ORBX EU Netherlands TrueEarth released

[AnkH 2,264]

Well, although some People did not like my critical asking it seems that is was valid. Performance is an issue for most, accuracy is not as good as expected, below 3000ft the photoground seems blurry, photoground roads and vector data is not properly aligned and yet it fills 77GB on your harddisk. Without your word not allowed point of view, is there really anything that makes this product a "game-changer"? I mean, really? Not things like "It's from ORBX, it's new and therefore it's good".

Speaking of trade-off. OpenLC Europe, FTX Global and FTX Vector with high settings. Does not need that much disk space, covers whole Europe and parts of the world and then? Does it really look that bad? Comparison shots are somehow missing. Even ORBX does not provide comparison shots. I wonder why...

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Oliver Ooi said:

Jeroen, can you tell me this location, perhaps the coordinates?

Used Google maps to figure it out (can't check it in P3D for the moment):

52°10'06.8"N 5°17'12.6"E

It's in Soest, looking to the east. When you check it in Google maps, using satelite images, you will easily recognize the tall buildings.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Anders Bermann said:

@J van E - have you reported your findings to the ORBX forum?

Yes, and the only reply I got so far (from an Orbx employee) was:

"I have to say that this screen shot seems to represent the real world very well indeed,
including excellent representations of the actual buildings.
Evidently, I do not need to post a comparison with Google Earth.
I think that the frame rate is remarkable also, considering the level of detail."

I should add that the poster added a picture of some other part of the scenery that did indeed look okay so he was actually referring to that picture but I thought it was an odd reply to my post and pictures nonetheless. How can you say something like that as a reply to my pics! Feels like a denial of the fact that major parts of the scenery don't look as it does in real life.

[Guest]

50 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Well, although some People did not like my critical asking it seems that is was valid. Performance is an issue for most, accuracy is not as good as expected, below 3000ft the photoground seems blurry, photoground roads and vector data is not properly aligned and yet it fills 77GB on your harddisk. Without your word not allowed point of view, is there really anything that makes this product a "game-changer"? I mean, really? Not things like "It's from ORBX, it's new and therefore it's good".

Speaking of trade-off. OpenLC Europe, FTX Global and FTX Vector with high settings. Does not need that much disk space, covers whole Europe and parts of the world and then? Does it really look that bad? Comparison shots are somehow missing. Even ORBX does not provide comparison shots. I wonder why...

You are right for the most part but, in addition to my not too positive posts so far, I have to say that when you are simply flying at a regular altitude things look totally real. Incomparable with OpenLC, Vector, etc. A thousand times more realistic than landclass scenery. What you see down there with TrueEarth comes really close to reality. However, you should NOT be flying too low and compare actual buildings with the real thing. It is the overal experience that is great and feels pretty real. So I do recommend it still. I myself am however mainly looking forward to the Aerofly because of the performance: I sometimes struggle to get 20 fps with the default Maule already...! (i7 4790K@4.5 and 1080). It doesn't feel fluid at all (with all scenery sliders full right).

Compared to Ortho4XP: the biggest advantage of TrueEarth is that it doesn't require any work of your own and the ground textures look great all over the country which can't be said of most of the home made textures.

Is it a game-changer or a revolution? Well, it's a major step forward and the best 'region scenery' I've seen so far. But it's not Google Earth 3D in HD all over the place. This isn't full realism yet. We still have a long long way to go before we get full realism on our PC's. But for now I am pretty happy with this and I will certainly also buy PNW and GB (for Aerofly though).

Edited April 26, 2018 by Guest

[Guest]

1 hour ago, J van E said:

Yes, and the only reply I got so far (from an Orbx employee) was:

 

In the meantime Jarrad (of Orbx) replied to my post in a more satisfying manner. 😉 I think (or hope) he won't mind me quoting the relevant parts of this post here: it may clarify a few things. He doesn't deny some things may not look as good as I (and others) hoped (as can be seen in the pictures I posted) but it puts things in perspective and makes it clear that TrueEarth is a work of art indeed (as I already said in the meantime). I also post this here because I don't want my pictures to give a wrong impression: they only shows one specific side of the story. 

There are 160 CityScene cities/towns/villages included in the scenery; obviously (and as has been pointed out all along) this doesn't cover the entire coverage area, but for a country the size of Netherlands, I think you'll agree that 160 urban areas in higher detail is a heck of a lot, and would cover all a large proportion of the population centres. The City Scene areas do include nice representations of rijtjeshuizen (as can be seen in dozens of screenshots), but as has been stated elsewhere, this custom-building tech can't be easily (or more importantly, performance-friendly) translated to traditional autogen. Thousands and thousands of hand-edits to inaccurate autogen buildings have been done; in fact this has comprised a fair majority of the latter stages of beta testing. Given there are literally tens of millions of buildings dotted around the country, and even if 0.001% of the autogen buildings don't extrapolate correctly from their source data, it is entirely possible that there will still be placements that don't exactly match the height or shape of the building. It is incorrect to say that you won't find your house (unless there is a very small chance that the building isn't included in Dutch Government geographical surveys), if you have your autogen settings maxed out, you will indeed find a generic representation of your house where it should be. As Nick pointed out, if you would indeed like a better representation of a given area, post a topic in the support forums with co-ordinate and other info, and I'm sure the team would be happy to look into it for you for a future service pack.

