Opinions for openLC Africa?

[AndrejS 25]

On 4/1/2020 at 4:08 PM, Benjamin J said:

Yes, indeed! I have his Germany and Belgium too, and I look forward to his Estonia. I also have some AG he made for other countries to be used with other available photoscenery, but have not tested those. I'm rapidly running out of hard disk space 😅

He's done a lot of AG for free and to me fsxforum.de and fsdeveloper.com are worth spending time in search for great sceneries (NL2k or Malta for example). You name it, you've got it. 

[Benjamin J 748]

1 hour ago, AndrejS said:

He's done a lot of AG for free and to me fsxforum.de and fsdeveloper.com are worth spending time in search for great sceneries (NL2k or Malta for example). You name it, you've got it. 

Yup, I have them. But like I said, I'm running out of HD space and therefore can't install any more photosceneries... In that sense I wish that some of the sceneries were mroe regional and allowed for some customization. The fact is I'm more interested in regions surroundings airports, rather than whole entire regions. E.g., Matthias made a fabulous Approaching Munich, but it got merged into Germany v2 Bavaria. Sadly I have no space for all of Bavaria, whereas just Munich would have been great 😅

[AndrejS 25]

Well, same here (4TB of combined SSD storage space), so i move a lot of sceneries (i don't use too often) to Seagate Backup Plus external usb 3 drives (5+5TB). It's not that you always need all of the world in PR/TE, god forbid to have them all checked in scenery library. Hopefully, SSD prices will drop even more so we can all enjoy fast 8TB drives for a decent money in not so distant future.

[kttd 12]

I finally started using it.  I don't care for much of the texturing.  However, I'm still using FSX so maybe FSX is losing something in the translation that PreparD is showing.

Edited July 14, 2020 by kttd

[IanHarrison 502]

On 3/31/2020 at 4:13 PM, F737NG said:

The ortho areas are a nice touch. A few areas such as the deserts, Nile Delta, certain mountains, I feel, are very believable for a landclass product.

Personally, I wish I'd not bought OLC South America and think OLC Africa is better, but that really is down to individual taste.

I compiled a list of what I think are acceptable freeware airports:

DAAG - Algiers Int'l, Algeria (by Riad Ghenim)

FAKN - Kruger Mpumalanga Int'l, South Africa (Aeroworx)
FASZ - Skukuza, South Africa (Aeroworx)

FMNN - Nosy Bé-Fascene, Madagascar (Free Scenery Designs)
FMST - Toliara (Tuléar), Madagascar (Free Scenery Designs)

FVHA - Harare Int'l, Zimbabwe (by David Uzzell)

HAAB - Addis Ababa Bole Int'l, Ethiopia (Whitedotsim)

Additionally, it sounds like FSDG are going to have Nairobi and Hurghada ready sooner rather than later.
 

I know the quality variesand it is not freeware but for the money you cannot beat NMG simulations. Look at Skukuza, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein. No fantastic detailing but more than recognisable and certainly completely accurate as regards frequencies and runway layout.

Edited July 16, 2020 by IanHarrison

[OzWhitey 3,353]

4 hours ago, IanHarrison said:

I know the quality variesand it is not freeware but for the money you cannot beat NMG simulations. Look at Skukuza, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein. No fantastic detailing but more than recognisable and certainly completely accurate as regards frequencies and runway layout.

I think for the same price, it looks to me like the FSDG lite airports definitely beat NMG. They're not v5 compatible, and they look pretty agricultural (based on the screenshots, I won't buy non-v5 airports).

I've got FSDG Nairobi, Cape Verde (free) and Dakar, and they are brilliant airports for the price.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

Guys, if you want to really fly Africa, you need to get on to Ortho4P3D and start building some scenery of your own. It is going to look 1000% times better than Orbx's payware landclass scenery.

As someone above said, may of the OpenLC Africa promo shots focus on the tiny areas of orthoscenery that the product includes. Even Orbx has finally realised that it's 2020, and landclass scenery stopped looking adequate about a decade ago.

Just so you know what I mean - here is shot from my flight over Mauritania in the Maddog last night:

Get to it, you won't regret it!

Edited July 16, 2020 by OzWhitey

[IanHarrison 502]

8 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I think for the same price, it looks to me like the FSDG lite airports definitely beat NMG. They're not v5 compatible, and they look pretty agricultural (based on the screenshots, I won't buy non-v5 airports).

I've got FSDG Nairobi, Cape Verde (free) and Dakar, and they are brilliant airports for the price.

FSDG only do Durban and Cape Town (which I have). You obviously haven't looked on NMG's site, from a quick look at least 3 that I saw are for v5 .

 

 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

1 minute ago, IanHarrison said:

FSDG only do Durban and Cape Town (which I have). You obviously haven't looked on NMG's site, from a quick look at least 3 that I saw are for v5 .

 

 

Well, I looked through Simmarket before I posted as I was only vaguely familiar with NMG. I see no mention of Prepar3d v5 compatibility - maybe it is mentioned on their personal website, but if they can't be bothered updating Simmarket descriptions after 2+ months, then I'm not overly impressed. 

What I'm even less impressed with is the quality of the airport textures and models, which are not even close to 2020 standards. I understand that if you need an airport covered, then this may be the only choice, but they're not airports I'd be rushing to buy myself. 

[IanHarrison 502]

11 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Well, I looked through Simmarket before I posted as I was only vaguely familiar with NMG. I see no mention of Prepar3d v5 compatibility - maybe it is mentioned on their personal website, but if they can't be bothered updating Simmarket descriptions after 2+ months, then I'm not overly impressed. 

What I'm even less impressed with is the quality of the airport textures and models, which are not even close to 2020 standards. I understand that if you need an airport covered, then this may be the only choice, but they're not airports I'd be rushing to buy myself. 

Yes. I can appreciate that but as there is nothing else available, personally I would rather have something that is at least recognisable as the airport and in which I can use aerodrome charts which agree with the layout (I have 4.5).  The generic approximation which passes as the airport and its layout is the greater of the two evils..

But it's your choice, obviously.

Edited July 17, 2020 by IanHarrison
Spelling

[pinepix62 52]

At one stage I used many NMG airports and agree that they do not compare well with most other publishers when it comes to the finer details, but they are way better than the default airports. What really upset me is that the publisher charges for every update and even though they confirmed that the upgrade to the 64 bit version (I think that was around P3D V4.4) would be free, the upgrade fee was eventually 50% of the new price, (I got one free upgrade to V5 for FAKN, a late addition to their product line). I stopped upgrading as I could see no real improvements and some airports are at update 5 already. They also have no option to install outside the sim even for the V5 compatible airports.

I quite enjoy the Africa LC, again way better than the default and it got me back into flying in Africa again as the old Aeroworx files does not cut it any more with the V5 updates. I even built some of my own scenery files for P3D v5.

[honanhal 1,419]

49 minutes ago, pinepix62 said:

At one stage I used many NMG airports and agree that they do not compare well with most other publishers when it comes to the finer details, but they are way better than the default airports. 

I'm sorry to be blunt, but it's not a question of the "finer details." These airports are of extremely low quality. They compare unfavorably with freeware from the FS2000 era. Modeling, texturing, and lighting are all poor. I would hesitate to install most of them even as freeware.

The fact that there is nonetheless a market of some size for these products shows just how desperate our community is for more airports in Africa!

James