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callegro

Orbx "Regions"....are they worth it?

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How do you guys feel Orbx' "Regions?" I want to buy either North or South Germany, but I remember when I purchased the Southern California region, it was very frame rate heavy on my rig. I know Los Angeles doesn't compare to Germany, but because of the frame rate issue, I disabled Los Angeles and just use Base/Vector/NA LC. Just don't want to waste money.

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Nothing new to say, but it very much depends on your hardware and the addons you are using.
I have both Germany North and Germany South. I bought them even though I am an airline type simmer.
I enjoy them very much and even at FL350 there are still many realtistic landcape features to admire.
Having said that, I have recently uninstalled both and returned to my Samscene/Prealsoft cities (Frankfurt/Munich) with Global and OLC.
The reason is when I was approaching large airports, especially Frankfurt, Cologne or Tegel (all from Aerosoft), performance was unacceptable (low FPS and some stutters/freezes)
By deactivating GEN and GES I have gained, depending on the location, around 5-10 FPS, which is a lot when flying complex aircraft into complex airports, plus more smoothness (fewer features loading).

Once again: GES and GEN are great products, adding A LOT to simming experience. But there IS a performance hit and you need to take it into consideration.

Edited by Rafal
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Regions are really only worth it if you're a low and slow flyer, the detail they bring really makes for a fantastic VFR experience.

For highly complex airliners they tend to just hammer the frames with little extra immersion.

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23 minutes ago, Rafal said:

Nothing new to say, but it very much depends on your hardware and the addons you are using.
I have both Germany North and Germany South. I bought them even though I am an airline type simmer.
I enjoy them very much and even at FL350 there are still many realtistic landcape features to admire.
Having said that, I have recently uninstalled both and returned to my Samscene/Prealsoft cities (Frankfurt/Munich) with Global and OLC.
The reason is when I was approaching large airports, especially Frankfurt, Cologne or Tegel (all from Aerosoft), performance was unacceptable (low FPS and some stutters/freezes)
By deactivating GEN and GES I have gained, depending on the location, around 5-10 FPS, which is a lot when flying complex aircraft into complex airports, plus more smoothness (fewer features loading).

Once again: GES and GEN are great products, adding A LOT to simming experience. But there IS a performance hit and you need to take it into consideration.

Well, it always "depends on your hardware and the addons" and the weather...and your settings...and on the moon being aligned just right with Uranus...and on a thousand other things.

I own Germany North and South plus all of the above mentioned Aerosoft airports. Performance on my 4-year old system is satisfactory - I get about 18-20 fps flying into Frankfurt or Tegel. IMHO, the fault also lies with Aerosoft, whose airports I don't think are very well optimized and are therefore frame rate hogs. 

Now, this isn't a useful answer, because one man's satisfactory is another's OMIGOD I CANT LIVE WITH THESE LOW FRAME RATES and so it goes round and round. 

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8 minutes ago, iwebber said:

Regions are really only worth it if you're a low and slow flyer, the detail they bring really makes for a fantastic VFR experience.

For highly complex airliners they tend to just hammer the frames with little extra immersion.

Inaccurate, it's fantastically immersive if you're coming in to land with an airliner. Also, if they "hammer" your frames, you have other problems.

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IMO, yes if you are flying GA and no, if you're flying airliners and have Orbx global. 


Howard
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My FlightSim YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@skyhigh776

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Can you turn them on or off in the scenery library depending on the type of flying you're doing?


Vic green

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1 hour ago, PATCO LCH said:

Can you turn them on or off in the scenery library depending on the type of flying you're doing?

Absolutely!
 

6 hours ago, callegro said:

How do you guys feel Orbx' "Regions?" I want to buy either North or South Germany, but I remember when I purchased the Southern California region, it was very frame rate heavy on my rig. I know Los Angeles doesn't compare to Germany, but because of the frame rate issue, I disabled Los Angeles and just use Base/Vector/NA LC. Just don't want to waste money.

I like, but don't love Germany North and South. The Rhein-Rhur area is the most interesting for me.
There is a performance penalty, but it's not as bad as SoCal.