I don't mean to come across as defensive, but merely trying to give an insight into the design decisions that have gone on behind the scenes by Eugene and the team. For a project that is encompassing an entire country in complete detail, it is important to remember that performance, time and practicality considerations need to be weighed against the everything-needs-to-perfect syndrome. We have been vary careful to ensure that we've been upfront about what this product is and what this product isn't - in fact this topic (https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/151913-introducing-orbx-netherlands-trueearth-the-complete-package/) was checked by 10 team members and went through four drafts before it was published. I think we can all agree that a scenery of this size, quality and scope has never been done before, and as the first of a new generation of products, we are all closely listening to what you have to say. 

 

Edited April 26, 2018 by Guest

[SquadronLeader 61]

Is it intended to install ORBX Truearth over existing ORBX programs such as base packs, vectors and Open GL - or does this replace them?

[Guest]

38 minutes ago, SquadronLeader said:

Is it intended to install ORBX Truearth over existing ORBX programs such as base packs, vectors and Open GL - or does this replace them?

It is not intended to be installed on top but you can do that: TrueEarth will override base packs, vectors and OpenLC. It will be put on top of those other addons in the library. You can use TrueEarth with or without the other addons installed but you won't see anything of vectors or OpenLC wherever TrueEarth is active. When you fly out of the TrueEarth region you will see Global, vector, etc. again.

[Maikel van der Heijden 4]

18 hours ago, awf said:

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,

Hi, I tried this method only I can't get it to work for me. When I start up at runway 36L the elevation seems odd and also the ""slootjes"" ditches seem very deep. Anyone else maybe have some advise for me?

 

Kind regards,

Maikel van der Heijden

[ErichB 3,642]

4 minutes ago, Maikel van der Heijden said:

Hi, I tried this method only I can't get it to work for me. When I start up at runway 36L the elevation seems odd and also the ""slootjes"" ditches seem very deep. Anyone else maybe have some advise for me?

 

Kind regards,

Maikel van der Heijden

Do you not have to re-run the elevation correction application when you switch some of these bgl's off.

Edited April 26, 2018 by ErichB

[Benjamin J 751]

Been following this thread. Bought TE NL as soon as it was released pretty much. Being Dutch, something like this seemed awesome. I'd used NL2000 in the past, but TE NL surpasses it by virtue of the autogen and all those added details. And, for 30USD, I thought it was a no-brainer...

So I took it for a quick spin with one of the default Carenado aircraft. I can echo some people's concerns with the combination FlyTampa EHAM and TE NL, which gave me about 20FPS using the Carenado bird. That said, all my sliders are full, or far right! Once I left EHAM behind and flew south to have a look at my hometown, Leiden, FPS quickly went back to 25, which is where I cao them. Also, normally I won't ever fly with those kind of settings in the PMDG NGX. While I haven tested out that combination, I'm pretty hopeful overall.

To those bringing up issues of accuracy, I do not share those concerns as much. I think you should put things in perspective. After all, this thing is about 30 USD. That's the same price as any FSDT or flightbeam  airport... You get my point. We're getting an entire country in photoreal, plus autogen, water masking, updated airports... I think that's pretty staggering for the price, and overall everything looks very good to me. Of course I understand the disappointment when you see a red-tiled roof on a place of an apartment building, or a large, flat rectangular "suburban mall" type building where your apartment building ought to be. To that I can only say that I'm assuming that mistakes like that will be ironed out over time... Again, we're getting the entire country in photoreal, plus all the features to enhance that photoreal, for the cost of 30USD. And from what I have seen, the vast majority of autogen does seem to be placed accurately.

So, to conclude, so far I've been very impressed with my hometown and its surroundings. I was able to fly along the highways and roads to pinpoint the location of my house. Even found my secondary school which, actually, looked surprisingly good (that said my high school didn't look as good, but oh well...).

If I had any criticism, it would be that I'd wish that there were more custom buildings in the skyline of The Hague, but that's pretty much it for now...

[Maikel van der Heijden 4]

40 minutes ago, ErichB said:

Do you not have to re-run the elevation correction application when you switch some of these bgl's off.

Hi, you mean the elevation correction via Vector? When I type in the ICAO code EHAM it doesn't show up. Interresting fact is when I start a flight on runway 36C landing 18R and taxi to the end everything is fine. Starting a flight on 36L seem to give the issue. Ditches are deep in both cases. Looking forward hearing from other users.

Maikel van der Heijden

[Mbergsma 1]

1 hour ago, Maikel van der Heijden said:

Hi, you mean the elevation correction via Vector? When I type in the ICAO code EHAM it doesn't show up. Interresting fact is when I start a flight on runway 36C landing 18R and taxi to the end everything is fine. Starting a flight on 36L seem to give the issue. Ditches are deep in both cases. Looking forward hearing from other users.

Maikel van der Heijden

Hello Maikel,

Had the same issue, all I did to correct it was with the  scenerycfgeditor move Amsterdam and Amsterdam_LC above the 

ORBX TrueEarth entries in the scenery.cfg file.

All was good after that.

 

Marinus.

[Maikel van der Heijden 4]

Hi Marinus,

First thing I did before starting up the sim. How are youre ditches looking arround runway 36L? I've noticed this topic on the ORBX forum, maybe I can try some more: https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/153456-eu-netherlands-trueearth-and-flytampa-eham/

Maikel van der Heijden

[Nemo 1,305]

Any reports about performance on EHAM (FlyTampa) approach with PMDG birds?

[sbague1 10]

On 4/24/2018 at 11:28 PM, HiFlyer said:

Maybe true, but i've found that people are generally creatures of habit, and tend to fly in certain defined areas in which they have a high interest. Which is to say, nobody is likely to buy the entire Us in Truearth scenery, even if it was feasible to create such a thing currently.

I myself have some states I would love to see, but for the rest of the country (where I wouldn't fly anyway) Orbx reguler stuff would be more than fine.

 

I agree 1000%