Does anyone recommend Black Marble?

[B777ER 2,484]

2 hours ago, Cruachan said:

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.

Regards,

Mike

Mike, what entries are you disabling in the terrain cfg that are not needed at night nor really missed during the day? 

Also, not sure if you know this but each time you run Central, it reactivates the Orbx Europe night lights from FALSE to TRUE in the scenery cfg if using OpenLC Europe and you need to go back in and deactivate them again. The North American lights stay deactivated if using OpenLC NA. 

For all - gain some performance back if using BM base and Vector by not using "service roads". Two reasons, the vector data has a lot of these road types in and around airports. These also are the main cause of lights showing up in odd places at your airport scenery. 

[B777ER 2,484]

First I have heard of this but are people using just Black Marble Base with Orbx roads from their FTX Vector product and getting the Black Marble lighting?

[Chock 17,769]

2 hours ago, F737NG said:

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

Unfortunately, and certainly visible on that video, it appears they've had to turn the bloom settings up to a level where it looks like you've just been maced if the blurred glow on the instruments is anything to go by, which does indeed make the ground lights look great, but not in a practical way if you want the PFDs to look realistic. That's a problem I've found with pretty much all FSX/P3D night lighting products, you can have great ground lights, but usually at the expense of other things looking over the top.

[Gregg_Seipp 565]

5 minutes ago, Chock said:

Unfortunately, and certainly visible on that video, it appears they've had to turn the bloom settings up to a level where it looks like you've just been maced if the blurred glow on the instruments is anything to go by, which does indeed make the ground lights look great, but not in a practical way if you want the PFDs to look realistic. That's a problem I've found with pretty much all FSX/P3D night lighting products.

That's a simpit, isn't it?  I do agree, in general, about the bloom thing though.  I use a tad, but, it's easy to overdo it and then things get weird.

[Chock 17,769]

6 minutes ago, Gregg_Seipp said:

That's a simpit, isn't it?  I do agree, in general, about the bloom thing though.  I use a tad, but, it's easy to overdo it and then things get weird.

Yup, in general it is the problem you find with the P3D/FSX graphics engine and its limitations; it's just never going to look as good as XPlane's lighting without it having a more modern 3D engine. As long as people are aware of that, then add-ons such as Black Marble will do the job, although personally for me, I don't think it is worth the price of admission, but others can make their own decision on that score.

[dmarques69 316]

6 hours ago, GSalden said:

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.

 

Gerard what do you have installed here? just the base or anything else?

[vgbaron 3,508]

Since they have a forum here - I'm moving this there.....

[Cruachan 705]

1 hour ago, B777ER said:

Also, not sure if you know this but each time you run Central, it reactivates the Orbx Europe night lights from FALSE to TRUE in the scenery cfg if using OpenLC Europe and you need to go back in and deactivate them again. The North American lights stay deactivated if using OpenLC NA. 

Hi Eric,

Yes, I am aware of this. It's a bit of a pain, but the easiest way to do this without suffering reindexing/reloading delays caused by changing these entries from within the P3D Scenery Library is by using the Lorby-SI utility mentioned in that post.

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/524877-flying-trees-at-lows/?do=findComment&comment=3755662

Regards,

Mike

[dgraham1284 92]

Black Marble + Black Marble Vector

 

 

 

[GSalden 4,656]

1 hour ago, dmarques69 said:

Gerard what do you have installed here? just the base or anything else?

Base + Vector

At this moment I also have 3D Bridges activated

[dmarques69 316]

1 minute ago, GSalden said:

Base + Vector

At this moment I also have 3D Bridges activated

Ok tanks! this vector as nothing to do with the vector from Orbx right? and can live together in the same installation!?

[Cruachan 705]

9 minutes ago, dmarques69 said:

Ok tanks! this vector as nothing to do with the vector from Orbx right? and can live together in the same installation!?

See second paragraph in my earlier post:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/525087-does-anyone-recommend-black-marble/?do=findComment&comment=3756574

Mike

[dmarques69 316]

20 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

See second paragraph in my earlier post:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/525087-does-anyone-recommend-black-marble/?do=findComment&comment=3756574

Mike

Got it, thank you Mike!

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

I can't seem to install it. On the installer it keep coming up with "Invalid simulator directory"! What is the specific path name I should point the installer to?

I don't think I've ever had so much hassle trying to install an add on! Sheesh!!! 

[anden145 2,285]

Looks quite nice... Tempted, I must admit... How's the performance with Base + Vector?