Orbx's TrueEarth scenery, WILL be the nail in the coffin for FSX/P3D

[kevinfirth 1,392]

1 hour ago, Sesquashtoo said:

Conjecture, is placing an idea, personal thought, or leaning, out into the market square.  It then invites personal viewpoints. If someone is not interested in the subject header of the post, they certainly don't have to pull the thread up. For some, the topic does interest them, and they delve deeper..  That's how I feel an open forum works. Am I wrong in this thinking?

Cheers

not at all its good to discuss :)

I have no personal experience of XP so I cant offer any opinion, but I'll probably try it now with the Orbx products and see for myself :)

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

22 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

not at all its good to discuss :)

I have no personal experience of XP so I cant offer any opinion, but I'll probably try it now with the Orbx products and see for myself :)

Kevin, there is a true learning curve at first.  And..besides Orbx...there is an almost overwhelming amount of freeware, payware, and donationware for the platform.  I still run P3D 4.1, still run FSX:SE, but for this new TrueEarth tech, it will be XP11.x that it is purchased for. You might end up thinking the same thing, or perhaps not...but only by buying and running it...will you see for yourself, where the Orbx TrueEarth scenery is going to end up, on your system.  Have fun, it's all about fun and learning.

Cheers,

 

[CarlosF 1,234]

Competition is good and benefits everyone:

Benefits of Competition. 

Competition is the critical driver of performance and innovation. It benefits everyone by enabling us to choose from an array of excellent products at affordable prices. Competition also encourages the adoption of innovation as companies evolve and new ideas flourish in the marketplace.

So I would add: Keep them all alive!

Edited April 2, 2018 by CarlosF

[dmarques69 316]

I have a word for that subject, but im going to keep it for myself... this just opens that endless discussion that doenst lead anywhere and is going to end with a moderator closing this and just filling wasted space in the server.

PS: XP11 is fantastic... P3D is beautiful...FSW is gorgeous... AFS 2 is awsome...FSX is great...why? because all have planes, i wish there where more...

[CB183183183 9]

2 hours ago, Glynn said:

Jose nails it, I would love to transition to Xplane because it is really looking great.

But there is too much missing at this point that I need in a simulator, The weather system is poor, Vatsim client is ancient, ATC is poor, Ai is miles behind the packages available for P3D, Only a handful of really great aircraft addons available, the list of missing or poorly implemented features is massive.

P3D may not look as good but it has a much more complete ecosystem available.

 

 

The list of missing or poorly implemented features is massive for X-Plane?  Then why has it gained so much popularity in recent years? It has become a very complete sim and in my mind costs a lot less to provide a top notch experience than P3D does.

Weather=There is a free NOAA plug-in to improve the weather depiction in X-Plane, but there is also the Xenviro addon you can purchase which is very good.  Activesky also said they are developing for the platform.

ATC=Both P3D and X-Plane have awful ATC out of the box.  But with VATSIM and PilotEdge out there for both platforms, folks have plenty of options to choose from for dynamic atc.  

AI=Have you tried World Traffic V3?  There are both freeware and payware options available for Xplane.  It personally does not bother me that much when I fly with online ATC.

Only a handful of great aircraft addons=There are a ton of excellent aircraft add-ons in X-Plane.  Not sure what your criteria is for a great aircraft addon, but Xplane has a plethora of them to choose from.  

I still enjoy P3D for airline simming because I have invested a lot in that department.  The NGX, GSX, the ORBX sceneries, the numerous payware airport addons, activesky, etc.  But for GA simming, X-Plane just feels much more immersive and is so much cheaper to get to a level of immersion that requires purchase of many expensive addons for P3D to get to that level. 

For X-Plane, I have two payware aircraft add-ons, but everything else is freeware.  I can fly with free HD mesh and ortho and can take advantage of the scenery gateway which gives me access to thousands of freeware developed airports that give a solid depiction of the airfield that is much more realistic than the vanilla P3D GA airfields.

 

[Guest]

I won't switch to XP only because it has better looking cars driving around. There is more to a sim than that. XP is still lacking a lot. Not as much as AFS2 but still. Considering the colors and so on: I can't see any difference between what I saw in that video and P3D screenshots (which don't even use PTA yet) so I also don't see how come TrueEarth in XP will be the end of P3D. And considering performance: AFS2 will blow XP as well as P3D out of the water in that department.

Luckily I own all mentioned sims so I might give TruEarth a try on all platforms providing the discount (for getting them on all platforms) is reasonable.

I've used (and own) enough sims by now to know it's not very wise to announce the death of ANY of them. It's impossible to know what the future brings.

BTW Take note that all close up shots in that video are of EGCB Barton, not UK TrueEarth. so don't expect addon airport quality all over the country. There is a reason why Orbx will continue to create and release airports for all those regions.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Guest

[tonywob 4,768]

7 minutes ago, J van E said:

BTW Take note that all close up shots in that video are of EGCB Barton, not UK TrueEarth.

This isn't true Jeroen. Yes, the airport is Barton, but the immediate surroundings (outside of the airport fence) is TrueEarth that I'm working on alongside Barton. The detailed autogen houses and tree placement you see in that video is the same throughout England and this is what Thomas was flying over in the video.