Speaking of SoCal and performance isssues, if you weren't already aware, take a look at this to see if it might help:

 


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We all have different opinions. Mine is that no landclass scenery package available today can provide me with a "fantastic VFR experience" across the board. I just see the repetitive textures, low resolution coastlines, and hard borders between urban and rural areas, and my brain decodes that as "unrealistic".

Edited by Christopher Low
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Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

FSBetaTesters3.png

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I have quite a few ORBX regions: Tasmania Demo, England, Scotland, Norway, Germany North & South, Iceland demo, Central Rockies, Northern California, Pacific Fjords, Pacific NW, Southern Alaska, NZ North Island & Sount Island. 90% of my flying time I do within these regions. In matter of fact I wouldn´t be in this hobby anymore without these sceneries.

Germany is one of the best of the regions. I know the area quite well RL and it is quite well done by ORBX. I fly there mostly with A2A C182,  Alabeo C404 Titan & C421 Golden Eagle, QW BAe146/RJ85 and Carenado Cessna 550 Citation II. With all of these the scenery looks just great.

Is the scenery hard on frame rates? It is. In order to have all the eye candies on you do need pretty good system. I have i7-9700 3.60GHz with 32 Gb RAM and GeForce 2070. I can have almost all maxed out with good frames. I do not have add on - airports for Germany. In England and Scotland I do have some UK2000 -airports with no problems. With Norway I ude freeware Airports of Norway, which by the way is a great add on. AI traffic comes from Alpha India Group.

I hope this gives you an idea what these regions are about and what they demand.

 

Edited by kiki

 

 

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9 hours ago, callegro said:

How do you guys feel Orbx' "Regions?" I want to buy either North or South Germany, but I remember when I purchased the Southern California region, it was very frame rate heavy on my rig. I know Los Angeles doesn't compare to Germany, but because of the frame rate issue, I disabled Los Angeles and just use Base/Vector/NA LC. Just don't want to waste money.

If you want better fps you ain't going to find them in FTX Germany, but you will if you choose FTX Norway, PFJ, or Southern Alaska. Lots of beautiful airports to explore and great fps. If you want the best region (fps intensive) then TE Netherlands is the one to get. It's absolutely the best region I've ever purchased for P3D v4 and I have all of the FTX regions.


A pilot is always learning and I LOVE to learn.

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Each ORBX region may require different settings optimization, but I wouldn't be simming without them.  I particularly enjoy Norway because of its variety of challenging airport locations, but PNW and Alaska are quite fun as well.

John

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Thanks a lot for the input guys. At the moment I am flying with a newer rig, less than a year old. Even though I built it for high performance, I am still skeptical on these heavy FPS areas.....particularly flying an approach into KLAX at sunset with cloud layers 🙂

Here are my current specs:

i7 8700k

Samsung Evo 970 250GB

Asus ROG 2080ti

Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16GB DDR4 3200

Corsair Hydro Series H115i RGB

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I have Orbx Global, openLC Europe and North America, plus, coincidentally, Germany South that you are interested in. That should allow for a nice direct comparison. ☺️ In my experience I can definitely say that this region is more demanding on performance compared to the Global+OLC combination, which in itself hardly seems to have any (negative) performance impact. I haven't gone/flown everywhere; around Stuttgart (EDDS) I seem to get about 5-8fps less, all other settings being equal. In exchange however you get a faithful and much more accurate representation of the area in terms of everything – terrain, roads, lakes, landmarks, etc. Since I am from the area I hope I can attest to that. 😄 Ultimately it also depends on your sim settings and what aircraft you are flying. GA should be fine in any case, airliners like PMDG are another story. However, your system should do well. Mine is: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, GTX 2060 Super, 32 GB RAM. With that I still get a satisfactory performance (25 fps+ in most scenarios, basically never <20).

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19 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

We all have different opinions. Mine is that no landclass scenery package available today can provide me with a "fantastic VFR experience" across the board. I just see the repetitive textures, low resolution coastlines, and hard borders between urban and rural areas, and my brain decodes that as "unrealistic".

If you bought Orbx products for VFR flying, you bought it for the wrong reasons. 

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