25 hours an 47 minutes later...

[birdguy]

TrueEarth Netherlands downloaded, unpacked, and installed.

Yesterday afternoon at exactly 1:00Pm I started downloading installing the program from FTXGlobal and then proceeded to prepare a roast beef for dinner.  Late this afternoon at 2:47PM it was done and ready to check out.

I decided on a 20 minute flight from Schiphol to Antwerp in my Quest Kodiak.  It seems by default everything in the configuration is checked.  My FrameRate is locked at 30FPS.

I took off from Schiphol and noticed some skipping but nothing that took away from the enjoyment of the flight.  The frame rate would drop to the 15-18 range but go right back up 30.  The further away I got from Schiphol the fewer skips I noticed but they never went away completely.  I did not experience any hesitations.  

I don't know what the coverage of The Netherlands is but as I crossed the border into Belgium I did not notice any abrupt change.  Either the coverage extends into the Antwerp area or the transition is seamless.

The only downside I see is the extremely long download time.  Otherwise I give the scenery a 10.

The Netherlands is about 16,000 square miles.  England, the next schedule TrueEarth scenery is about three times as large at a bit over 50,000 square miles.  All things being equal it looks like a three day download. 

Windows 10 Pro

i7 7700K CPU @ 4.20GHZ

64GB RAM

nVidia GeForce 1080 Ti0.0

Noel

[scianoir]

Thanks for the mini review Noel - it’s reassuring to know that it’s performance is pretty good. I haven’t bought it yet as I was a bit concerned about its size and the effect that such a big addon might have on performance but I might consider it now as I love the colours when flying (RW) over the Netherlands. Could I ask do you use any separate payware for  Schipol Airport?

Bill

[Matthew Kane]

It is a great package, and a glimpse into the future. If they can start replacing everything with this tech I would be one very happy chappy 😎

JV has also said they will be upgrading their download network to an opt in Peer to Peer network to speed things up, you can leave FTX Central open to share your downloads with others for store credit. This would speed things up but you can also opt out if you don't like it. I would opt in because I have most of their stuff, unlimited internet access so free store credit works me 

[himmelhorse]

Hello guys,

This is probably a little off topic but here goes.

I have long ago given up any consideration of using the ORBX Download and install system due to my slow internet (10 MBS) I now only use the manual install after downloading with Internet Download Manager.

The actual reason for this post is that I would like to think that there are advantages in using the FTX system but for me, this makes a long download even longer. I am wondering if the problem is with the ORBX system and whether or not ORBX has any upgrade plans.

Birdguy, with regard to your nearly 26 hours download/install time, I would like to point out that using FTX Central 3, it took me in excess of three days to download FTX Global. Whilst I appreciate your pain, can someone shed a tear or two for my initial epic journey into ORBX. LOL

I now have all my ORBX scenery saved to hard disk and reinstall is now quick and easy, so as an alternative for the slow download, the manual system is fine.

Regards

Tony

 

[birdguy]

Bill, I am a North American flyer so I have no European addons except the Orbx sceneries.  I have them all and fly in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand from time to time...especially my ancestral home of Norway.

Noel

 

[Matthew Kane]

5 hours ago, himmelhorse said:

I have long ago given up any consideration of using the ORBX Download and install system due to my slow internet (10 MBS) I now only use the manual install after downloading with Internet Download Manager.

Hi Tony,

Yes good advice and this works with all scenery except for TrueEarth. If you do buy True Earth Netherlands you can only download it in FTX Central. This will be the case with future TrueEarth scenery from what I understand

If you do buy TrueEarth Netherlands just double check before you purchase it. From my account it says this about it on the manual download page:

Quote

Download

No download is currently available for TrueEarth Netherlands .

The manual download is currently turned off.

[Christopher Low]

Quote

The Netherlands is about 16,000 square miles.  England, the next schedule TrueEarth scenery is about three times as large at a bit over 50,000 square miles.  All things being equal it looks like a three day download.

TrueEarth England will not include all four seasons. Probably only two.

[harrry]

43 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

TrueEarth England will not include all four seasons. Probably only two.

A shame, spring and Autumn are such a feature there. I guess they will give Summer and winter.  A big loss.

