Orbx P3D 4.4 and NO SEASONS!

[dave2013 1,123]

Personally, I'm disappointed that ORBX has decided to devote so much of their resources to this TrueEarth scenery.  This is why openLC Africa has been delayed for so long and very likely why openLC Asia wasn't even mentioned in ORBX's 2019 roadmap.  I can only think that TE scenery must be a great selling product for them.

Dave

Edited December 30, 2018 by dave2013

[Rocky_53 1,566]

Like many others, I always fly at the time it is in real life, so simming in the winter, in my man cave, seems pointless if I load up a flight from my local airport and it is the middle of summer!

[Amon1973 1,421]

I think I'll be joining Rob on this one and opting out, it's a real shame because I was really looking forward to it as well.

[simbol 5,819]

1 minute ago, eaim said:

I think I'll be joining Rob on this one and opting out, it's a real shame because I was really looking forward to it as well.

+1

[DrumsArt 270]

I have all the FTX regions+Netherlands , I'm perfectly happy with them.

If other FTX regions come out, I'll buy them but there's no way I'm buying other TrueEarth scenery other than Netherlands that I bought to see...I saw....

Richard

[odaber 4]

I advise all simmers to take a trip to Norway winterland and include Airports of Norway ++ freeware, you will find it all here: https://www.flightsimnorway.com/

Edited December 30, 2018 by odaber

[kevinfirth 1,392]

1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

No seasons = no purchase for me.  I understand the cost/complexity involved, but 4 seasons in many areas of the world are rather dramatically different and it's important for me to "feel" that difference as it gives flights a 4X re-use because of the season.  But how is this going to look when we fly from LC based Orbx area with seasons to a permanent summer in a TE area?  It's going to look very odd as the winter transition just "stops".

If it costs more to produce, then I'll pay more, but that LAST thing I want to see is yet another add-on following the path of LCD (lowest common denominator) ... we had and have this issue already with the FSX ball and chain, now we're going to get it again?  I hope it's not related to "workflow" and XP11 limitations? ... this is NOT what progress is about ... one step forward three steps back.

I'll vote with my wallet, but not very happy about this decision at all ... I hope JV has a re-think.

Cheers, Rob.

Some people are going to be ok with one season. I'll still buy it because right now with existing legacy PR I still only have one season.  I'd much rather have 5, and I'll pay a reasonable premium for it, and the download bandwidth. 

Id like OrbX to do seasons as an option, for those who want a bigger feature set and are happy to cough for it. 

On the positive side, from what Ive seen the summer base imagery looks pretty good, the colour correction alone is worth the asking price and the 3D autogen/POI/cityscapes look plausible.  We just need seasons please :)

Edited December 30, 2018 by kevinfirth

[Guest]

I'm more than willing to pay for additional work by Orbx dev team ... there are still many "features" that could be implemented but not being implemented because I'm guessing the FSX ball and chain and it's memory limits ... example read NOTAM feeds for airports, runway closures etc. and animate temporary closure trailer/signs on the runway (Flashing X) ...

and the many other activities that happen at an airport that will impact one's planned flight.  Especially winter time, airport runways get closed frequently ... looking at my Foreflight app and NOTAM on PACV with runway closure.  I'm almost certain these types of features aren't being done because of FSX memory limits and not because of developer talents and I know there is no P3D SDK limitation.

This might sound like Orbx bashing, but it's not (far from it).  Since the 64bit P3D V4.x release and the removal of memory limits, I'm very surprised that we're NOT seeing A LOT of new features that could be implemented in 64bit platform using P3D SDK ... it just feels like we're getting too much "well it might not work in FSX so we're not going to do it".  

Plea to devs, I'll pay for the extra work, please do it.  🙂

Cheers, Rob.

[GSalden 4,656]

40 minutes ago, DrumsArt said:

I have all the FTX regions+Netherlands , I'm perfectly happy with them.

If other FTX regions come out, I'll buy them but there's no way I'm buying other TrueEarth scenery other than Netherlands that I bought to see...I saw....

