19 hours ago, Nemo said:

Now that they made their Support Forums READ ONLY, I doubt that this will positively affect my purchase decisions in 2022. But to be honest, their support went downhill anyway since JV left.

The same here. The last product I bought was Skiathos and the release version had some issues. By creating a thread and showing the issues, together with other buyers, the developer jumped in and all issues were solved.

My experience with Tickets is that I am always “the only one having these issues”…🤓 

Till after a few months updates appear 😁

I also have to agree. I've been simming since the late 90's. I was there when Orbx as it came to be known came to life back when they released their first products as freeware, back in the ozx days.

I have loved the work that comes out of that company, but sadly, I agree since John stepped down and in the last 12-24 months they just haven't been the same company.

There was a number of things I read in that post from Anna that raised concerns. But none more than when she referred to the interior modelling thing as a "fad". Now I don't care too much for interior modelling, but in saying that, a "fad" in Aussie language is usually used when referring to something that is popular at the moment but generally won't last. She's right in saying it's a "fad" but I just don't think it's the best message coming from the head of the company, she just didn't seem behind the idea. She essentially said "we are happy producing stuff that will get us quick dollars, because it's the in thing". I was really put off by this part of her post. At least pretend to be behind the idea for your companies sake.

Another thing that caught my attention was her comment about them releasing their first aircraft in 2021, the Edgley Optica. Umm what about the Lancair Legacy that was released years ago and I'm pretty sure there was a CT4 in there somewhere? The Optica is not their first aircraft, shouldn't a company head know these things?

The next thing was the comparison with netflix. basically saying "buy it now or wait and get it for free I don't care". I accept that but is this the message John would have put out there? I doubt it!

I was just really disappointed with the post, not because I didn't see what I wanted, I seen VTSP which I can't wait to get my hands on but as I said ever since John stepped down it's just..... not the same. It's just a reseller now.

I was also very shocked at the move to close the support forums and make them read only, leaving you with nothing but a ticket system for support. If your try and post support questions in the main forum you'll soon have you post deleted I would imagine.

As you can see by my post count, I don't post a lot. So this is something I feel strongly about and really concerns me.

This person is a bean counter and that's all. Her profile here https://orbx.group/team/ says it all.

Edited February 14, 20224 yr by matsout

19 hours ago, Kaboki said:

> Who's making better sceneries than ORBX in 2022?

Everyone...

That's not true, in my mind. Flightbeam certainly is better, but they need a couple of years to complete a project.

What I feel is ORBX lost its ability to innovate. They were the pioneers of small-sized landclasses, Peopleflow, and other technologies. Their continually expanded ORBXLIbs were legendary and developers were eager to use them as an ORBX developer.

ORBX is still making good stuff - good, but no longer ahead of the competition.

Kind regards, Michael

Edited February 14, 20224 yr by pmb

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

My experience with Tickets is that I am always “the only one having these issues”…🤓 

 

Not totally untrue. Been there too…

But the public forums will be full of their problems anyway. This is what I don’t understand. By giving up on their after sale forums, they lose control.

Edited February 14, 20224 yr by Dominique_K

2 minutes ago, pmb said:

That's not true, in my mind. Flightbeam certainly is better, but they need a couple of years to complete a project.

What I feel is ORBX' lost its ability to innovate. They were the pioneers of small-sized landclasses, Peopleflow, and other technologies. Their continually expanded ORBXLIbs were legendary and developers were eager to use them as an ORBX developer.

ORBX is still making good stuff - good, but no longer ahead of the competition.

Kind regards, Michael

A good point.

They made their fortune by remedying to the terrible level of the default scenery with the landclass products and  a smart pooling of resources among young developers of the moody small airfields that Richard Goldstein invented before Orbx. John V was saying that the libs were the jewels of the crown and this is why he didn't want to license them.  He then brought the object/peopleflow thingies which I miss in MSFS. And the prices were good. 

We see them looking for new products, city packs, Volanta (a non starter IMO), meshes (more please 😁 !), a regional product (Central GB) seemingly by trials and errors.

They still do good stuff indeed but they have to reinvent themselves. Tough job. I hope they succeed because I know what the hobby owes to them. 
 

46 minutes ago, pmb said:

That's not true, in my mind. Flightbeam certainly is better, but they need a couple of years to complete a project.

What I feel is ORBX lost its ability to innovate. They were the pioneers of small-sized landclasses, Peopleflow, and other technologies. Their continually expanded ORBXLIbs were legendary and developers were eager to use them as an ORBX developer.

ORBX is still making good stuff - good, but no longer ahead of the competition.

Kind regards, Michael

You are right offcourse, my response was just a sarcastic response to the claim. But Orbx for sure isn't the "one stop shop" for me anymore as it used to be before.

These days Im very careful before I buy from orbx  and always check out the competition first. Also their focus on big airports is really dissapointing for me. The small strips in the middle of nowhere that no one heard of used to be my main reason for buying from them. Now I dont see any reason to just stick with them and forget the others like I used too..

2 hours ago, filou said:

Totally agree with the Dominique comment.

Some people don't look beyond the end of their nose.

