Considering several Orbx purchases due their great May sale...

1. Can you use Global openLC Europe without Global? I don't care for Global's low-res incorrect colors and hope they will evidently create a hi-res version with PBR. I know they "supposedly" require Global with their airports but I've been running several locations without no repercussions.

2. Which TrueEarth is better quality-wise Netherlands or Great Britain South for P3d v4? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

I don't have Global on one of my systems and have no issues at all with their airports, their regions or their OLC.

I have it setup on a second system for testing - I prefer GEP3D in the first system.

Vic

9 hours ago, SP2472 said:

Considering several Orbx purchases due their great May sale...

1. Can you use Global openLC Europe without Global? I don't care for Global's low-res incorrect colors and hope they will evidently create a hi-res version with PBR. I know they "supposedly" require Global with their airports but I've been running several locations without no repercussions.

2. Which TrueEarth is better quality-wise Netherlands or Great Britain South for P3d v4? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

I own many Orbx products, but not any of the True Earth releases. I understand that the Netherlands performs very much better than the UK. This is likely to be because of the flatter terrain, so lower mesh needing to be drawn and also it has far less autogen.  

10 hours ago, SP2472 said:

I know they "supposedly" require Global with their airports but I've been running several locations without no repercussions. 

They "require" global because their airports will blend in smoothly with surrounding LC (it's mostly because of the "deeper greener" looking textures). You can of course install any ORBX airport without other Global or Local LC but you will clearly see the boundaries of the scenery.

I also find ORBX LC policy a little bit strange (but that is my opinion) because:

1. You can buy a Global LC --> means the entire world gets a new look

2. You can buy regional LC (like EU, AM,...) --> these will replace Global LC in those regions to look more closer to what you would expect.

3. You can buy specific country LC (Germany N or S) --> these will replace tge regional EU LC which replaced the Global LC

4.... you get the point....

Edited May 7, 20197 yr by GEKtheReaper

@GEKtheReaper

1 (ORBX Global BASE) is NOT landclass, it just replaces default terrain textures and some of the autogen models that sit atop them.
2 (ORBX OpenLC xx) is ONLY landclass, there are no changes to textures or models but they are positioned more accurately and with more variety.
3 is BOTH plus mesh, vector data (roads, railways, rivers, coastlines), 3D landmarks and some custom cities for a smaller geographic area, often half a country. The textures included are unique to the region covered, and some of the autogen models are custom too. There are also upgrades to the airport detail, and small aerodromes are added.

1 and 2 compliment each other. 3 (ORBX regions) are "all-in-one" products at higher level of detail than the global stuff, and they will override/upgrade global in their areas.

@SP2472
1) I don't think you can use OpenLC without FTX Global Base, because it includes new classes that call up textures that only exist in FTX Global Base. If you don't want Global Base, look at F1 Ultimate Terrain X (UTX) which is vector and landclass and only calls the default textures so you can use it with any texture set you want (e.g. GEX, Adam Mills)

2) True Earth Great Britain South is the newer product so I would expect the quality is slightly better. But it has more reported framerate issues than TE Netherlands. TE Netherlands also had incorrectly sized buildings and Orbx were very slow to issue a fix, I don't know if they have actually done so yet. TE Netherlands has seasonal variations, TE GBS is permanently summer.

Edited May 7, 20197 yr by ckyliu

11 hours ago, SP2472 said:

Considering several Orbx purchases due their great May sale...

1. Can you use Global openLC Europe without Global? I don't care for Global's low-res incorrect colors and hope they will evidently create a hi-res version with PBR. I know they "supposedly" require Global with their airports but I've been running several locations without no repercussions.

2. Which TrueEarth is better quality-wise Netherlands or Great Britain South for P3d v4? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

1) You need both FTXG & LC for best results. You can add FTX Vectors, but Vectors causes micro pauses and lower fps on some systems. At 50% off it's a real bargain.

2) I've stayed away from FTX TE addons because of the large downloads, slow loading times, and poor sim performance. These addons seem to to be better suited for XPlane 11. The upcoming PNW for XP 11 looks amazing!

1 hour ago, ckyliu said:

1 (ORBX Global BASE) is NOT landclass, it just replaces default terrain textures.
2 (ORBX OpenLC xx) is ONLY landclass, there are no changes to textures but they are positioned more accurately and with more variety,
3 is BOTH plus mesh, vector data, 3D landmarks and some custom cities. The textures included are unique to that area, and some of the autogen models are custom too.

Was not aware of that. I thought that with open LC you also get new textures based to the region they apply. Thank you for the clarification.

6 hours ago, ckyliu said:

2 (ORBX OpenLC xx) is ONLY landclass, there are no changes to textures or models but they are positioned more accurately and with more variety.

4 hours ago, GEKtheReaper said:

Was not aware of that. I thought that with open LC you also get new textures based to the region they apply. Thank you for the clarification.

That's not correct, you get new textures in openLC. 
That's why the 3 packages are all 6 - 8.5 GB in size. Just look at the size of your texture folders in each of the OLC products on your disk drives.

It even states it on the product page:

Quote

...and new textures unique to openLC.

That's why I'm looking forward to OLC Africa and eventually (fingers crossed) OLC Asia. Global doesn't cut the mustard in places where there are unique landscapes.
Check the 1st post of the ORBX 2019 roadmap thread to see the Africa-specific textures.
 

18 hours ago, SP2472 said:

2. Which TrueEarth is better quality-wise Netherlands or Great Britain South for P3d v4? 

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Even as a Brit, I'd argue that TE Netherlands is the better product.
Seasons that match EU Germany North and South or OLC Europe, performs better than TE GB, higher resolution mesh (5m), smaller area meaning easier to find landmarks. And tulip growing season adds a lot of colour in places.

When SP1 drops for TE GB, it might even things out a little.

1 minute ago, F737NG said:

That's not correct, you get new textures in openLC. 

This was also my opinion at the time I looked into buying ORBX stuff...but I didn't wanted to misinform the OP since I wasn't sure anymore (did buy GEP3D instead).

 

PS:

@ckyliu getting the "like" back from your post 😉

24 minutes ago, F737NG said:

That's not correct, you get new textures in openLC. 
That's why the 3 packages are all 6 - 8.5 GB in size. Just look at the size of your texture folders in each of the OLC products on your disk drives.

I thought it was just a few supplementary textures; perhaps you can tell me then what the point of running Global Base alongside openLC is?

Edited May 7, 20197 yr by ckyliu

58 minutes ago, GEKtheReaper said:

PS:

@ckyliu getting the "like" back from your post 😉

To be fair, @ckyliu is right about Global and Regions, and half right about OLC placing textures more accurately.
 

40 minutes ago, ckyliu said:

I thought it was just a few supplementary textures; perhaps you can tell me then what the point of running Global Base alongside openLC is?

AIUI, you need Global Base, but then the OLC provides some new textures relevant to the continent, photoreal textures in one or two locations and 3D night lighting (plus landclass as you rightly mentioned).

The marketing is a bit muddled at ORBX. That debate has already been had, so I'll leave it there.
 

Edited May 7, 20197 yr by F737NG
Responding to question.

@GEKtheReaper Do I get your like back then? 🤣

Edited May 7, 20197 yr by ckyliu

This topic is a masterclass in the propagation of misinformation and uninformed assertions

coloured by personal opinion.

@Reader Well you sure did add a lot of value to this thread with your comment.

Edited May 7, 20197 yr by GEKtheReaper

As the topic is so far a series of contradictions, there isn't much value.

A visit to the Orbx Direct product pages would be more informative.