Richard

What I feel is a pity is the  attitude towards tte customers who bought TE Netherlands for P3Dv4 : after 9 months still no service pack and no info. Customers asking about it were ignored.

All barns are way oversized and they were other glitches. Missing light houses...

They simply went on with other platforms and the GB TE series ... 

So myself I might buy the Justflight UK VFR series instead of the TE GB..

 

[kevinfirth 1,392]

Some devs are following an FSX oriented development path which is limiting features.  Thats not the case with Orbx TE I dont think because its only for P3D4.  I think this is sadly (and possibly with some justification) a case of JV not believing that his market will bear the additional cost of the extra work sufficiently enough to profit from it.  Some of us will stump up what it takes regardless, but we arent many.  The problem is that cost is only one barrier.  Physical storage is another serious one - some people just dont have enough Tb to go round.  Imho the TE limitations are imposed by cold headed business thinking, not laziness or addiction to the FSX SDK.

Remember earth simulations? Their Shawbury Fields scenery was one of the best large scale sceneries Ive ever seen.  It was for FSX..and it tanked commercially.  Autogenesis, technically accomplished, multiple season colour corrected PR, prob better than TE in a direct comparison..available in up to 30cm/pp resolution...tanked commercially.

Root cause: insufficient numbers of people wanting the scenery, willing to pay for it and/or incapable of storing it.

Attitudes will change to some extent as faster larger storage becomes more widely accepted, but its simply tough developing this kind of scenery to a high standard at a profitable price point.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

The force is strong in Photorealistic scenery. It looks great initially but then one starts seeing the limitations. I spent some time populating small areas in XP with Ortho4XP. Then I started using up drive space and started wondering whether it was worth it just to see Uncle Elmo's house. And the endless summer also gets tiresome after a while. As I said previously, Photorealistic is best for warm climates and POIs. Unless some entity is going to release 4 season free to almost free worldwide coverage its application in consumer flightsim scenery is limited.

Even the personal use solutions like Ortho4XP rely on vendors like Google leaving their high resolution images exposed for free. I don't know how many people use FS Earth Tiles to create airport backgrounds but the trick to make FSET find the Google hi res server data has been blocked recently by Google. Only the previous server version is still reachable. Not surprisingly, Google wants everyone to pay for their tiles.

Edited December 30, 2018 by jabloomf1230

[HiFlyer 9,343]

I think it's what people are accustomed to. If you've been flying forever with four seasons, it might be a big deal, and to others it will be a big shrug.

Also, ginormous sceneries easily within the 100+ gigabyte range likely have significant bandwidth costs to Orbx, which would likely result in price hikes that would suppress the market for such addons in a non-virtuous cycle, and would likely engender lots of "No thanks, they must be kidding." posts.

I can already see in my minds eye the complaints about having to buy new HD's, data plans, etc.

[Skywolf 992]

Why do I get the feeling that something like this will be in the corner for upcoming P3D releases.  The teaser is already here - this is using XPlane but I will not be surprised that like this could happen very soon in Prepar3d world

 

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/165519-true-earth-and-seasons/?do=findComment&comment=1454799

[ckyliu 1,749]

Ah man this thread has been a good giggle, so much outrage! It seems many posters aren't flying VFR or used photo scenery before.

Wide area photographic scenery has never had seasons to my knowledge because of the practicalities of providing it; required space as pointed out is already huge, but you have to generate the seasons since source photos don't exist and doing that convincingly is still years away imo. It's hard enough to just colour balance one season to start with!

Landclass based scenery is great for instrument flyers and has seasons. I have photoscenery for visual navigation and sight seeing so can't sacrifice the accuracy but can't say I miss seasons all that much. If you must have seasons just stick with your existing ORBX regions (these will cut it for VFR nav, just about), no need for all the upset!

Edited December 31, 2018 by ckyliu

[Greggy_D 935]

11 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

If you must have seasons just stick with your existing ORBX regions (these will cut it for VFR nav, just about), no need for all the venting!

I believe everyone is entitled to their opinion.  I certainly do not see anyone out of line in this thread.