On 5/18/2023 at 5:23 PM, TurboKen said:

$8 dollars seems justified and a great price for an upgrade to me, judging by the pics I have seen, as I have yet to upgrade but will be doing so.

As far as rehashes ORBX is way behind in bringing all the great airports form P3D to MSFS in my opinion as far as the US goes. The PNW was supposedly one of the most popular spots for flying and I'm still waiting for most of the airports to be made available. They must have lost a lot of developers to the competition.

I agree with you.  I do think most of the "competition" though, are freeware devs on flightsim to.  Sure most freeware in PNW is fairly basic but they do a lot more than stock scenery for free.  Perhaps orbx sees this.  Or my other "fear" is that orbx used their first 2 re-releases as a benchmark and they didn't sell well.  I think it was 3W5 Concrete and Darrington or something.  I believe they were ported from p3d and frankly did not look good at all.

Also when I first bought BUR and SBA the quality was awful.... honestly neither is still very good.  V2 of Burbank was a little better.

So maybe they did lose devs or they found it wasn't cost effective to do major texture upgrades.

If you are in search of PNW check out the San Juan islands by Wookie42 or scenery by and someone with a Q in their name lol.  I searched and cannot locate them.  It was like Quelcerto or someone.  Maybe they pulled their files in the giant fs.to overreaction.  Windhover also did 2 or 3 PNW airports.

Edit: oh I found him!

https://flightsim.to/profile/quelcertoleo/uploads

Edited May 22, 20233 yr by ryanbatc

1 hour ago, ryanbatc said:

I agree with you.  I do think most of the "competition" though, are freeware devs on flightsim to.  Sure most freeware in PNW is fairly basic but they do a lot more than stock scenery for free.  Perhaps orbx sees this.  Or my other "fear" is that orbx used their first 2 re-releases as a benchmark and they didn't sell well.  I think it was 3W5 Concrete and Darrington or something.  I believe they were ported from p3d and frankly did not look good at all.

Also when I first bought BUR and SBA the quality was awful.... honestly neither is still very good.  V2 of Burbank was a little better.

Concur 100% with this statement. They (Orbx) are just not at the quality level that they used to be at and more and more simmers that used to really like their scenery are starting to feel that way, myself included. During my later FSX years and then during all of my P3D years I exclusively used Orbx scenery. Everything they put out back then was awesome with lots of character, new tech (People Flow etc.) and cool details. They really have seemed to have lost their way during the MSFS time. Nowadays, for me, my scenery collection in MSFS only includes about 50% of Orbx scenery, and most of that is from third party developers.

25 minutes ago, sniper31 said:

Concur 100% with this statement. They (Orbx) are just not at the quality level that they used to be at and more and more simmers that used to really like their scenery are starting to feel that way, myself included. During my later FSX years and then during all of my P3D years I exclusively used Orbx scenery. Everything they put out back then was awesome with lots of character, new tech (People Flow etc.) and cool details. They really have seemed to have lost their way during the MSFS time. Nowadays, for me, my scenery collection in MSFS only includes about 50% of Orbx scenery, and most of that is from third party developers.

Yep, when John Venema departed, the whole look of the ORBX operation changed. The operation expanded exponentially, quality control tough to manage and an eye for maximum profit creeped in.

5 minutes ago, The Flight Level said:

Yep, when John Venema departed, the whole look of the ORBX operation changed. The operation expanded exponentially, quality control tough to manage and an eye for maximum profit creeped in.

Agreed

2 hours ago, ryanbatc said:

I agree with you.  I do think most of the "competition" though, are freeware devs on flightsim to.  Sure most freeware in PNW is fairly basic but they do a lot more than stock scenery for free.  Perhaps orbx sees this.  Or my other "fear" is that orbx used their first 2 re-releases as a benchmark and they didn't sell well.  I think it was 3W5 Concrete and Darrington or something.  I believe they were ported from p3d and frankly did not look good at all.

Also when I first bought BUR and SBA the quality was awful.... honestly neither is still very good.  V2 of Burbank was a little better.

So maybe they did lose devs or they found it wasn't cost effective to do major texture upgrades.

If you are in search of PNW check out the San Juan islands by Wookie42 or scenery by and someone with a Q in their name lol.  I searched and cannot locate them.  It was like Quelcerto or someone.  Maybe they pulled their files in the giant fs.to overreaction.  Windhover also did 2 or 3 PNW airports.

Edit: oh I found him!

https://flightsim.to/profile/quelcertoleo/uploads

Bullfrog Sim has done a few as well.

1 hour ago, The Flight Level said:

Yep, when John Venema departed, the whole look of the ORBX operation changed. The operation expanded exponentially, quality control tough to manage and an eye for maximum profit creeped in.

Absolutely. The spirit got lost then.

3 hours ago, Sonosusto said:

Bullfrog Sim has done a few as well.

Oh yeah thanks for mentioning!  He does really nice work!

There is a lot of good freeware for Alaska these days. Just don't blame me when you end up having to download and install 60 airports.

 

17 hours ago, Stiller Water said:

Absolutely. The spirit got lost then.

Just got an advertisement for ORBX London City V2 on Google Ads. You know they are into serious money with regular Google Ads!

On 5/22/2023 at 10:02 AM, ryanbatc said:

I agree with you.  I do think most of the "competition" though, are freeware devs on flightsim to.  Sure most freeware in PNW is fairly basic but they do a lot more than stock scenery for free.  Perhaps orbx sees this.  Or my other "fear" is that orbx used their first 2 re-releases as a benchmark and they didn't sell well.  I think it was 3W5 Concrete and Darrington or something.  I believe they were ported from p3d and frankly did not look good at all.

Also when I first bought BUR and SBA the quality was awful.... honestly neither is still very good.  V2 of Burbank was a little better.

So maybe they did lose devs or they found it wasn't cost effective to do major texture upgrades.

If you are in search of PNW check out the San Juan islands by Wookie42 or scenery by and someone with a Q in their name lol.  I searched and cannot locate them.  It was like Quelcerto or someone.  Maybe they pulled their files in the giant fs.to overreaction.  Windhover also did 2 or 3 PNW airports.

Edit: oh I found him!

https://flightsim.to/profile/quelcertoleo/uploads

Thanks Ryan, I appreciate it. I'll check these guys out. 

On 5/17/2023 at 3:27 PM, Rene_Feijen said:

until the upgrade bundle will be available in the Marketplace

anybody knows when this may be the case, been waiting now for more than a month

Looking at the publicity video I felt a sudden nostalgia for when scenery packages concentrated on the stuff you would actually notice from inside the cockpit of the aeroplane.
 

Lingering shots of terminal interiors, the exact number of cables supporting the Dome, etc etc …. obsessive without adding one iota to the immersion - and presumably detracting from the fluidity.  
 

Imo obvs.