OrbX KSBA Santa Barbara and NA Southern California

[Simicro 247]

You are most welcome.

Here https://orbxdirect.com/product/ksba you are right.

And here https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/162027-ksba-santa-barbara-municipal-airport-now-available-for-fsxp3d/   they say "For the best experience, FTX Southern California should be..."

There is the Black Friday before Christmas. I read that under 1 month after release, there is no discount,  and recent products have a max of 30% discount.

 

[vc10man 732]

As this is a fairly newly-released airport, very much doubt it will be available in Black Friday 50% Sales Offers, but I could be wrong. In the past they have not listed newly-released stuff.

[MartinRex007 390]

1 hour ago, raymie said:

Thanks Simicro for sharing that. I went back to the Orbx Direct website and here is what they say:

Prerequisite Products

You require at least one of the following products to use KSBA Santa Barbara Municipal Airport, and they listed NA SoCal. It's a bit confusing in light of the fact that region is not essential according to your experience and others as well. 

Again, thanks for sharing your experience. I am hoping that by Christmas if Orbx has a sale, Santa Barbara will be somewhat discounted.
 

Frooglesim has recently posted a good video helping to explain some of the confusion surrounding what is and isn't required for Orbx airports, informative video and worth a view.

Edited November 10, 2018 by MartinRex007

[Jim Young 2,356]

I have had major issues with Orbx SoCal scenery as it is not compatible with FSDT KLAX or FSDT KLAS unless you do some major modifications.  Because of that I simply have not reinstalled it on my new build as it is a chore to make the airports and the surrounding areas compatible elevation wise.  They know it is not fully compatible with many popular add-on sceneries and have detailed instructions on making the scenery compatible.  I would be more interested in this scenery if they would change their installers to work better with incompatible scenery.  For instance, they could have an option in the installer or interface asking something like FSDT KLAX and or KLAS installed?  If you indicate they are installed, the installer would automatically go in and turn certain bgl's off in the Orbx directories (there are several files and folders you have to change for each add-on scenery).  They could then go into Scenery/World/Scenery and switch the appropriate elevation bgl's off.  Orbx SoCal is a pretty old scenery and has never been updated except for maybe the Libraries for the scenery.  I wish developers like Orbx would make it easier for their customers who have to install and reinstall this scenery instead of one having to go into the Orbx Forums and go through several forums to find the solutions to make SoCal compatible. They have known for several years SoCal causes many anomalies with FSDT KLAX/KLAS.

[Dave_YVR 971]

 Getting those FSDT sceneries to work in FTX SoCal is pretty simple though and only takes a couple minutes. It's only mildly more complex than the dozens of other add-on airports that i have within all of the other FTX regions.

[ryanbatc 12,833]

Socal is rough on my machine.  I put most scenery sliders to normal or below medium when I fly.  It's not so bad once you get away from LA though

[raymie 81]

4 hours ago, MartinRex007 said:

Frooglesim has recently posted a good video helping to explain some of the confusion surrounding what is and isn't required for Orbx airports, informative video and worth a view.

Thanks! I will take a look at his video to understand this topic better.

[medx421 50]

From the developer of Santa Barbara in the Orbx forums:

"It doesn't actually work perfectly, if you look in certain areas there are anomalies. However, if these don't bother you, then of course it's possible to use KSBA without SCA.

We list SCA as a requirement because it's needed to see the scenery exactly as designed without any of those anomalies. If we didn't then we'd get a lot of support requests from people who might actually be bothered by them.

I can't speak for other airports in the area, how many problems an airport has without its corresponding region greatly depends on the particular product. It might have minor ones like KSBA, or might be much more major. All we can guarantee is that the airports will only work without any problems whatsoever if you have the corresponding region, since we don't test airports without the region."

 

[raymie 81]

Thanks for sharing the developer's comments. That;s helpful information regarding my decision to purchase KSBA and possibly what to expect without having the region installed. At least there will be no surprises if one sees any "anomalies".

[Simicro 247]

2 screenshots made by a french colleague. If I am not miskaten, the 1st one is without SoCal and the 2nd with SoCal.

 

[Christopher Low 5,352]

Quote

"It doesn't actually work perfectly, if you look in certain areas there are anomalies....."

So, what exactly are these "anomalies"?

[MartinRex007 390]

In the above two photo's there is a slight difference in the color of the textures between the area of the airport and the surrounding area if just using Land Class and not the region, hardly that noticeable.

Edited November 11, 2018 by MartinRex007

[StewartH 66]

1 hour ago, Jim Young said:

Absolutely a false statement.

Instead of making such a dogmatic statement, why not ask Dave why he believes installation is as simple as he says.  I agree with him, in fact--installation of the two airports is not that difficult at all. 

[Jim Young 2,356]

32 minutes ago, StewartH said:

Instead of making such a dogmatic statement, why not ask Dave why he believes installation is as simple as he says.  I agree with him, in fact--installation of the two airports is not that difficult at all. 

Thanks for your advice.  I appreciate it.  I have removed my "dogmatic" comment in response to his statement it was "pretty simple and only takes a couple of minutes".  I made my dogmatic comments because, for me, as a computer expert, I found the process quite daunting and laborious.  There are a lot of switches required to be turned on and off in several Orbx directories to include Scenery/World/Scenery.  For KLAS you also have to download and install a fix developed by Holger.  Holger is doing an excellent job in the FTX/Orbx Compatibility Forum and I certainly appreciate all of the hard work he does to make Orbx scenery compatible with other add-on products.  It is just that SoCal/NoCal were released back in around 2015 and immediately not compatible with FSDT KLAX/KLAS and this is now 2018 and I would have hoped for an update to SoCal/NoCal to make these products compatible with FSDT products w/o having to manually change or download and install about 8 or 9 "fixes" for each FSDT scenery.  I think there's about 8 sceneries not compatible with SoCal.

I have since moved on the using MSE SoCal and NoCal and that scenery is fully compatible.

Apologize to you and Dave for my "dogmatic" comments.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Jim Young

[Dave_YVR 971]

33 minutes ago, Jim Young said:

Thanks for your advice.  I appreciate it.

  I only say that Jim as an admin your words are often more influential to other users, and some may take it the wrong way and not even try to get them working. Getting FSDT KLAS, KLAX, or even any other addon airport within any FTX region requires a bit of work, it's not much nor is it difficult. KLAX for example is renaming 4 files, KLAS is 6, very easy.