1 hour ago, ssair1 said:

Alright, so I just installed TE Northern California into V5, loaded up the good old A2A Bonanza on FlightBeam's KSFO, and took off towards downtown San Francesco. Initially, I had a couple of minor studders, but things smoothed out rather quickly. With moderate settings, I got a range of about 40-68 FPS. Here are a couple of screenshots: https://imgur.com/gallery/wMWhK91

I can't buy this product until the Bay Bridge is fixed.  That's absolutely pathetic.  The stupid part is the SF side of the bridge was perfectly done in the old landclass region.  I know this was flagged in the Xplane version as well so sad they didn't fix it.

Do you have to uninstall Orbx NorCal before you install the Orbx TE NorCal?

4 hours ago, Noel said:

Is it true TE does not have seasonal effects?  It looks somewhat better but I'm usually up at altitude where is makes less difference.  Sounds like it's a bit harder on performance and even FTX NCA is hard on my machine when in the NGXu in the KSFO area.

TrueEarth - and ortho in general - is typically more effective from altitude, as the repeating landclass tiles are more obvious. The illusion that Orbx landclass is replicating reality works best at low altitude, where you can't see the complex patterns that typify large-scale landscapes.

That's unless you're talking about cloud obscuring the landscape, in which case the choice of scenery is largely irrelevant! 

Another comment: Prepar3d w EA does a great job of putting haze over the distant orthoscenery, but this doesn't work well for the objects on the ortho (the "autogen"). In hazy conditions, as seen where I was flying around KSFO yesterday, this makes the trees stand out too much against the background.

Edited June 14, 20205 yr by OzWhitey

25 minutes ago, Ed_S_Pilot said:

Do you have to uninstall Orbx NorCal before you install the Orbx TE NorCal?

Nope.  Indeed, I have both installed in the sim and change back and forth while I'm flying.

Greg

4 minutes ago, lownslo said:

Nope.  Indeed, I have both installed in the sim and change back and forth while I'm flying.

Greg

Change back and forth while flying?

Edited June 14, 20205 yr by Ed_S_Pilot

Both are in my Scenery Library... I disable one and then enable the other.  The scenery reloads while I'm in the air.  Back and forth I've been going comparing the two.

Greg

 

1 minute ago, lownslo said:

Both are in my Scenery Library... I disable one and then enable the other.  The scenery reloads while I'm in the air.  Back and forth I've been going comparing the two.

Greg

 

So when i go to fly , I need to disable one or the other. They both cant be enabled?

4 hours ago, Noel said:

Is it true TE does not have seasonal effects?  It looks somewhat better 

No ortho has good seasonal effects. Some try. To do it properly, you'd need a full set of photos taken in four different seasons. The problem is that 1. this data doesn't exist 2. storage size would be 4x a large.

You can try and post-process the ortho - vero-FS was the first commercial provider I saw doing this for FSX, years ago - but it doesn't work well. Some of the TrueEarth products change tree colors with seasons, but in short, if seasons are critical for you landclass works better than ortho-based scenery.

As for looking somewhat better - superficially, it looks fairly similar. The difference is that it's real scenery, as opposed to imaginary (lamdclass). As well as being much more useful for training, it avoids the major issues that landclass has with objects, such as roads, being completely misplaced when compared to the "fake" scenery tiles.

At the price, I'd definitely recommend that people give TrueEarth a try if they haven't already. Particularly in v5, performance is pretty good. The main issue with this release is that the ortho itself is not very good quality. Orbx could definitely do better here. The overlay is top quality, and it this that is the difficult part to make - it's actually very simple to replace the underlying ortho layer if you're after a top-tier experience.

1 minute ago, Ed_S_Pilot said:

So when i go to fly , I need to disable one or the other. They both cant be enabled?

They can both be enabled but I can't tell you what you'll get (for me it would be TE NorCal... it's above the original FTX NA NorCal).  I just disable one so it won't interfer with the other while I'm comparing them.

Greg

Just now, Ed_S_Pilot said:

So when i go to fly , I need to disable one or the other. They both cant be enabled?

No. You can leave both enabled, which is what I've done. No need to overthink it, just install via Orbx central and it works, photoscenery always overrides landclass.

If you want to complicate things: You could disable the TrueEarth fairly easily using Simstarter etc if you wanted to see winter landclass tiles, for example, but it's not something I'd personally be bothered doing.

Just now, OzWhitey said:

No. You can leave both enabled, which is what I've done. No need to overthink it, just install via Orbx central and it works, photoscenery always overrides landclass.

If you want to complicate things: You could disable the TrueEarth fairly easily using Simstarter etc if you wanted to see winter landclass tiles, for example, but it's not something I'd personally be bothered doing.

Ok, Thanks. Was not sure if i should have uninstalled the Nor/Cal scenery first before the TE install

 

Thanks

1 minute ago, Ed_S_Pilot said:

Ok, Thanks. Was not sure if i should have uninstalled the Nor/Cal scenery first before the TE install

 

Thanks

Yes, it's a little confusing in this thread. For anyone on the fence because of this - quite simply, you just buy TE and install it via Orbx central. That's it. 

Anything more complex than this is just tweaking for fun and excitement, which is certainly an option if you choose (just like me modding the ortho!)

7 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

As for looking somewhat better - superficially, it looks fairly similar. The difference is that it's real scenery, as opposed to imaginary (lamdclass). As well as being much more useful for training, it avoids the major issues that landclass has with objects, such as roads, being completely misplaced when compared to the "fake" scenery tiles.

Sounds like it's not for me as very often scenery is indeed obscured with haze and especially because I always seek out departure and arrival at dawn and sunset where haze effects seem pronounced.  I'm very focused on doing well according to how I have FSCaptain set up and FTX regional sceneries are pretty much good enough.  I'm not even moving to P3D v5 as I'm quite content to wait n see what MSFS brings.

5 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Yes, it's a little confusing in this thread. For anyone on the fence because of this - quite simply, you just buy TE and install it via Orbx central. That's it. 

Anything more complex than this is just tweaking for fun and excitement, which is certainly an option if you choose (just like me modding the ortho!)

Thank you.....

Just now, Noel said:

Sounds like it's not for me as very often scenery is indeed obscured with haze and especially because I always seek out departure and arrival at dawn and sunset where haze effects seem pronounced.  I'm very focused on doing well according to how I have FSCaptain set up and FTX regional sceneries are pretty much good enough.  I'm not even moving to P3D v5 as I'm quite content to wait n see what MSFS brings.

You can wait for the uncertain future of MSFS if you really want, but if you like flying at altitude in realistic aircraft v5 is the ticket if you care about visuals (including clouds) in June 2020, and will be for at least the immediate future.

If you're saying that you don't care about scenery because it's obscured by haze - then FS9 is fine, no need for MSFS 2020!

As for dawn and dusk - TrueEarth comes with nightlighting, so it performs well in this role, and P3D v5 with EA is the current dawn/dusk sky champion, easily outperforming v4.5 with a stack of addons. P3D v5 with EA is also is current state of the art amongst the released sims for haze and clouds.