For UK scenery Just Flight or Orbx

[philmurfin 73]

Hello. As I've never been an Orbx fan, I'm just asking how JustFlight VFR Real Scenery NexGen 3D compares to Orbx True Earth please?

Best....  Phil

[Cai Zicheng 171]

If your computer is powerful enough then Orbx True Earth, which is very detailed but demanding.

[Stephen Simpson 7]

I've used both but for simplicity with the rest of Europe I've gone back to true earth gb.

JF VFR is still sitting there and can be activated at the click of a button.

Both good sceneries.

S

[philmurfin 73]

1 hour ago, Stephen Simpson said:

I've used both but for simplicity with the rest of Europe I've gone back to true earth gb.

JF VFR is still sitting there and can be activated at the click of a button.

Both good sceneries.

S

As I only fly vfr over the UK the simplicity with European scenery wouldn't be an issue, it is the quality of the2 products that I am interested in please.

[wardp 19]

There are plenty of Youtube videos of both sets of scenery. I watched them for quite some time before I eventually went for Orbx TE GB.

[jon b 2,047]

Hi Phil 

I’ve used both and flown around the Peak District where you are, and as others have said the orbx is the better of the two.

A full set of orbx U.K. gives you a very impressive area for VFR flying. Orbx have made lots of custom POI 3D models scattered around the countryside which adds to things. There’s a few notable things missing, such as Chatsworth house for example. The other advantage is of course the orbx airfields blend in nicely. If you do go the orbx route I recommend getting their tree replacement-terraflora V2 product to add to the TE, it’s only a fiver but really gives the world a much better 3D looking appearance than the original  cartoon like trees in P3D TE.

Thats the P3D option , if you use x-plane the TE  U.K. products do look nicer, to my eye at least in XP.

And of course I have to  mention there is always the option of the new sim for £59 which gives you a very good U.K. area indeed for VFR flying, it needs 3D POIs and better mesh, and I suspect orbx will port over a pack of 3D poi objects in the future.

Edited September 13, 2020 by jon b

[OzWhitey 3,353]

7 hours ago, jon b said:

Hi Phil 

I’ve used both and flown around the Peak District where you are, and as others have said the orbx is the better of the two.

Randomly built some peak district ortho and have been flying around there today for the first time, using the Orbx overlay for buildings and scenery. Also UK2000 for a couple of small airfields that seem to be missing from Orbx. Works great in combination.

Out of the box, Orbx TrueEarth is good, but the LOD15 ortho is a bit low res for optimal low-level flying. Would definitely recommend, but it can be substantially improved with a bit of DIY work.

[Christopher Low 5,353]

I wonder if I could get the PlayHorizon version of Chatsworth House to blend with the ORBx TrueEarth GB Central scenery? How is Chatsworth House represented in TrueEarth? Is it just a standard warehouse/factory building model?

[philmurfin 73]

18 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Randomly built some peak district ortho and have been flying around there today for the first time, using the Orbx overlay for buildings and scenery. Also UK2000 for a couple of small airfields that seem to be missing from Orbx. Works great in combination.

Out of the box, Orbx TrueEarth is good, but the LOD15 ortho is a bit low res for optimal low-level flying. Would definitely recommend, but it can be substantially improved with a bit of DIY work.

I've done the whole of the UK in ZL19 for X-Plane, I wasn't aware that I could do the same for P3d, what program are you you using to do that please? Any links or further info would be really great!

[philmurfin 73]

Thanks to you all for your helpful replies, other than making my own Ortho, which I very keen to do, it seems like Orbx is the favoured route, again thanks for the detailed replies.

Very best......  Phil

[philmurfin 73]

On 9/13/2020 at 4:00 PM, jon b said:

Hi Phil 

I’ve used both and flown around the Peak District where you are, and as others have said the orbx is the better of the two.

A full set of orbx U.K. gives you a very impressive area for VFR flying. Orbx have made lots of custom POI 3D models scattered around the countryside which adds to things. There’s a few notable things missing, such as Chatsworth house for example. The other advantage is of course the orbx airfields blend in nicely. If you do go the orbx route I recommend getting their tree replacement-terraflora V2 product to add to the TE, it’s only a fiver but really gives the world a much better 3D looking appearance than the original  cartoon like trees in P3D TE.

Thats the P3D option , if you use x-plane the TE  U.K. products do look nicer, to my eye at least in XP.

And of course I have to  mention there is always the option of the new sim for £59 which gives you a very good U.K. area indeed for VFR flying, it needs 3D POIs and better mesh, and I suspect orbx will port over a pack of 3D poi objects in the future.

Good to hear from you John, I hope you are keeping well, I'll take your advice about terraflora thanks.

Best Wishes

Phil

[OzWhitey 3,353]

13 hours ago, philmurfin said:

I've done the whole of the UK in ZL19 for X-Plane, I wasn't aware that I could do the same for P3d, what program are you you using to do that please? Any links or further info would be really great!

ZL19!!! 