It has nothing to do with not looking beyond my nose, I have no issue with any company moving forward, that is the process of business, continually growing with the ever changing needs of the consumer. My issue is, and always has been, is when a company sacrifices the very thing that has made them successful in exchange for 'moving with the times' or 'keeping up with the market' or for some other corporately perceived reason 

Edited February 14, 20224 yr by Rockliffe

I too was a strong supporter of ORBX. I lost the desire to promote them many years ago. The primary reason was the way that they treated some of their customers at their forums. They removed the hardware forum, JV had a bad attitude, and honestly some of their airports were petty but useless due to performance issues that were never fixed.

Now that we have a new sim with an entire world to explore with gaps to be filled, ORBX chose to focus on improving cities & expanding the ORBX marketplace. I think that this is the right approach. They just need to be reminded of where they came from. Their forums were built and made relevant by a few sycophants, but they have been rendered obsolete. The human factor should not be ignored. They have some of the best and most talented airport devs in their marketplace, but so does Contrail. They are not the only vendor.

As for support, I bought a few add-ons for AU during the last sale and they were all excellent. I had a small issue with water tiles at lord, contacted the AUscene rep and got a response within 24 hours.

I will continue to support these talented developers regardless of where they choose to sell their MSFS add-ons.

 

 

Edited February 14, 20224 yr by DJJose

17 minutes ago, Rockliffe said:

It has nothing to do with not looking beyond my nose, I have no issue with any company moving forward, that is the process of business, continually growing with the ever changing needs of the consumer. My issue is, and always has been, is when a company sacrifices the very thing that has made them successful in exchange for 'moving with the times' or 'keeping up with the market' or for some other corporately perceived reason 

You can't even imagine what I'm capable of sacrificing to evolve financially, start new projects, feed my family and live decently.

I'm starting to see why Carenado chooses to not engage with customers on a certain level.🤣😂

Why show customers how unfavorable your personality and vibes are through message boards and email communications if you really don't have to.🤣

Seems Aerosoft (Mathijs Kok) and ORBX (Anna) have revealed too much overall character of staff and now folks are finally picking up the vibes they aren't exactly favorable characters.

Must be super low overall vibes if even AVSIM the most bipolar bunch of all sim communities are starting to feel offended and distrustful.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

What do you do when most of your catalogue of  hundreds of products  becomes obsolete in a matter of few months and that people stop to buy  ? When you suddenly face what is basically an unfair competition, a gigantic wave of freeware

 

You step it up and innovate. You don't sit around and recycle your old material hoping that folks will throw a few pennies your way.

I'll always be grateful to Orbx for what they did with FSX and P3D scenery, from LC through to airports. For example, the improvement effected by True Earth UK over stock P3D scenery was wonderful, and made Britain the only place I wanted to fly in. I always received good product support too, though I only needed it a couple of times. Orbx Central was excellent for keeping tabs on what you owned, what was installed, what needed updating and what was available in the shop - it was all made so easy. The only fly in the ointment was the attitude towards customers on the forum, which was sometimes terse, and on two occasions downright rude. At times it seemed that any and all disagreement with Orbx was strictly verboten -- no names, no pack drill, of course.

MSFS stock scenery has broadly eclipsed Orbx, but I hope they are able to continue in some form or other and, like others, I'd like to see some of their work brought over to MSFS - Alice Springs, Broome, and the small UK airfields for example.

1 hour ago, filou said:

You can't even imagine what I'm capable of sacrificing to evolve financially, start new projects, feed my family and live decently.

That's all true. And I totally understand ORBX was in a difficult situation for several reasons at the same time.

However they now rest on former laurels - which works for a while, but wears off if not fed by innovation attracting new (and keeping previous) customers. There are several aspiring talented newcomers - take NZA Simulations, Bijan, or Roman Design - that ORBX (aside just the distributor role) no longer is the ne plus ultra it was once.

Kind regards, Michael

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

 is when a company sacrifices the very thing that has made them successful in exchange for 'moving with the times' or 'keeping up with the market'  

 Howard, to be clear, I never implied or thought that you didn't look beyond your nose. I don't speak like that with old friends 😀

Now, on the topic itself. Keeping up with the market is what a company like Orbx is all about. Remember that  John V was with Cisco (or Oracle) before. Just sayin'...

Opposing John V and Anna C has no sense for me. He is, according to him, the main shareholder.  I surmise that the contracts Orbx has with MS were his doing.  The environment has rather brutally changed, they just can't do as if the market was the same.  What made them successful is mostly gone. She has to cope with this and rebuild Orbx. 

Now some pure conjecture, I wouldn't be surprised if JV didn't work on new tech. He has this idea some years back of having interactions between the sim pilot and the FBO for instance, if my memory serves me well.

  

Edited February 14, 20224 yr by Dominique_K

I personally think the problem is that MSFS2020 is such a complete, high quality, representative world and environment to fly your simulated a/c in that it has removed Orbx's competitive basis. The default worlds in FSX and P3D were so dismally non-representative of the world in which we fly, that Orbx's introduction of Global, then OpenLC and their "full fat" regions finally gave simmers an environment that we all had wished for. And I expect that Orbx invested a lot of R&D to achieve these products, and this investment paid off for several years, as there was no real competition.. I am not sure that "just innovate" will be enough. Global and Orbx's other innovative scenery products had something that airports and cityscapes do not have: they are big and comprehensive and set up competitive barriers that individual developers did not have the resources to compete against.