4 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Are those Hybrid drives worth the extra cost over standard hard drives?

Meh, I had one a few years ago, they're only really useful I think if you are accessing the same data repeatedly.

Make sure you have a 500Mb SSD for the OS and the sim, and a large HDD for scenery.  I've just put NL on a new 6TB drive....

4 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

Meh, I had one a few years ago, they're only really useful I think if you are accessing the same data repeatedly.

Make sure you have a 500Mb SSD for the OS and the sim, and a large HDD for scenery.  I've just put NL on a new 6TB drive....

I thought it was all the rage a few years back to get sims (and scenery in particular) loaded onto SSD's because the scenery would load up quicker and eliminate stutters..  Has this thinking now changed?  I  have always run both my OS and sim on separate SSD's

Edited April 25, 20188 yr by ErichB

6 minutes ago, ErichB said:

I thought it was all the rage a few years back to get sims (and scenery in particular) loaded onto SSD's because the scenery would load up quicker and eliminate stutters..  Has this thinking now changed?  I  have always run both my OS and sim on separate SSD's

I think there may be only a very marginal performance benefit, but to me its not noticeable and not worth the extra expense.  The 6TB 7200rpm HDD cost me £150, that would only have bought me 500Gb of SSD....storage quantity beats hardly noticeable performance difference any day unless money is no object...

Orbx ought to provide for a way to install on non P3D drive since their disk space requirement is growing.. the current model is not sustainable.

Edited April 25, 20188 yr by Manny

Read about Windows symbolic links. It's easy to move the ORBX folder anywhere on your PC and FTX Central will still find it correctly.

 

My thoughts on the size is that eventually either 1) our computers will catch up as drives become ever larger and internet connections ever faster, and/or 2) as technology advances they will find ways to pack more scenery into smaller files. Either way I think this is officially what can be called the cutting edge of flight sim tech with the new capabilities of 64-bit sims, and it will take a while for us to all be able to enjoy it fully.

That said, since I don't do any flying in Europe currently, I can't wait for the first US versions to come out!

I also ordered today an 6TB HDD, after realised how much NL HD of space would take. Seems the only viable solution if you keep downloading scenery.

2 hours ago, Manny said:

So this is the equivalent of VFR Scene like PACA? 

 

 

Not really.
Orbx uses another technology which is much more precise, with better image resolution, more colorful and less heavier on fps!
But IMO France VFR's autogen is closer to reality and probably more dense.

So it's a matter of taste and of performances.
 

Edited April 25, 20188 yr by David Roch

6 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Read about Windows symbolic links. It's easy to move the ORBX folder anywhere on your PC and FTX Central will still find it correctly.

 

I did that but the problem is that ORBX still seems to initially download to the Windows temp folder before extracting it to the ORBX directory on the other hard drive with a symbolic link pointing to it.

 

I left this to download over night and had 250GB free on my scenery drive and only 50GB free on my Windows/Prepar3D drive. When I looked at it this morning it said that the install failed because it ran out of disk space. I found that it had consumed space on the C drive instead of the D drive. I freed up some more space by moving stuff around and retried the download/install and it worked. Once the install completed, the temp files were cleaned up on the Windows drive and I now have 100GB free. So it seems that if you have your scenery on another drive you need 77GB on your scenery drive as well as your Windows drive until the download/install process completes.

1 hour ago, kevinfirth said:

I think there may be only a very marginal performance benefit, but to me its not noticeable and not worth the extra expense.  The 6TB 7200rpm HDD cost me £150, that would only have bought me 500Gb of SSD....storage quantity beats hardly noticeable performance difference any day unless money is no object...

Also a good idea to get another HD about 1-2 TB to back up everything on to

For you guys with Flytampa EHAM :-)

Always make first a backup....

Ok have done the following to have Flytampa working nicely with this master piece...

Rename the following files to .off
your directory path: \FlyTampa\Amsterdam\scenery
amsterdam_center.bgl.off
amsterdam_city.bgl.off
amsterdam_city_basic.off
TileMapA.bgl.off
TileMapA_snow.off
TileMapB.bgl.off
TileMapB_snow.off
TileMapC.bgl.off
TileMapC_snow.off
TileMapD.bgl.off
TileMapD_snow.off

your directory path: \FlyTampa\Amsterdam_LC\scenery
All files to off with the exception of this one to avoid field elevation problems
cvx_eham.BGL

Ok hope it's helpful,

Cheers,

1 hour ago, ryebred2 said:

I did that but the problem is that ORBX still seems to initially download to the Windows temp folder before extracting it to the ORBX directory on the other hard drive with a symbolic link pointing to it.

The new FTX Central version seems to have an option to move the temp folder (or at least the files that would be downloaded into it) to another drive.

The Orbx FTX forum has helpful posts regarding installation options such as the symbolic link that gives us an option to move the Orbx directory away from the P3D root directory.  I am going to get on board with this one, considering my Orbx folder is already 228 GB without a TrueEarth installed.  I'll take advantage of the link to keep the Orbx data along side my other 136 GB of addon scenery and terrain mesh.  Looking at the Micron 1100 2TB SSD right now for only $319... not as fast as the Samsung 850 EVO but half the price. Orbx says even a HDD will be okay with loading times a little longer but no performance hit once underway. Get ready for the future.

Download was pretty quick, about 15 minutes all said and done.  The scenery is spectacular, never seen anything like this before in any simulator, OrthoXP for XP11 comes close, but the accuracy and shear volume and quality objects is staggering.  They did an amazing job making this fit 72GB ... I would have liked to see the PR LOD bumped up one notch but that would have probably doubled the scenery file size.

Unfortunately I got a repeatable CTDs at a specific location and view direction ... need to evaluate what might be causing this.  I am using TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 which push VRAM usage up to around 10-11 GB and the PR certainly increase BUS loads to 50% or higher, with everything maxed out in 4K my GPU was frequently hitting 99% and my CPU temps were around 70C and all CPUs working at close to 95% utilization.  FPS was 25-30 (I lock at 30Hz).  I'll need to dial the graphics down a little to sustain 30Hz or need to figure out which objects are causing the most stress on FPS (possibly Wind mill animation) ... fortunately there are about 30+ Control Panel options for this scenery package to allow users to fine tune the details to met their hardware limits.

If Orbx are moving in this direction (and I hope they do), it'll make for pretty amazing scenery in the future ... can't imagine running this type of scenery on anything other than a 64bit platform as it's definitely a memory consumer.

Cheers, Rob.

16 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

but the accuracy and shear volume and quality objects is staggering

Agreed when it comes to volume but accuracy...? Maybe if you've never visited the Netherlands but I can't say I am happy with my hometown. Compare this real world photo with what TrueEarth gives me in that exact same spot. I am seriously disappointed with this.

Yes, the overal impression is nice and things look sort of real but after seeing the official screenshots I didn't expect this 'accuracy'. It's not even CLOSE. WIthout the photoreal ground textures I never would have 'recognized' this spot. Apart from not showing the proper buildings the shown ones are totally out of proportion too. And as I mentioned elsewhere the 'rijtjeshuizen' are sorely missed.

 

Edited April 25, 20188 yr by Guest