There's a P3D version of Ortho4XP, available through github. That's what you'll want to use. Let me know if you run into any problems, I should be able to help. I'm very actively building tiles for P3D atm, having done so for XPlane in the past with both Ortho4XP and the tools the preceded it.

Did you use Google for your ZL19? It's hard to find good source material for the UK that is consistent across the country. The Lake District itself looks great, but there's a dodgy part in the northeast of the tile.

Orbx uses ZL15 (well, it's labelled LOD15 and it's pretty poor quality, so I think it's ZL15), so if you're a ZL19 guy you're probably going to want to build your own ortho (though ZL18 is the most you'll get with Ortho4P3D).

Surprisingly, many P3D users are unaware that it's actually easy to build ortho (unlike X-plane, where everyone knows that's a thing). 

I've been hooked on ortho for FSX/P3D ever since I tried a free trial years ago that - with relevance to the current discussion - was the JustFlight version of the Lake District! Just random chance that I'd decided to build it in P3D and revisit it over the last few days. Certainly is a beautiful part of England, great for cruising over in the A2A Comanche.

 

 

[OzWhitey 3,353]

On 9/13/2020 at 11:00 PM, jon b said:

Thats the P3D option , if you use x-plane the TE  U.K. products do look nicer, to my eye at least in XP.

I have TE UK (all regions) for both X-plane and P3D. I personally prefer the look of the P3D version, with the proviso that in both X-plane and P3D the underlying ortho really needs a DIY upgrade to shine.

X-plane just has such a grim color palate, sure we're trying to model England here so maybe that's true to life, but do you really want to develop depression after each sim session? P3D looks a lot happier, the ortho is crisp and I also like the aircraft that we have available (A2A, Maddog and PMDG being my preferred choices).

[philmurfin 73]

14 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

ZL19!!! 

There's a P3D version of Ortho4XP, available through github. That's what you'll want to use. Let me know if you run into any problems, I should be able to help. I'm very actively building tiles for P3D atm, having done so for XPlane in the past with both Ortho4XP and the tools the preceded it.

Did you use Google for your ZL19? It's hard to find good source material for the UK that is consistent across the country. The Lake District itself looks great, but there's a dodgy part in the northeast of the tile.

Orbx uses ZL15 (well, it's labelled LOD15 and it's pretty poor quality, so I think it's ZL15), so if you're a ZL19 guy you're probably going to want to build your own ortho (though ZL18 is the most you'll get with Ortho4P3D).

Surprisingly, many P3D users are unaware that it's actually easy to build ortho (unlike X-plane, where everyone knows that's a thing). 

I've been hooked on ortho for FSX/P3D ever since I tried a free trial years ago that - with relevance to the current discussion - was the JustFlight version of the Lake District! Just random chance that I'd decided to build it in P3D and revisit it over the last few days. Certainly is a beautiful part of England, great for cruising over in the A2A Comanche.

 

 

Firstly, thanks for your advice and your offer of help if required, I'll try github for the P3d version, I can't seem to find a lot about it on the tinternet. I saw something called FSEarthTiles, have you tried that at all?

If the P3d version is similar to the XP version, the ZL can be altered up to 19 in the main config file.

For providers, I used mainly Google, a few Bing and a few Arc,I struggled a bit with Shetland and Orkney!

 If you are using ZL18 and no higher,  a good provider is Ordinance Survey UK18.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

22 hours ago, philmurfin said:

Firstly, thanks for your advice and your offer of help if required, I'll try github for the P3d version, I can't seem to find a lot about it on the tinternet. I saw something called FSEarthTiles, have you tried that at all?

If the P3d version is similar to the XP version, the ZL can be altered up to 19 in the main config file.

For providers, I used mainly Google, a few Bing and a few Arc,I struggled a bit with Shetland and Orkney!

 If you are using ZL18 and no higher,  a good provider is ^{Ordinance Survey UK18.}

I'm a long-time FSEarthTiles fan - I've made plenty of posts praising it over the years. However, for large-scale orthoscenery production you really want Ortho4XP P3D edition. It has a much better interface and - most importantly - with FSET you need to make every water mask by hand. I've spent hundreds of hours masking coastlines, and I'm very happy to not need to do that with Ortho4XP!

If you're familiar with the standard (XP) Ortho4XP, you'll feel right at home with the P3D version. There's just an extra box on the map interface that says "Build for ESP", you need to tick that along with the Assemble vector/Trinangulate/Water Mask/Build imagery/DSF fields you'd select in X-plane.

P3D version is a fork of the XP version. From memory, the dev (not Oscar) said that the P3D version only supports up to ZL18, but there may be a way around that. I love hi-res ortho, but ZL19 would be extreme even by my standards on a large-scale level. 🙂

I've built the UK for X-plane and P3D using both Bing and GO2. The south of the UK is good, the north not so great. If you have the .lay file for Ordinance Survey UK or can point me in the right direction, I'd be interested to have a look.

Here's the link to the P3D version of Ortho4XP: https://github.com/stackTom/Ortho4XP_FSX_P3D

Enjoy!