Like many i was disappointed to see London looking way off most other major cities & whilst i welcome the Orbx news, it just poses more questions then answers. Whilst the Orbx buildings will go a long way to improving London, from what I've seen it doesn't fix the very weird looking Thames, low-res satellite data & the majority of buildings in London still looking nowhere near how they should. Most auto-gen area's do a pretty good job but it's noticeably bad in London. Adding some notable buildings isn't going to suddenly make London look good & if anything the much higher quality Orbx buildings seem to stick out & make the bad look worse.

London definitely requires updating with photogrammetry but then what happens if you bought Orbx? Do those buildings get replaced with photogrammetry & make the purchase worthless? Do you get the photogrammetry but it replaces certain buildings with the Orbx one's? Do you not get the photogrammetry update?

It's going to 'annoy' a lot of people if they make a purchase that becomes completely invalid with a free update from Asobo, especially in the case of London where currently both the Orbx buildings & a photogrammetry update are needed. Even that leads to more questions. Why is default London missing so many notable landmarks & looking very noticeably bad compared to virtually everywhere else? Did they purposefully make default London look worse then it would've been to make a deal with Orbx, essentially locking an on-par London behind a paywall? That wouldn't be such a bad thing if every other major city didn't look as great as they do or they weren't charging $120 for the full game to then have such a major city in it's default state looking so far off everywhere else.

I could spend the day praising the majority of this game but it doesn't change the fact it's very odd & leaves confusion.

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by d25bev

I wonder if its any different to any other non-US city. Auto generated cities are not going to be perfect and stuff will be missing.

I thought it looked great. Compared to what p3d or x-plane shows its a massive improvement.

Yes MSFS updating the world could make some addons useless but I don't think they will focus too much on areas covered by addons especially since they get a cut of the money from their marketplace.

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by sanh

With the tech they have I would assume they could easily create a mask for certain areas that would specify that area for different types of autogen. They could do this with London and make the autogen more appropriate for the area.

I could be really speaking out of turn but it makes sense to me.

Install P3D v5 out of the box go fly over London and you will see how “ bad” MSFS is, it’s disgraceful!

You clearly have no idea how ungrateful you are.

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by Nyxx

London looks fine to me!?

This is a preview of the London Orbx, just released

 

clearly unfinished and I hope it won't stay that way now that Orbx have released their Landmark product for London.

 

Just now, Nyxx said:

Install P3D v5 out of the box and you will see how “ bad” MSFS is, it’s disgraceful.

Yes, default London in MS2020 looks bad. Just because it looks better then other sims doesn't mean it doesn't look bad, especially in comparison to every other major city in the game/sim.

I kinda have a feeling that @d25bev is still thinking in "p3d mode". When p3d updates the first thing many people think about is the compatability of all the addons, including scenery. Your questions are valid, of course, but for many who saw the quality of MSFS textures they were wondering how scenery developers would fit into the MSFS universe at all. Then came all the reassuring comments about scenery developers having a place still. 

Orbx need to figure this out together with MSFS. I dont believe that MS/AS have purposefully gone in and downgraded London to make a deal with Orbx. That is too tin-foiled for me to believe. There are plenty of cities that are affected, and I think you are a little bit ego-centric to focus so much on London. I get it is your home town, but ENGM is my home airport and it looks absolutely terrible. I am absolutely going to buy an addon for that airport to make it more realistic. But I also understand that how updates to MSFS will affect addons is a bit up in the blue right now. It could be that many of our addons will simply stop working a few days every 2 or 3 months when MSFS is updated for all I know. 

I can only hope that MS/AS have thought about how important stability is to us and to addon developers (which I absolutely think they are aware of - they are in direct contact with 3PD), and find a solution to this that doesn't disrupt our ecosystem too much. 

32 minutes ago, d25bev said:

Do those buildings get replaced with photogrammetry & make the purchase worthless?

Probably. Are you really going to cry over $8 you didn't need to spend when that happens?

Obsidian Ant brought it to our attention;

It looks awful. Looks awful in FSX/ P3D/ Orbx makes it look like Cartoon World.

What do we do with a problem like London; so near Heathrow. . .

My Home.

Someone please sort it out. Anyone. No ghost ships under the surface of the "hilly Thames", I'm not a snob but Buckingham Palace doesn't look like a slum tenement, in real life - it looks like a palace. As for the Tower Of London...

I have such a long list.

Least it doesn't look as bad as it did in P3D but it still doesn't look like my home.

COME ON ASOBO! - SO NEAR THE FINISH LINE - GET THESE THINGS SORTED. VRAIMENT, N'EST PAS?

 

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by Will Fly For Cheese

3 minutes ago, Farlis said:

Probably. Are you really going to cry over $8 you didn't need to spend when that happens?

Why do you think it will be replaced? There is clearly a layering system in place since ORBX will be able to put their assets on top of today´s graphics. I don't see why it will make any difference that you eventually get a new base layer.

Just now, espent said:

Why do you think it will be replaced? There is clearly a layering system in place since ORBX will be able to put their assets on top of today´s graphics. I don't see why it will make any difference that you eventually get a new base layer.

That depends how exclude layers work in the new sim. The photogrammetry might just bleed through the custom 3d buildings if not done properly.

13 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

 

Orbx need to figure this out together with MSFS. I dont believe that MS/AS have purposefully gone in and downgraded London to make a deal with Orbx. That is too tin-foiled for me to believe.

I don't believe they've 'downgraded' London either. But it certainly looks like they've not put the work into it that they have everywhere else & that they would've if the Orbx product wasn't a thing. My focus on London has nothing to do with how near or far i am from it. As i said, it's noticeably bad to every other major city. To the point that it's quite odd.

11 minutes ago, Farlis said:

Probably. Are you really going to cry over $8 you didn't need to spend when that happens?

$8 is a decent price for all those buildings. I have no problem spending $8 on that amount of scenery. That's not the problem with the situation. 

Edited August 12, 20205 yr by n4gix
Removed unnecessary long quote!

Just now, d25bev said:

I don't believe they've 'downgraded' London either. But it certainly looks like they've not put the work into it that they have everywhere else & that they would've if the Orbx product wasn't a thing. My focus on London has nothing to do with how near or far i am from it. As i said, it's noticeably bad to every other major city. To the point that it's quite odd.

Have you seen every other major city in msfs?