Word of warning: Dont buy London landmarks (orbx)!

[Eriol_Mits 33]

I get the feeling that Orbx saw the video put out about the scenery in London from Obsidianant. Saw that backlash about how many of the landmarks were missing. So decided to quickly port over the landmarks they had already made for the Orbx True Earth Scenery. Which is one of the reasons the new Orbx assets do look quite dated in compassion to the landmarks that were originally in the game.

That said its cheap enough and the approach into London City isn't quite the same with the default buildings so they will do for now.

[wim123 758]

they al;so say on their forum, they will fix it..so there is hope for the ppl who got it.

i dont need cities, landscape addons. planes yes

[cwburnett 1,809]

2 minutes ago, Der Zeitgeist said:

Is anyone here using the new OrbX addon airports for MSFS? I read they're currently lacking some functionality, like frequencies and procedures?

Yes and yes. At least with EGLC the internal nav database loses the procedures with the add on airport, but the ILS freqs still work.  I think this issue speaks to a broader concern about navdata, how it is managed, etc. I haven't checked KTIW or KORS. I don't use default ATC because...why...so no idea of those work as expected...

With respect to the London landmarks, I did buy them because I found that the default scenery, while having a few high-res buildings/pois, was generally missing a lot. From the altitudes one flies approaches into EGLC or the other airports in the area, the landmarks look okay to me. But, it is true that flying low level along the Thames, many deficiencies are apparent. It would have been nice for Orbx to leave the higher quality versions of some of the objects from the base sim in place...but it was also not a high cost item...so I agree that it isn't top notch work, but I also think that if you want London to look like London from 3,000' on an approach to EGLC, this product satisfies that much better than the default scenery.

BTW, this topic was covered in a thread Monday as well. It's like deja vu all over again...we had this entire conversation already. I posted some daytime screenshots. Night lighting is certainly cartoonish as compared with the surroundings

 

 

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

1 hour ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

 

Well done Andreas,

Thanks for heads up.

My hand froze on buying the whole MSFS this morning.

I'll get it, surely, as some point. But I'm not touching the Kool-Aid until the dust settles.

 

 

[Andreas Stangenes 1,628]

Just now, Will Fly For Cheese said:

Well done Andreas,

Thanks for heads up.

My hand froze on buying the whole MSFS this morning.

I'll get it, surely, as some point. But I'm not touching the Kool-Aid until the dust settles.

 

 

Well, I dont know your flying style, but if I was me (which I am, fortunately), I would buy it right away and start enjoying the heck out of it. You have no idea what a great time Im having in MSFS! I am sleep deprived, and I eat way more chocolate than I should 😄 

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

Wow, Holy Triple Post.

My Internet Connection is fragile to say the least. However, the message delivered in triplicate might not be a bad thing!

 

[FishBowlMan 56]

3 minutes ago, Eriol_Mits said:

...and the approach into London City isn't quite the same with the default buildings so they will do for now.

I can understand them rushing this out to add some of the missing buildings to the London skyline, but I don't see the logic of replacing buildings (Tower Bridge for example) that are already present at much higher detail.

[cwburnett 1,809]

12 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

Personally, if it's worse than default or the same quality as default, it should be free. 

Except that this product includes dozens of buildings and POIs that don't exist in the default. So, lower res? Absolutely. Poor night lighting? Yes. But a more realistic rendition of London from 3,000'? Also absolutely. As I said in the other thread on this subject, it depends what you're looking for...I wanted the skyline to look more realistic when coming and going from EGLC - this does that. Could it be better? Of course. Should it be? Not sure at this price point. Compare it to the prices of the CityScene and CityScape products...

I don't get the conspiracy theories...Orbx took existing assets and made them available on day 1 to increase the number of buildings and POIs in London because they could easily do that...and charged less than $10 for it... I don't see the conspiracy here...

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

To be honest, the baked in ships/boats and cars look worse.... Still not a good move though...

[SeanMo 140]

Want to see some comparisons between default and Orbx?

I flew the Thames last night and the lights were too bring and the color garish. But it sure beat default imagery. It's great that the feedback is getting back to them and they are going to re-evaluate what is acceptable to this community. Much better to set the bar high now.

[ca_metal 2,015]

8 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

Except that this product includes dozens of buildings and POIs that don't exist in the default. So, lower res? Absolutely. Poor night lighting? Yes. But a more realistic rendition of London from 3,000'? Also absolutely. As I said in the other thread on this subject, it depends what you're looking for...I wanted the skyline to look more realistic when coming and going from EGLC - this does that. Could it be better? Of course. Should it be? Not sure at this price point. Compare it to the prices of the CityScene and CityScape products...

I don't get the conspiracy theories...Orbx took existing assets and made them available on day 1 to increase the number of buildings and POIs in London because they could easily do that...and charged less than $10 for it... I don't see the conspiracy here...

Well, I agree with you in parts, but why replace the default Landmarks that were better? Also, they should have released with updates for it already in mind. That kind of approach would be better:

”Here’s the London Landmarks v1.0 for MSFS. Updates to put the product on the new MSFS SDK standards are coming soon.”

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t buy those “performance concerns”, as the default landmarks are way better and aren’t causing issues.

[Nemo 1,305]

At least they should have mentioned that they used lower texture resolutions for better(?) performance or whatever else reason. Anyway, my opinion about ORBX as a company as well as my experience with many of their products is getting worse and worse over the years.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Nemo

[Tuskin38 6,460]

Their airports look fine IMO, it's just the landmarks.

[badger2000 168]

1 hour ago, DPSimulation said:

So that beg's the question from a newbie like me, why not just leave out models that clearly didn't need replacing?

My thoughts exactly.  Why would they even bother to replace the better quality models already in the sim.  It just doesn't make any sense.  If they'd left those alone there wouldn't have been a problem.

[Carts85 1,203]

17 minutes ago, cwburnett said:

Except that this product includes dozens of buildings and POIs that don't exist in the default. So, lower res? Absolutely. Poor night lighting? Yes. But a more realistic rendition of London from 3,000'? Also absolutely. As I said in the other thread on this subject, it depends what you're looking for...I wanted the skyline to look more realistic when coming and going from EGLC - this does that. Could it be better? Of course. Should it be? Not sure at this price point. Compare it to the prices of the CityScene and CityScape products...

I don't get the conspiracy theories...Orbx took existing assets and made them available on day 1 to increase the number of buildings and POIs in London because they could easily do that...and charged less than $10 for it... I don't see the conspiracy here...

You’re making the assumption that more POI’s means we must settle for lower resolution? Why? Have you seen some of the other auto generated cities like London in the sim, for example Paris, the detail there that hasn’t had to be compromised. Imagine PMDG releasing the 737 with a FMC that was far inferior of the default 320 for example and they say sorry we had to because of performance there would be uproar. You might say well the product is less than 10 dollars but the customer count is WAY higher here and they know it and price is no excuse to me when your selling a product that’s lesser quality than what’s already there.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Carts85