 

[F737MAX]

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

TrueEarth England will not include all four seasons. Probably only two.

 

53 minutes ago, harrry said:

A shame, spring and Autumn are such a feature there. I guess they will give Summer and winter.  A big loss.

 

There is recent talk by JV on Orbx's TE England XP thread that they may look at making seasons available as optional extras.

That would save users valuable SSD space if they so wish. It also opens up the potential for Orbx to monetise the extra seasons (though that has not been mentioned).

[harrry]

7 minutes ago, F737NG said:

 

 

There is recent talk by JV on Orbx's TE England XP thread that they may look at making seasons available as optional extras.

That would save users valuable SSD space if they so wish. It also opens up the potential for Orbx to monetise the extra seasons (though that has not been mentioned).

One problem with Xplane is the lack of seasons.  They are left for the add on developer to work with.  A shame if the major add on developer for P3D and FSX takes the seasons out of FSX.

[Christopher Low]

Lack of seasons has always been a "problem" with photoscenery (in any flight simulator), although it has never been a problem for me. I prefer to fly in spring or summer, so seasonal variation is basically irrelevant to me.

[Guest]

13 hours ago, scianoir said:

it’s reassuring to know that it’s performance is pretty good. I haven’t bought it yet as I was a bit concerned about its size and the effect that such a big addon might have on performance but I might consider it now as I love the colours when flying (RW) over the Netherlands.

He didn't say what his settings were. 😉 In order to sort of enjoy TrueEarth in P3D with all 3D scenery stuff enabled (it would be a waste to lower the related settings and miss out on everything) I had to disable shadows, water, reflections, weather, lower AA, turn off traffic, in short, I had to disable almost everything and I had to fly the default Maule. Flying my favorite GA (A2A Comanche) killed fps already. And even then fps usually was around 23 or so (I had it locked at that otherwise things stuttered badly). Not my kind of fps. 😉 So I personally wouldn't say performance is pretty good: TrueEarth may kill performance unless you take heavy measures. (PC specs: i7 [email protected], 16 RAM, GTX1080, W10, all SSD's.)

I in fact uninstalled TrueEarth from P3D and now only fly it in AFS2: no performance problems there LOL!

[HiFlyer]

7 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

Yes good advice and this works with all scenery except for TrueEarth. If you do buy True Earth Netherlands you can only download it in FTX Central. This will be the case with future TrueEarth scenery from what I understand

Except for the Aerofly version, which can indeed be purchased and downloaded on Steam.

[birdguy]

For Jeoren.

I am no expert on flight simulations so my settings are those recommended to me (with perhaps a few variations) by a friend who I think knows more about flight simulation than anybody else I know.

I hesitate to publish the settings because when you do threads turn into 'well I have xxx set to yyy' or 'why do you have this set at that?'  But here goes anyway:

FXAA - ON

AA: 4xMSAA

Aniostropic 16x

Resolution High 2048-2048

Vsync - on

Triple buffering

Level of Detail Radius - MAX

Tesselation Factor - Medium

Mesh Resolution 5m

Texture Resolution 15cm

Use High Resolution Textures checked

Water Detail Medium

Reflections: Terrain, Vegetation, Buildings checked

Special Effects Detail Medium

Special Effects Distance Medium

Shadow Quality Medium

Shadow Draw Distance Low

Shadow Casting and Receiving - All checked except particles 

I didn't like flying in weather when I was flying real airplanes nor do I when flying my sim.  I fly on June 20th, 10:00AM, with a layer of cirrus with the bases at 39,000ft and the tops at 40,000ft to give the sky some texture.

Cloud Draw Distance 70 miles

Cloud Coverage Density Low

Detailed Clouds checked

Traffic:  I use MyTraffic  set at 25%,  General Aviation set at 75%  All others at 25%

It works for my on my system.

Noel

 

[Guest]

16 hours ago, birdguy said:

I hesitate to publish the settings because when you do threads turn into 'well I have xxx set to yyy' or 'why do you have this set at that?'

I can understand that. ;) However, I was mainly trying to say that Bill's impression performance was pretty good wasn't actually based on facts. And btw you forgot to mention the most important settings when it comes to performance and TrueEarth: the Scenery Objects! ;)