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[HighBypass 2,339]

Kevin - if you have any urban or not so urban areas in your sim which still uses default scenery (not photoreal or airfield bgl files), then believe you me, Black Marble is very noticeable & will give you great night lighting on any roads - that's just the base package, not Vector. I love the extra bit of immersion which BM base gives me as I don't have my sim world covered in photoreal scenery. Of course that's my opinion and I'm welcome to it LOL.

FWIW Here's some shots of BM Base on my rig - flying an old C-46 out of Butte, MT. Bear in mind that the BM lights are extremely configurable; amount, placement, colour, intensity. I've not messed with the default much - maybe my roads are overly illuminated, but I've not studied nighttime photos of every area I've flown over in the sim.

Edited December 30, 2017 by HighBypass
images

[klamal 282]

3 hours ago, HighBypass said:

Kevin - if you have any urban or not so urban areas in your sim which still uses default scenery (not photoreal or airfield bgl files), then believe you me, Black Marble is very noticeable & will give you great night lighting on any roads - that's just the base package, not Vector. I love the extra bit of immersion which BM base gives me as I don't have my sim world covered in photoreal scenery. Of course that's my opinion and I'm welcome to it LOL.

FWIW Here's some shots of BM Base on my rig - flying an old C-46 out of Butte, MT. Bear in mind that the BM lights are extremely configurable; amount, placement, colour, intensity. I've not messed with the default much - maybe my roads are overly illuminated, but I've not studied nighttime photos of every area I've flown over in the sim.

Yeah, I’m not saying black marble isn’t good. It may or even most likely is better than FTX Vector. But for as much money as they are asking for it, I don’t think it’s that much better. Or at least I haven’t seen anything yet that makes me believe it would be worth the cost anyway. 

[Chris Bell 165]

if its cost thats keeping you from jumping in the pool; this is your chance!
our special end of the year promo is not coming back for at least another year!

Black Marble or any of its ad-dons are not a competing (some feature are similar)
or a replacement product to FTX Vector! just go on YouTube and search for Black Marble and ORBX and you will clearly see the value Black Marble brings with ORBX installed! (these are customer posted videos!)

i think your comment comes mainly from lack of education in regards to what the product is,
all our customers know they have their money well spent when investing in Black Marble Black Product line,
from the product itself to the team and support behind it, not to mention our "no questions asked" fair refund policy!

i urge any one of our customers to call me out if they think im full of it!

Black Marble is a revolutionary brand new product aiming specifically at worldwide vector based road system and night lighting at native Sim vector data level (we don't do textures!), there is no base for comparing Black Marble with FTX Vector when it comes to roads network or night lighting system worldwide!

our Black Marble line does this on every spot on the globe!
(these are accurate 1:1 real world vector roads you can use to navigate by!)

 

(this video was rendered on an office grade laptop with no special effect or any edits beside adding sound track, recorded using fraps!!!)

[HighBypass 2,339]

8 hours ago, klamal said:

... don’t think it’s that much better. Or at least I haven’t seen anything yet that makes me believe it would be worth the cost anyway.

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I was blown away by what BM gave me over and above default FSX:SE. I've never gone down the ORBX & FTX route. Freemesh X gives me decent topography and I wasn't about to shell out just to get FTX vector to flatten some airports. (I've got ADE to mess with that if it upsets me that much )

[parachutem 51]

20 hours ago, klamal said:

snip... But, just like Black Marble, I have serious doubts as to just how noticeable/worth it the product is...snip

I would  respectfully  disagree. I only fly at night and I cannot imagine flying without black marble as well as NE. As they say your mileage may vary.

[klamal 282]

5 hours ago, parachutem said:

I would  respectfully  disagree. I only fly at night and I cannot imagine flying without black marble as well as NE. As they say your mileage may vary.

Again, I'm not saying it doesn't look good.  I just can't see how it is that much better than Orbx night lighting to warrant the cost for someone that already has Orbx.  I'm more than happy to spend my money on this, especially now with the sale.  I just need that video or picture that convinces me and I have yet to see it.  I'm sorry if it's there staring me right in the face.  :)

[klamal 282]

15 hours ago, Chris Bell said:

Black Marble is a revolutionary brand new product aiming specifically at worldwide vector based road system and night lighting at native Sim vector data level (we don't do textures!), there is no base for comparing Black Marble with FTX Vector when it comes to roads network or night lighting system worldwide!

