I will offer my opinion on True Earth. I have tried TE both for Xplane (Washington) and P3D (England) and found that I did not like the P3D version. It was too blurry and just felt odd to some extent. The ortho tool for P3D sounds interesting though. I was planning on trying that either in P3D or Xplane, but found I never got enough motivation to go through the learning and processing of the files, plus they are huge. Maybe one of these days I will give it a try. I do find that the Orbx landclass products are a good solution for P3D, in fact for me it would be difficult to fly without Orbx visuals. 

When did you notice blurry textures in TrueEarth P3D, Mike? I fly PMDG airliners "low and slow" over TrueEarth GB and Netherlands in P3Dv4.5HF2 without suffering any blurry textures. However, this is generally no higher than 5000 feet, and at speeds no greater than 240 knots. My PC is not a "top of the range" system (i5 7600k @ 4.6Ghz/32GB DDR4-3600 RAM/6GB GTX 980Ti/2xToshiba 7200rpm HDD), and I run TrueEarth at maximum detail levels, with a screen resolution of 1920x1080 @ 4xSSAA and 16xAF.

Edited September 6, 20205 yr by Christopher Low

22 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

I find that a lot of P3D users don’t know much about ortho-building in this sim, which is a shame as both p3d and ortho are great for airliners. I’ve been meaning to write a “how to” post on Ortho4XP P3D, will try to get it done when real life slows down a bit!

Please let us know when you have the "how to" ready. I have been trying but I have only been able to download my local city without autogen... at ZL16 it looked bad.

Edited September 6, 20205 yr by ttbq1

42 minutes ago, ttbq1 said:

Please let us know when you have the "how to" ready. I have been trying but I have only been able to download my local city without autogen... at ZL16 it looked bad.

Ramon, to avoid future disappointment: ortho4xp p3d is not a good tool for generating overlays (the objects that sit on orthoscenery). For that, you want scenproc, and scenproc is a challenging program to use.

Your best bet if you’re not a tech guru and/or don’t have time to make overlays is to find someone else who has already made this for your area. Or buy orbx trueearth just for the overlays if you’re flying in the UK or parts of the US.

What ortho4xp does do well is make the ortho layer, and in this respect it can provide a better product than TrueEarth (more resolution).

A big deal is made by some of the need for “colour correction” with ortho. In reality, you don’t really need this for most popular areas in 2020, as the source imagery is actually pretty good.

Home made ortho can also look better than MSFS ortho, for example when you are flying a jet at altitude. In this use case - which is what i’m doing in a lot of my virtual flying - streaming ortho struggles, as you really need to be pulling a lot of data off a fast HDD to keep the scenery looking crisp.

3 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

When did you notice blurry textures in TrueEarth P3D, Mike?

It was when the first installment of TE GB came out. I tried it a few places in GB and really did not like it and actually preferred the Orbx landclass product that I had for that region instead. 

That first version of TE GB south was notoriously un-optimised.

It was updated , I believe using different methods, and now along with the other 2 volumes of TE GB works nicely.

Admittedly the XP versions are better optimised but I routinely take the milviz T-38A 500kts at 500ft Throughout the U.K.  in P3D with no problems.

Thanks for the replies guys. I see it’s now out  I may give it a go. We will see 

Only 20% off. So much for the cross platform discount. I'll pass.

On 9/5/2020 at 4:05 AM, OzWhitey said:

I find that a lot of P3D users don’t know much about ortho-building in this sim,

You are correct.  I had no idea that this existed for P3D.  I thought it was XP only.

On 9/5/2020 at 4:05 AM, OzWhitey said:

I find that a lot of P3D users don’t know much about ortho-building in this sim,

You are correct.  I had no idea that this existed for P3D.  I thought it was XP only.

2 hours ago, DJJose said:

Only 20% off.

Yes, this works out to around $32 US for the next 3 days or so (launch discount).  I might give it a go for this amount.  I haven't tried any of their TE products yet.

6 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

Yes, this works out to around $32 US for the next 3 days or so (launch discount).  I might give it a go for this amount.  I haven't tried any of their TE products yet.

Go for it! I have the XP version. However after doing some flying in FL in MSFS 2020, I will not need TE FL for P3D.

6 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Ramon, to avoid future disappointment: ortho4xp p3d is not a good tool for generating overlays (the objects that sit on orthoscenery). For that, you want scenproc, and scenproc is a challenging program to use.

Your best bet if you’re not a tech guru and/or don’t have time to make overlays is to find someone else who has already made this for your area. Or buy orbx trueearth just for the overlays if you’re flying in the UK or parts of the US.

Thanks Rob, I was able to generate beautiful ortho at ZL18 (40Gb...I may need only ZL16) but the autogen is missing, now I understand why.

I am not a tech guru but I am willing to spend some time to learn how to use scenproc.

I will mainly be focused on Colombia and other South American countries, where there is still room for improvement on the textures side. MSFS has done a great job but I don´t find myself flying that sim until I have Fslabs and Pmdg aircraft working great as well as AI AIG.

I will check some video tutorial for scenproc to see if I can learn how to do that.

6 hours ago, MikeT707 said:

It was when the first installment of TE GB came out. I tried it a few places in GB and really did not like it and actually preferred the Orbx landclass product that I had for that region instead. 

Two things changed:

1. Orbx re-released TE GB South as v2 almost 11 months after its initial launch. As @jon b correctly points out above, v1 was awful due to a lack of optimisation.
    
2. TE GB South v1 was released for P3D v4.4. By the time v2 became available, P3D was onto v4.5 HF2. The new point version for P3D brought "improved rendering performance", helping TE to work slightly better again.

As long as some sense of balance between performance and detail is kept, a half-decent PC like mine can run a lot of add-ons acceptably.
I used the PMDG 737, over TE GB Central London, and into Aerosoft's Heathrow with some weather (few clouds) and some AI traffic (limited to about 50 aircraft). My PC averaged about 25 FPS on the approach.

Maybe worth you downloading the updated v2 and taking a second look at it?

Other than Florida what's the point of this scenery if no Seasons?

 

Can't imagine flying to a TE winter region that should have dead foliage and snow only to see summer Terrain...  (I.E. NY to Denver in January)!

As amazing as TE series are, the increased P3D load times is a non starter for me.