Just Flight Ortho with autogen released for UK South

[tutmeister 695]

Don't know how this compares to Orbx's TE yet but it is a good price. Am going to grab it tonight and do a comparison although so far Southern England TE is only out for Xplane. It is still the same files though so should compare ok.

I imagine the orbx autogen and custom buildings would be better but who knows? Competition is great!

Cheers

[F737MAX 5,491]

1 hour ago, tutmeister said:

I imagine the orbx autogen and custom buildings would be better but who knows? Competition is great!

Competition is normally great, but from the photos this Just Flight product is well down in quality compared to ORBX's TE, yet at the same price point.
Lower LOD, washed out colours, missing landmarks (no Shard building in London as the most obvious) and has poor water masking all highlighted on the product sales page!
It feels rushed, which is a shame. With a bit more care and attention, it could've competed on being more FPS friendly.

ORBX have announced that they are releasing their P3D version in the next week.
I will wait for this instead.

Edited January 28, 2019 by F737NG

[ckyliu 1,749]

@tutmeisterWhich simulators is this product for? I thought "Ortho" was an Xplane thing.

[pmb 5,137]

How come:

ORBX is using ZL17 = resolution ~1.2 m and uses 125 GB for the XP version. JustFlight says they are using the same general resolution (1.2 m) and require 10 GB only. They must be masters of compression.

Kind regards, Michael

[pmb 5,137]

20 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

@tutmeisterWhich simulators is this product for? I thought "Ortho" was an Xplane thing.

Any Sim can use orthophotos: P3D, XP, and Aerofly (the latter exclusively). Even FSX could.

Kind regards, Michael

[ckyliu 1,749]

@pmbso that would be what I've been calling "photographic scenery" for the last decade. So what platform is this "ortho" for?

1.2m/px resolution is what I would know as LOD15, so I'm guessing ZL17 is the Xplane equivalent? The Horizon VFR X Photographic (originally for FSX) I use is already at that resolution and the installation is definitely a lot bigger than 10GB but I understand you can compress BGLs a lot more for P3D.

Edited January 28, 2019 by ckyliu

[pmb 5,137]

As far as I can tell, orthophotos is more or less a synonym for photoscenery which I think is always based on orthophotos (what else?).

I'll leave it to the experts to explain the relation between resolution, LOD and ZL. I only read, both products (ORBX and Just Flight) claim to use a general resolution of ~ 1m/pixel. While ORBX on screenshots indeed looks much better.

Kind regards, Michael

[tttocs 301]

"Ortho" is a sim agnostic term, and frankly one I prefer to the old "Photoreal" often used in FSX' heyday. 

Just took a look at the VFR Real Scenery product page at JF (and to clarify, yes this is for FSX/P3D) and it was less than exciting.  Some of the London shots (one in particular looking up the Thames at Tower Bridge and the Tower of London) were, well, underwhelming and I agree with other comments about poor water masking, etc.  I like competition too, but based on the product page images, I don't think this offers much competition to Orbx TrueEarth stuff.

Scott

[tutmeister 695]

Initial thoughts only....

I'm going to hold off on direct comparisons and screen shots until I can compare directly to P3D TE rather than the x-plane version.

It is a long time since I have used the generation X scenery but it feels a bit like that with revolution X over the top. It isn't the sharpest but the entire install directory is less than 7.5 GB. Performance is good in that on a 8600 at 4.5GHz and a 1080ti over orbx England I run high settings with the scenery sliders about 3/4 to keep 60fps. With this I have every slider to the right and get around 80fps. Turning on vsync give a solid 60fps and a very nice flight experience in the a2a Cherokee. The autogen is pretty generic with houses and industrial buildings in mostly the right places. Tree and house sizes are pretty good too. It is a bit washed out and needed some hdr tweaking to make it look good. Scenery popping was evident in the distance but then this is P3D.

I did compare to x-plane TE but the x-plane scenery engine is so different I don't think it would be an accurate comparison so will have to wait a week or so. Also x-plane TE seems to have some sort of weird granular texture overlay to try and compensate for the lower resolution that they used on England compared to the Netherlands. However it doesn't pop autogen in and the region specific houses are great. Flying with clear road textures looks great as it nullifies the horrible dual carriage ways that x-plane seems to stick everywhere. Anyway this isn't about x-plane so once TE is out I'll post some comparison shots.

Cheers

Edited January 28, 2019 by tutmeister

[G-RFRY 1,705]

If you have ORBX UK advised to remove for TE according to John performance impact, JF product  will run on FSX and P3Dv4 there's a clue to performance. 

[Chock 17,769]

Was a bit underwhelmed by the screenshots, but when they bring out NW England volume I will probably give it a try.

[Gabe777 132]

As much as I support our own Just Flight.... those water masks / coastal zones are ugly !

Look at Horizon's old FSX photoscenery.... THAT is how to do water masks and coasts.

Non-starter for me... unless they redo them.

The inland areas and the cliffs on the coast, look great, but I cannot get past the harsh and jarring coastlines.... AND there are too many sharp demarcation areas, with regimented patches of light blue water... ouch. Nasty.

Edited January 29, 2019 by Gabe777

[GSalden 4,650]

Only If you are struggling to have a good framerate you should buy JF UK. 

Otherwise go with TU UK....

[GCBraun 2,390]

Well, if the product-page screenshots look that bad, I believe that it is definitely not worth buying. My free orthophotos/autogen look much better.

[G-RFRY 1,705]

But for FSX users ORBX is not an option, I don't use it but it`s not dead sim for a lot of simmers.