So FTX Vector is not world wide?  I thought it was?  And how is Black Marble that much different from the night lighting for someone that already owns Orbx?  This is what I'm trying to see and can't.  Maybe because I just don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for or maybe because there really isn't that much difference - like we're talking about cloud textures where every 6 months we get a new artist's rendition of what they think are beautiful.  I want to see life like.  I just did a flight this week and night and there aren't any pics or videos yet that say "wow", that was just like my real world flight the other night.  When I look at BM, I just see a different rendition of night lighting.  Again, not that it's not good.  It's just that Orbx is good too so why buy another product that gives the same experience?  Where's the difference I should be looking for??

[klamal 282]

So I think maybe I get what the difference is for Black Marble?  Or at least one of the big selling points anyway.  The "more accurate" vector data being used and/or the way it is "native" to the sim vs whatever method or level of accuracy Orbx is at.  Is that correct?  I can see that there are more and/or better defined roads w/ BM Vector.

How about Blue Marble...can anyone comment on the night lighting in the distance?  Apparently you can see the lights of cities off in the distance with this?  Any chance of a few images of this at various altitudes at night too?  Actually, a video would be great.  Night and day.  Various altitudes.  Does one of these exist yet on YouTube or something?

[Chris Bell 165]

i see someone spent some time on our forums educating themselves 
 

3 hours ago, klamal said:

So FTX Vector is not world wide?  I thought it was? 

that is correct Kevin, FTX is global but not worldwide!
and the majority of the data there is not vector driven or related,
no argue over it being pretty; but still not vector or real world replication!

3 hours ago, klamal said:

And how is Black Marble that much different from the night lighting for someone that already owns Orbx?

the biggest difference is that all our roads are 100% accurate,
and we bring all the roads in; the benefits are huge!!!

from the "on the fly" native Sim autogen layout which is now forced into a more realistic grid due to our complete road grid,
to the night or day footprint, to the lighting system itself, and the features we developed around the BM framework,

the lights in FTX are not vector or vector driven nor they replicate a real world grid nor they can be used for real world navigation,

1 hour ago, klamal said:

So I think maybe I get what the difference is for Black Marble?  Or at least one of the big selling points anyway.  The "more accurate" vector data being used and/or the way it is "native" to the sim vs whatever method or level of accuracy Orbx is at.  Is that correct?  I can see that there are more and/or better defined roads w/ BM Vector.

that is correct Kevin :)
all our data is 100% vector based and driven, we don't use textures or annotated objects over textures,
our roads are 100% configurable, size width, light color, and allot more variation that give you direct controls over the road system and lighting system accompanied, our BMM allows you to whip your night environment to virtually any way you wish to run it,
the possibilities are endless with BM and BMM, you are literally the night architect 100%

1 hour ago, klamal said:

How about Blue Marble...can anyone comment on the night lighting in the distance?  Apparently you can see the lights of cities off in the distance with this?  Any chance of a few images of this at various altitudes at night too?  Actually, a video would be great.  Night and day.  Various altitudes.  Does one of these exist yet on YouTube or something?

Blue is a different animal than Black,
BTW... Blue is all D'Andre's fault

he made me do it :P

im joking of curse, but Blue is indeed D'Andre inspired,
he made a comment on his site a while back when we introduced Black for the first time,
we showed the globe being lit at night as a concept for our project,
in the description he said that Black Marble (Black not Blue!!!) will look like that globe,
which wasn't true, he didn't say this to be malice just lack of understanding,

that comment bothered me ever since, the only way to come true on that was to make Blue Marble and give the night layer inside the globe night lighting as well, from there we started investigation and got to NASA globe textures being used on Google Earth and we though it be cool to bring the same globe to our sim and update the old outdated textures we been looking at,
the globe has 12 monthly textured layers for each month of the year, but lacking a night layer,
so we added the 13th layer and custom built the globe night map to fit,

 

[klamal 282]

2 hours ago, Chris Bell said:

i see someone spent some time on our forums educating themselves 
 

that is correct Kevin, FTX is global but not worldwide!
and the majority of the data there is not vector driven or related,
no argue over it being pretty; but still not vector or real world replication!

the biggest difference is that all our roads are 100% accurate,
and we bring all the roads in; the benefits are huge!!!

from the "on the fly" native Sim autogen layout which is now forced into a more realistic grid due to our complete road grid,
to the night or day footprint, to the lighting system itself, and the features we developed around the BM framework,

the lights in FTX are not vector or vector driven nor they replicate a real world grid nor they can be used for real world navigation,

that is correct Kevin :)
all our data is 100% vector based and driven, we don't use textures or annotated objects over textures,
our roads are 100% configurable, size width, light color, and allot more variation that give you direct controls over the road system and lighting system accompanied, our BMM allows you to whip your night environment to virtually any way you wish to run it,
the possibilities are endless with BM and BMM, you are literally the night architect 100%