[strider1 575]

4 hours ago, tonywob said:

This isn't true Jeroen. Yes, the airport is Barton, but the immediate surroundings (outside of the airport fence) is TrueEarth that I'm working on alongside Barton. The detailed autogen houses and tree placement you see in that video is the same throughout England and this is what Thomas was flying over in the video.

Are the trees ORBX trees or XP default trees ?

[ErichB 3,638]

P3D's coffin will never be nailed down finally until XP addresses the weather environment.  It needs a product like  Active Sky which makes it possible to fly in an airliner from A to B with realistic transitions to different weather types  (no snap weather changes, no obvious transitions, proper winds aloft data and preferably wind data links to aircraft like the ZIBO modded 737.

Otherwise its all just about pretty scenery.  You cannot take a simulator seriously if it doesn't represent an aircraft's natural environment realistically.

Edited April 3, 2018 by ErichB

[Guest]

15 hours ago, tonywob said:

This isn't true Jeroen. Yes, the airport is Barton, but the immediate surroundings (outside of the airport fence) is TrueEarth that I'm working on alongside Barton. The detailed autogen houses and tree placement you see in that video is the same throughout England and this is what Thomas was flying over in the video.

I (very happily!) stand corrected!  Although it remains the case that the close up shots of the airport buildings are the Barton airport buildings. I don't think the autogen will look that good and detailed. (Correct me if I am wrong again!  ) I mainly said what I said because some people post about the video as if it is TrueEarth only, which isn't the case, and I thought it would be good to make people aware of this. And don't get me wrong, I am just as excited and happy with the upcoming TrueEarth addons as everybody else!

[tonywob 4,768]

Yep, that's correct Jeroen. The video does mention it's Barton and TrueEarth, so hopefully people do understand it's a preview of both. Now, if I'd invented some new tech to make the entire flight sim world look like a high-quality payware airfield then I probably wouldn't be sat here on my laptop anymore  (Rather I'd be cruising away on my yacht)

The actual close ups of the airport buildings are of course fully custom modelled buildings and ground textures, but the scenery outside the fence with the autogen and trees is TrueEarth. Just like the Netherlands, the England scenery will also contain landmarks etc, but please remember what you are seeing in the video is only an early alpha release.

 

 

52 minutes ago, ErichB said:

P3D's coffin will never be nailed down finally until XP addresses the weather environment.  It needs a product like  Active Sky which makes it possible to fly in an airliner from A to B with realistic transitions to different weather types  (no snap weather changes, no obvious transitions, proper winds aloft data and preferably wind data links to aircraft like the ZIBO modded 737.

Whilst I completely agree with this remark about the weather, it's worth saying that not everyone enjoys flying airliners from A to B. Especially when we are talking about the TrueEarth sceneries which are really designed for low and slow pilots. For those pilots who enjoy helicopters or general aviation, I think both sims are easily on par with each other, with X-Plane increasing in popularity as both a GA and tubeliner platform. For me, the deciding factor will likely be one of price and general availability, of which X-Plane and AF2 win hands down.

 

[ErichB 3,638]

7 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Whilst I completely agree with this remark about the weather, it's worth saying that not everyone enjoys flying airliners from A to B.

Agreed.  Which is why I have made that point in another post of my own.  For GA, I think it's a winner which doesn't necessarily need meteorological complexities. 

Nonetheless, I think this is the one huge elephant in the room as far as XPlane is concerned.

Edited April 3, 2018 by ErichB

[pmb 5,137]

4 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Whilst I completely agree with this remark about the weather, it's worth saying that not everyone enjoys flying airliners from A to B. Especially when we are talking about the TrueEarth sceneries which are really designed for low and slow pilots. For those pilots who enjoy helicopters or general aviation, I think both sims are easily on par with each other, with X-Plane increasing in popularity as both a GA and tubeliner platform. For me, the deciding factor will likely be one of price and general availability, of which X-Plane and AF2 win hands down.

While I belong to that second class (pure GA flyer) I can't make friends with XP as long as it comes with that dull grey-brown overlay introduced on incarnation 11. Yes, you can amend that using Reshade, Environment addons (tried a few), or even modifying monitor settings as JV explained recently. However, it's a continuous struggle where you well may end up with something like a Mickey Mouse world, fighting addons, crashes on exit, etc. if improperly done.

There's a second point you left out: I invested several kilo Euros into FSX/P3D  addons. Even with a 40 % rebate (not granted by every maker) this comes down to another several kilo Euros would I buy them again for XP (which I don't intend to). Beginners might see this from another point of view.

Kind regards, Michael

[alpha12125 213]

Its still funny to see how Sesquashtoo still manages to rile up people :)

He is the Jeremy Clarkson of AVSIM and has always been a fan of hyperbole :D

Edited April 3, 2018 by alpha12125

[tonywob 4,768]

12 minutes ago, pmb said:

I can't make friends with XP as long as it comes with that dull grey-brown overlay introduced on incarnation 11

Yep, I agree with this. The dullness and visual problems with lighting and glowing trees is not doing the default sim any favours. But to be fair, default P3D is certainly no winner in the beauty department either :)