10 minutes ago, honanhal said:

If I’m a hardcore systems guy who doesn’t care what the view out the window looks like, why would I be buying Orbx products in the first place?

James

Because the core P3D ground textures have always left a lot to be desired. FTX Global is more or less mandatory and its benefits are very obvious even from FL350.

The other products I use are Ultimate Terrain X as it greatly enhances the coastlines etc.

50 minutes ago, SimonC said:

you capitalized game. By a word of definition, both FSX and P3D are a game. All the same one, actually. P3Dv5 being a heavily enhanced ESP-"game".

It has a different taste.. just wait until you can eat some of that fruit and after that you can continue to eat wherever you like the most. Having said that, P3D V4 and V5 does not taste to me as a GAME.. they taste as professional simulators.. but this is how my tongue perceives these flavors.. many others might and will differ, so each to its own.

Anyhow we need to get back on topic, because this is not the area to discuss X sim.. better than Y sim.. these are the P3D Forums.. 😉

S.

 

Edited May 24, 20206 yr by simbol

4 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Because the core P3D ground textures have always left a lot to be desired. FTX Global is more or less mandatory and its benefits are very obvious even from FL350.

The other products I use are Ultimate Terrain X as it greatly enhances the coastlines etc.

That is just it though. You need ORBX Global and UTX just to make it bearable to look at. It ain't pretty. Just bearable. To make it pretty, gotta pay way more.

Edited May 24, 20206 yr by SimonC

1 minute ago, simbol said:

Anyhow we need to get back on topic, because this is not the are to discuss X sim.. better than Y sim.. these are the P3D Forums.. 😉

Nope. Hangar Chat 😉

1 minute ago, SimonC said:

Nope. Hangar Chat 😉

Ahh they move it!.. fine then smash each other happy lol

S.

But seriously... "professional simulators". Until couple of years ago, before P3D, we had "only" FSX and XPlane... and everything was "professional" enough. For years and years. Now comes LM, strips down all "gamey" stuff, not really necessary, makes a menu which looks "professional" (debatable), and now it's a pro sim? Under the hood, it's the still the same sim... half the sliders are still the same! Only changed the look... and oh wait, there is no menu music and they added submarines!

Edited May 24, 20206 yr by SimonC

4 hours ago, eaim said:

You don't need to be actually in the Alpha to see what MSFS is bringing to our hobby, have you not seen all the leaks on the bilibili website? 

I can not make any comment on the alpha. 

39 minutes ago, SimonC said:

That is just it though. You need ORBX Global and UTX just to make it bearable to look at. It ain't pretty. Just bearable. To make it pretty, gotta pay way more.

Those UT and FTX packages have lasted me through FSX, P3Dv3 and v4. Good value for money I would say. 

If vanilla MSFS really is so nice and I buy it or subscribes to it then there still is the need to again purchase all the airplanes I had in P3D. And that's a lot. Would I want to do that?

Will vanilla LOWI in MSFS look as good as ORBX LOWI in P3D or would I have to pay for it again as well? What about FlyTampa St.Maarten? Questions over questions.

Karl

If P3D V5 develops to what it shows as promise right now, I will be luckily investing in addons for that platform for years, even if MSFS2020 turns out to be as nice as it looks.

So yes, I will drop my money on Orbx for a long time coming...

10 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Those UT and FTX packages have lasted me through FSX, P3Dv3 and v4. Good value for money I would say. 

No doubt. But can't deny that it simply looks ugly for today's standards.

Edited May 24, 20206 yr by SimonC

2 hours ago, Clutch Cargo said:

" . .  Also remember, like in the past, not all simmers will drop everything to the "latest & greatest". . . "  

That's me to a "T"--just not into getting all my stuff to work properly all over again and again . . . .  I remember not very long ago P3Dv4.4 was the latest and greatest, which I'm still using with a lot of good hardware and software.  All of it (seventeen pieces of hardware and  about a dozen programs) have been working smoothly as a unit, error free for what seems like years.  So, I still get new ORBX products as they are released and probably will do so as long as they're releasing new stuff for v4.

 

I think OrbX and other FS/P3D/XP developers are suffering more right now than they will once the new MSFS actually comes out, because everyone is holding off purchasing expensive addons. It seems simmers have this expectation that MSFS will be everything to everyone, right out of the box. Every single square mile of the world and every airport will be indistinguishable from reality, making scenery addons obsolete. The flight dynamics and systems will be so realistic that nobody ever needs to buy a study level aircraft again, and the weather simulation is so realistic it will not only replace all weather addons, but also the National Weather Service. All for ~$60 without ever having to buy any addons or DLC. Did I mention it will run at 120 FPS on Ultra settings on a 2013 PC because The Cloud™?

Once the sim actually comes out and it's no longer new any shiny, I think the flight sim market will stabilize and divide itself between the different sims based on customer preferences and priorities, and the strengths and weaknesses of each sim. There will be plenty of room for addon companies like OrbX to enhance every actively developed sim, though those enhancements might not be the same for every sim.

One last thing, I absolutely love the OrbX Central. It's so much faster to re-install everything from there than to run 50 individual installers, copy and paste each serial number individually, click next a dozen times etc. I wish there was an option to select multiple addons to install at once, but it's just 2-3 clicks for each so it's almost as fast.

Edited May 24, 20206 yr by AdvancedFollower

Rob, please, you do understand sarcasm, don't you? So, I guess 25 years in FS world, including all P3D versions in "pro" version, doesn't give me enough insight.

1 hour ago, SimonC said:

No doubt. But can't deny that it simply looks ugly for today's standards.

That might be what you think. I have a different opinion.