Blue is a different animal than Black,
BTW... Blue is all D'Andre's fault

he made me do it :P

im joking of curse, but Blue is indeed D'Andre inspired,
he made a comment on his site a while back when we introduced Black for the first time,
we showed the globe being lit at night as a concept for our project,
in the description he said that Black Marble (Black not Blue!!!) will look like that globe,
which wasn't true, he didn't say this to be malice just lack of understanding,

that comment bothered me ever since, the only way to come true on that was to make Blue Marble and give the night layer inside the globe night lighting as well, from there we started investigation and got to NASA globe textures being used on Google Earth and we though it be cool to bring the same globe to our sim and update the old outdated textures we been looking at,
the globe has 12 monthly textured layers for each month of the year, but lacking a night layer,
so we added the 13th layer and custom built the globe night map to fit,

 

Ok, Chris...I'm going to give this a try.  I am downloading BM base and Vector now along with Blue Marble.  I certainly hope it's worth it.  If I'm not happy, am I remembering correctly that you offer a money back guarantee?  Was that right?  Or am I remembering wrong?

[Chris Bell 165]

Thank you Kevin
no need to rely on memory,
we offer a fair money back "no questions asked" policy,

we do try to assure the right steps were taken and proper experience was achieved,
if its not something you're interested in after you experience our product;
we will not force you to keep owning it if you don't feel its worth its value!

there were customers who taken us up on our policy, we stand by that and never let a single customer down!
i will tell you that more than half who used our policy; it seemed they just got cold feet or wanted to see we stand by our policy,
the majority all bought back a while after again!

[klamal 282]

1 hour ago, Chris Bell said:

Thank you Kevin
no need to rely on memory,
we offer a fair money back "no questions asked" policy,

we do try to assure the right steps were taken and proper experience was achieved,
if its not something you're interested in after you experience our product;
we will not force you to keep owning it if you don't feel its worth its value!

there were customers who taken us up on our policy, we stand by that and never let a single customer down!
i will tell you that more than half who used our policy; it seemed they just got cold feet or wanted to see we stand by our policy,
the majority all bought back a while after again!

That's good to know.  Thanks.  Hopefully I won't have to take you up on it either.

So I'm about to do my first flight as I'm typing this.  A few issues to start with.  First, should there be lights in the middle of airports?  Is there a tool or way to remove them?  I'm sitting at UK2000 EGKK(whatever the latest version for P3Dv4 is) and I have lights in the middle of the ramp and protruding through the terminal etc.  Second, the app to change the settings crashes on me if I try to change too many of the object size settings at once before saving.  So, currently, this flight is being done with lights that are way to huge because I didn't want to take all night switching every light to something smaller one at a time.

Anyway, I'll probably report back here once I'm air born but it's bad weather in the London area right now so I'm not sure I'll get to experience much on departure.  :)

[Chris Bell 165]

Thank you Kevin
i hope you enjoy your first flight
there's allot of information on our forums;
now that you own BM you should also be able to see those sub forums!!!
(our shop instance and forums are separate of each other,
you need to have registered on both with the same email;
if you don't see these sub forums now let me know pls)

you will find allot of info you may find useful when setting up,
especially when running with ORBX, we have a spesific patch for ORBX Vector customers,
many confuse Black Marble Vector Pack and our ORBX Vector Patch;
which is applied to our own Black Marble Vector Pack!
but only when ORBX Vector is part of the scenery stack,

the roads you see inside airport are service class roads,
you can uncheck the class or completely delete it in BMM,
you can keep just roads which are visible at day time with no lights at night,

its all configurable and at the tip of your fingers,
take a moment to go through our manual; its under your program file menu
CreativeDesignStudios > Black Marble - Base v1.0.0 PREPAR3D v4 > Manual-EN

[klamal 282]

So my initial impressions on my departure out of EGKK are positive.  I can see an improvement by having all roads.  But, I definitely will need a handful more flights and some tweaking of the settings(light size and whatever else is there) before I can place a final verdict.

One thing I really wish was possible somehow...get rid of the lighting away from cities.  I would hate to see what the electric bill would be for the world if we lit every single mile/kilometer like we see now in the sim.  Not just BM of course.  I think every other night lighting project out there does the same thing.  Is there some logic that can be ran to not generate lights/lit up roads for as far as the eye can see?

I was hoping to see Blue Marble take effect here too but most of my route(EGKK-ENGM) is going to be over the ocean tonight.  So I'm not sure if I will get to experience that at all.  We'll see.

[klamal 282]

Just reached FL350 and I can see the lights from the coastal cities in the Netherlands!  It's not the most spectacular thing in the world.  But, for what was it, $7.  I think Blue Marble is worth it for that little bit of extra immersion.  Curious now to see what it looks like during the day.