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

[steve310002 1,198]

On 8/22/2020 at 7:19 PM, Der Zeitgeist said:

I think it has a lot to do with brand loyalty and the overall reputation of OrbX from previous sims. Some people just bought the Innsbruck airport addon from them without even having a look at the default version first, which is also handcrafted. Everyone just assumed that stock scenery must be inferior because it was like that in FSX, P3D and Xplane.

I was thinking about this as well. Why do we rush to buy new scenery when the sim has just been released and we have so much to explore? It's a bit like an addiction in an a sense. The thrill is in 'collecting' the latest and greatest. I suppose that's how that God awful Pokemon thing worked (I was far too old at the time thankfully and never really understood it).

Gotta catch'em all. Or something like that!!

[Nate1 163]

I bought it because I live in London, not because I rush to buy anything. 

And it significantly enhances my home city. For 7 quid.

There are hundreds of buildings included, including newly modelled ones. 

[azphilosopher 0]

My guess is that Orbx had all those buildings from a previous product as has been suggested and just threw them into their release without looking at the ones they'd replace.  As a past scenery designer that got undone by the changes in FSX and a huge corporation putting out the same scenery I worked on I sympathize with a company like this.  I kinda get what the Orbx team did which was to simply throw it out there at a very bargain price as a stop gap way of providing a London skyline that is very lacking in the new version.  What Osobo built is amazing but there were some head scratchers too.  You make a stunning Parliament building but the extremely recognizable bridge going to it is missing.  I think Orbx (and it sounds like they're going to work on this) needs to go into their code and remove any buildings that Osobo has built and leave the rest with a promise to patch them as they can with the upgraded ones.  Also, be very honest in their marketing that buyers can expect it to be continually upgraded that it is provided as a quick and dirty upgrade now but not up to their general standards hence the cheap price.

That said, I might just buy their product even with the flaws cause I love seeing city detail from way above and the UK is a second home to me.  This isn't a car simulator so I really don't get that close to the buildings anyway.  I'm generally buzzing past them at 80 knots.  I'd not have known there were offices in The Strand I could look into.  Hopefully rendering those is not lowering frame rates substantially.

A challenge to Osobo.  It seems to me that there are some things you can do with the satellite imagery from Bing maps.  If you have a body of water, particularly a river defined on the DEM data and the overlaying image has a clearly recognizable right angle contrast line which would be made by a bridge, then throw in a generic bridge as autogen.  I'd rather have the mistake be made to accidentally add a bridge that doesn't exist than to see those disappearing roads go into and out of the water. Same thing (although a bit harder) would go for a pier or dock and the boats attached to it.  Those patterns would seem to be recognizable and you could autogen in a dock and boats.  Go to Monaco and look at the very famous area where the yachts all dock.  It looks like a graveyard of sunken ships.  A large blob of light color out in the middle of a lake or river could be replaced by a large generic boat as well.  

Certainly scenery add on makers should tackle this manually but I think there's a real potential for substantially better water areas by autogen and some simple graphical logic.   

[Reader 2,021]

9 hours ago, hanhamreds said:

Nah this all still stinks to me.All they cared about was getting products out for launch day to maximize revenue.

Nothing will provide balance against this point of view, which has nothing to do with the quality of the addons, or the simulator and is not in the least bit concerned with anything that might not agree with it.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Reader