

The subscription cost is ONLY for support, and it's a small amount at that. It is optional...

Other developers have different business models, some of whom make you pay twice for different versions of their products.....

SAS443 - go to the forum and have a look at some of the videos (or on youtube), because BM is configurable - you may find that it can be quite realistic, and Vector gives you every road out there (at the time of programming!)

[ssair1 92]

Gentlemen, I also went ahead and just purchased BE base, when it comes to realism, it's all in or nothing! Let's see how it turns out, so I should disable the night lighting for my FTX global and Vector? 

Cheers...

[Cruachan 705]

Hi,

Along with many other early adopters of Black Marble I too was disappointed with the performance impact in Prepar3D 4.0. in certain situations. The 'elephant in the room' turned out to be conflicts with ORBX and the fact that it quickly became clear that the BM product had not been tested alongside resident ORBX installations. Fortunately ORBX came to the rescue and, recognising the exceptional added value BM brings to the sim, agreed to work with the BM Developer, Chris Bell, to identify and resolve those compatibility issues. 

If you purchase BM it's worth going for both BASE and VECTOR as the latter is a much more detailed and accurate product and replaces ORBX Global Vector roads and highways without affecting the shorelines. These changes are visible both day and night. Indeed the density of road coverage is extraordinary and, like ORBX Vector, you do need to be sensible and select what you need to see while disabling anything in ORBX Vector which would conflict with BM. The same goes for Night Lighting - ALL ORBX night lighting should be disabled. What BM offers is so much better along with the added realism of darker skies (as seen in Night Environment).

Everything is configurable using the 'Black Marble Manager' and, while it does a decent job, there are aspects that need to be improved such as the automation of undoing stuff changed each time you run ORBX's FTX Central 3. If you followed my recent thread regarding 'Flying Trees at LOWS!' I described the necessary steps I have to follow to ensure BM and ORBX continue to work together where Night Lighting is concerned. Again, regarding FTX Central 3, each time it is run it restores terrain.cfg to the ORBX defaults. There are numerous additional entries added by ORBX to terrain.cfg. Many are unnecessary while flying at night (and really not missed during the daytime either). I have a modded terrain.cfg where these entries have been removed and this has a significant positive impact on performance.

Suffice it to say that I am now very happy with the setup as it stands. At first it was a bit of struggle and it took some time to get there, but the journey has proved to be very interesting and worthwhile. Black Marble is an excellent product and can be described as a work in progress with a very enthusiastic and skilled Developer, Chris Bell, at the helm. What he has achieved is extraordinary and should not be dismissed out-of-hand. Give it some time, read the Black Marble Support Forums at Creative Design Studios and get to know how to optimise the product to suit your requirements.

Regards,

Mike

[F737MAX 5,501]

59 minutes ago, ssair1 said:

Gentlemen, I also went ahead and just purchased BE base, when it comes to realism, it's all in or nothing! Let's see how it turns out, so I should disable the night lighting for my FTX global and Vector? 

Cheers...

Yes, you should turn off ORBX's FTX lighting. There is a detailed thread on how to do this in the Black Marble support forum.
In my opinion, the 'BM Vector' package is what makes it after-dark simming really come alive. I don't feel there's a need for the bridges and traffic add-ons.


I think a better video demonstrating what BM looks like, is this one here:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/2qgDpohVxdM

To note, this is being run on a multiple PC setup with several 1080Ti cards, so you *must* dial down the eye candy or it will turn into a slide show. That being said, I really like it on my setup.

[ssair1 92]

I just bought BM base, vector, and traffic; it looks amazing! I must confess that I've ventured into Prepar3D from Xplane 11 and the biggest drawback was the night lighting! Now, I understand the BM replaces landclass scenery and that there are BM add-ons for particular photoreal regions. But some of my photoreal regions come with night lighting, how can I disable them?

[F737MAX 5,501]

5 minutes ago, ssair1 said:

I just bought BM base, vector, and traffic; it looks amazing! I must confess that I've ventured into Prepar3D from Xplane 11 and the biggest drawback was the night lighting! Now, I understand the BM replaces landclass scenery and that there are BM add-ons for particular photoreal regions. But some of my photoreal regions come with night lighting, how can I disable them?

BM is a global product and doesn't have particular regions, that's Night Environment (NE) from the same developer, which can be run at the same time as BM.

You can disable photoreal by deselecting them (active=false) in scenery.cfg. You won't see photoreal textures at night anyway.

Dusk / dawn is heavy on system resources. Photoreal + lights is probably too much for most PCs to handle, so it's a choice between one or the other.

[ssair1 92]

@737NG, thank you! Now, I'm thinking of buying some NE regions, do I have to modify any existing settings with BASE and VECTOR? Also, when I purchased BM traffic, it did not come with a downloadable file, just a license key...

Kind regards, 

[F737MAX 5,501]

@ssair1  I don't have NE regions, nor know of how to deal with them i.r.o. BM, I'm afraid.

I suggest you have a look at the BM support forums and look for the 'Black Marble and ORBX Compatibility Patch for v4 Released!!!' thread. For NE, you might need to create a new thread.

[B777ER 2,475]

16 hours ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

At the moment on P3D I use Orbx Vector and lights. The one massive problem I have is shimmering distant lights. I've Googled and tried everything to get rid of it to no avail.

So given the hefty price tag does it mean Black Marble comes with a plethora of optimisation options which can eliminate or vastly reduce the shimmering issue?

Or is it still a problem with this add on?

I have it and the lights are so much better than that Orbx word not allowed. People think just because Orbx puts something out it must be the best. Hardly and when you try to tell them about the horrid shimmering they blame you in one breath and in the next beat there chest over how superior their product is. Black Marble is ten times better and more realistic.

[B777ER 2,475]

11 hours ago, captain420 said:

That's ugly. Although I've seen some pretty nice shots with Black Marble, but to me its not worth the price of admission, plus thats another addon to add to the long list of addons I already have to start along with launching P3D.

You set it once and unless you want to change your road settings you don't need to start anything.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

6 hours ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

Ok I just purchased Black Marble base to try it out but i'm not receiving any confirmation E-mails. Not a very encouraging start!

Message Chris Bell on the night environment forum. I sent him a couple of questions earlier today, and had responses each time within 1-2 minutes (!)

Very impressive customer support.

[B777ER 2,475]

15 hours ago, DLWbluues said:

Black marble is good but you really need a KILLER system to use it if you are flying anything with a highly detailed VC. BM brought my system to it's knees with anything PMDG. I believe they do have a money back guarantee if it doesn't work out. 

Don't forget that Black Marble offers alot more roads then just the 4 Orbx has with their Vector product. More roads, more resources used. You can shut them off in the Black Marble Manager and use anywhere from just 1 road type to like 10.

[Mitch24 194]

So from my understanding it is $160 + $5/year just for support for the product? Is anyone else thinking this is absolutely beyond ridiculous????