Orbx TrueEarth Great Britain South Released for Prepar3D v4

[GSalden 4,714]

26 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

But that requires Dev time to make it happen, maybe when the new team starts in September we'll see it addressed

Somewhere I have the feeling that that will not happen ...

Orbx is working on multiple projects and SP’s are mostly released 6-12 months later.. 

The True Earth series are XP packages ported over to P3Dv4. If you disable all shadows, use clear weather and set Lod Rafius to minimum then it is sort of flyable for most people.

I have built an extra left view pc ( 8700K @5.0 Ghz / 16 Gb 4000 memory / 2080 OC / 2 TB M2 SSD ) to give the main pc  ( 7940X@4.7 Ghz / 32 Gb 3400 memory / 2080 Ti OC / 2 TB M2 SSD ) some  breathing space ..... 3x 4K displays..

I now can fly over TE NL Amsterdam + FT Schiphol + Live AI Traffic + Real Weather with high settings , but don’t ask me at what financial cost ..

Orbx should do more for P3Dv4 users regarding heavy scenery ....

Edited June 29, 2019 by GSalden

[Christopher Low 5,408]

3 minutes ago, F737NG said:

 

@Christopher Low I don't know what mesh you are currently using. Toposim  is currently offering a GB mesh up to 19m for free on their own website under 'Daily Freebie'. Could be better than 30m with TE GB North.

My existing Horizon UK VFR Photographic Scenery has a 5m mesh resolution, and that is essential for a country like Scotland. I dread to think what (for example) Dunnottar Castle looks like in the XPlane version of TrueEarth GB North. In the real world, this is a ruined castle on top of a high promontory above the North Sea (around 15 miles south of Aberdeen). This really needs to be corrected for the P3D v4 version.

Edited June 29, 2019 by Christopher Low

[F737MAX 5,755]

43 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

My existing Horizon UK VFR Photographic Scenery has a 5m mesh resolution, and that is essential for a country like Scotland. I dread to think what (for example) Dunnottar Castle looks like in the XPlane version of TrueEarth GB North. In the real world, this is a ruined castle on top of a high promontory above the North Sea (around 15 miles south of Aberdeen). This really needs to be corrected for the P3D v4 version.

I have visited it in person, so know what the problem would be.

Here's Dunnottar Castle on my sim with Orbx Scotland, Pilot's FS Global Ultimate Next Gen, freeware Scottish Castles vol. 1 by Richard Bui, and mesh set at 5m in the sim.



Not perfect by any means, but a whole lot better than a 30m mesh would give.
 

[Christopher Low 5,408]

I have visited the castle twice, and a 5m mesh with decent quality photoscenery would be acceptable. The screenshot below shows the view in Horizon UK VFR Photographic Scenery Volume 7 Scotland Central. No 3D model of the castle (even with Scotflight), but the promontory is reasonably well represented, and of course the 0.6m per pixel photoscenery makes it look a million times better than the ORBx FTX Scotland landclass scenery. The image is a bit dark, but that's just my brightness settings!

Edited June 29, 2019 by Christopher Low

[kevinfirth 1,470]

22 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

Of course, they will need to source higher resolution mesh for the P3D version of GB North.

Why Chris? just swap out the mesh scenery entries and use your 5m???

[Christopher Low 5,408]

Yes, but the problem is that ORBx will design the scenery for whatever mesh they use to build it. In other words, the 3D model (and location) of Dunnottar Castle would be designed to fit in a landscape that has low resolution 30m mesh.....and that would be completely different from the 5m mesh version that I am looking for. I would be interested to see how this castle (and the coastline around it) is represented in XPlane 11.....

[F737MAX 5,755]

At long last, Orbx has just announced that TrueEath GB North, Central and a revised v2 of South will be released this week.

Features for all 3 regions include:

• Hand corrected, crisp, color-matched aerial imagery
• *New* Configurable options for those looking for additional performance gains
• Accurate building shapes to precisely match the ortho imagery footprints
• Millions of trees at the correct height and location
• Buildings at the correct height and location
• VFR landmarks such as masts, windfarms, churches, power-lines, castles, stadiums and lighthouses
• Hundreds of custom-modelled 3D POIs
• Hand-placed and custom modelled landmarks
• Sharp and detailed 10-meter mesh
• Superb watermasking along the entire coastline
• Summer season only with full night-lighting supported

"This update focuses significantly on performance, ensuring that you have the same stunning visual appearance whilst enhancing usability. New techniques have been discovered to improve the autogen, along with giving users the choice to use the simulator's settings to adjust scenery density depending on their personal system. These techniques have been carried over to Great Britain Central and North."

Most importantly, existing owners of TE GB South will get the v2 update for free.

It's been a long wait for this. Very excited that we're very close to having the whole of GB available.

[Christopher Low 5,408]

That is fantastic news. I will be getting the lot as soon as I have my new PC build up and running. It's good to hear that they also have higher resolution mesh for Scotland than they released with the XPlane version. I also hope (and expect) to see all of the 3D POI models that were released in the XP updates.

[Michael Moe 497]

Is central 4 still mandatory for this along with ESGG ?

Is it safe to run the central installer now without scenery.cfg issues at all? 

Michael Moe (Central 3 user)

[Christopher Low 5,408]

Quote

Version 2 for Great Britain South will be a free update to existing customers and we plan to have an exciting offer to complete the whole package.

It looks like there will be a discounted price to complete the collection. I like the sound of that!

[GSalden 4,714]

TE GB has been installed with FTX Central here. I do not want to install Central 4 to be able to install the update ....

[Coneman 71]

"Hand corrected". I was suspicious when I saw that based on things I had seen in TE South. Sure enough, green roads and parking lots. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. TE NE looks so much better. Why??

[Christopher Low 5,408]

Personally, a few green roads pales into insignificance next to the consistently realistic colouration of most of the landscape in TrueEarth GB South. I will take that any day over the wildly inconsistent colouration (and texture quality) in the Horizon versions of England and Wales.

[CFIJose 5,485]

Those three regions look tempting.

I'm wondering whether the payware airports will be compatible and are any of you experiencing mesh morphing in any of the TE regions?

[Nyxx 6,994]

About Central 4,

Since I had to do a complete new install of P3D v4.5 because i upgraded to W10....(yes late to the party I know)

I decided to use Central 4, all fine but it .....let's say rubbish as the word i would use is not allowed when it comes to looking at scenery entries. Everything is working fine but what a mess it is in there. 

You can move a airport down the list and it jumps another up! swaps them around. No idea whats going off in my scenery orders but it does  enter Orbx stuff where you ask it to but......

Before all XML enters were at the top all in order and others below and you could arrange as you feel fit. It's a bit of a lottery now. But it works!

O BTW I made a folder to install all Orbx into outside main P3D folder, yer.....GL with that!!!! ended up just installing in the main folder....lol