FC Scenery v Orbx

[Ian S]

Hi

I'm just following up on a post over on the Bargain Hunter's forum which appears to have lost momentum. I see FC Scenery have a sale ending shortly for all of their products bundled for $500USD. I have all the Orbx products in P3D 5.4 but presume that FC Scenery would render most, if not all, redundant. 

I don't currently own any photoscenery so am curious about how the two products compare and whether the visual improvement is worth the cost. The promotional photos certainly look impressive. 

I am also curious how FC Scenery works with 3rd party airports, and whether you need to keep the likes of FTX Global installed in order for some Orbx Airports to work. 

I see winter textures are limited. Is it possible to 'turn-off' certain sceneries? For example if I wanted to fly from Norway to Finland in winter, I presume Orbx Norway & LC Europe would be a more realistic option than the snow-less textures of FC Scenery. Curious how easy it is to switch between products.

Any advice would be appreciated.

cheers

[Patco Lch]

You don’t have to buy the full Monty at once. Why not just buy one or two locations and decide for yourself? Yes you can turn photoscenery on and off at your pleasure in your scenery library. Just buy the areas you will use, that way you don’t waste money and the tremendous storage space photo scenery requires. Personally I fly tube liners most often and find my ORBX land class to be better than photo scenery in some ways, like keeping better resolution at low altitude. Just my humble opinion.

P.S. there are some free photo scenery on sites like https://flyawaysimulation.com/

that are quite good.

[Reader]

I'll state the obvious and point out that for under 80 USD, you could have photo scenery of the entire planet
with autogen and snow in winter if you were willing to try a different simulator.
You wouldn't need to abandon the one you have, just use the other one when your priority is sightseeing.

Edited March 17 by Reader

[Ian S]

20 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

You don’t have to buy the full Monty at once. Why not just buy one or two locations and decide for yourself? Yes you can turn photoscenery on and off at your pleasure in your scenery library. Just buy the areas you will use, that way you don’t waste money and the tremendous storage space photo scenery requires. Personally I fly tube liners most often and find my ORBX land class to be better than photo scenery in some ways, like keeping better resolution at low altitude. Just my humble opinion.

P.S. there are some free photo scenery on sites like https://flyawaysimulation.com/

that are quite good.

Yes, I thought that, but even to test out the scenario above would cost me $70USD which is a bit pointless to pay for just three countries when the whole world was on offer for $500USD. Hence why I was hoping someone could speak from their experiences already. 

Yes, I also fly tubeliners, and am generally happy with Orbx, which is why I was curious if it was as life-changing as some suggest. Thanks for the tip with the freeware, might look into that.

[Luis Hernandez]

1 hour ago, Ian S said:

Yes, I thought that, but even to test out the scenario above would cost me $70USD

22 hours ago, Patco Lch said:

there are some free photo scenery on sites like https://flyawaysimulation.com/

That could be your trial. The only variables are quality of ground photos and autogen.

[Patco Lch]

5 hours ago, Ian S said:

Yes, I thought that, but even to test out the scenario above would cost me $70USD which is a bit pointless to pay for just three countries when the whole world was on offer for $500USD. Hence why I was hoping someone could speak from their experiences already. 

Yes, I also fly tubeliners, and am generally happy with Orbx, which is why I was curious if it was as life-changing as some suggest. Thanks for the tip with the freeware, might look into that.

Life changing? Naw. I can think of much better uses for $500. Like the kid above said for eye candy flight there’s MSFS. Ouch! It hurt to say that😂

[tktheo93]

I have over 10 000 gb of Photoscenery on my drive and I'm pretty sure I can provide you with a reasonable fair answer. I have paid for them myself with my own money. 

To begin with, Mega Scenery Earth is outdated and the lack of autogen makes it pointless to use. I created over 6 million objects with a simmer for Ohio, which took a week and the end result is not even close to the other "player" FC Scenery. ORBX is nice but limited to a few states and the pricing policy is what it is.

 

Here is a pros and cons list of all of them:

 

ORBX TE:

+Nice photoreal

+Nicely polished autogen and landmarks

+Overall a nice quality product.

+Decent freeware strips

 

-You only get a few states or countries.

-Price is high compared to the rest.

-No updates anymore.

 

Mega Scenery Earth:

+Reasonable price.

+Limited space, but that comes with a drawback regarding the sharpness of the image.

 

-No autogen, only flat terrain.

-Outdated photoreal

-No support

 

FC Scenery: 

+Reasonable priced, especially the limited 500 usd for the world is a joke. That is honestly 0,02 cents per gigabyte. Cheap.

+Around 1m resolution in urban areas, around 2m elsewhere. 

+No performance issues.

+Colour matching is one of the best, if not the best, that I have seen on P3D.

+Updated maps and quick support available.

+Autogen (trees, buildings) 

 

-You need a lot of SSD space for the world. I would say that 6 000-8 000gb would be a close estimation.

-Some minor issues here and there. With that said, you get a response from the dev and those will eventually be sorted.

 

Which one would I recommend?

FC Scenery 100 %. 

Do I regret paying over 1 500 euros?

No, would do it again.

 

Here are some shots from my flights using FC Scenery, all in 4k:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KD8NCt4u72wU-7KZOLntwpBuf8FLbMH7?usp=sharing

 

best,

Théo

Edited March 18 by tktheo93

[dave2013]

Does anyone know what the autogen for FC Scenery is like?

Is the autogen stock or is it customized?

Does the building and vegetation autogen correspond to the location?  For example, Italian style buildings in Italy, mesquite bushes in the Southwest USA, etc.

Thanks a lot.

Dave

[tktheo93]

4 hours ago, dave2013 said:

Does anyone know what the autogen for FC Scenery is like?

Is the autogen stock or is it customized?

Does the building and vegetation autogen correspond to the location?  For example, Italian style buildings in Italy, mesquite bushes in the Southwest USA, etc.

Thanks a lot.

Dave

Autogen is always autogen; hence, it requires a lot of work from the dev.  Firstly, you need to fetch data for it's placement and tell the editor the appropriate building height etc. 

I recommend using ORBX HD autogen and ORBX Vegetation addon with your photoscenery, and you'll get the location spesific HD autogen. 

 

Théo 

Edited March 19 by tktheo93

[Patco Lch]

13 hours ago, tktheo93 said:

have over 10 000 gb of Photoscenery on my drive and I'm pretty sure I can provide you with a reasonable fair answer. I have paid for them myself with my own money. 

Glad you didn’t use someone else’s money😂 Just joking. Yours is an excellent synopsis of the options available. Well said.

[Blasb]

Another option is to try Ortho4Xp and create your own ortho and autogen for P3D. That doesn't cost anything and after that you will know if you prefer photoreal over landclass (and then you can either uninstall Ortho4xp or go full steam ahead with it)! I basically do all my photoreal myself now for 0 cost. 😁

[dave2013]

8 hours ago, tktheo93 said:

Autogen is always autogen; hence, it requires a lot of work from the dev.

I don't understand what you mean by this.  I didn't ask if it was a lot of work, but I'm sure it is.

 

8 hours ago, tktheo93 said:

I recommend using ORBX HD autogen and ORBX Vegetation addon with your photoscenery, and you'll get the location spesific HD autogen. 

OK, so the FC Scenery photoscenery uses either the stock autogen or ORBX, so the autogen is not custom.

 

8 hours ago, tktheo93 said:

Firstly, you need to fetch data for it's placement and tell the editor the appropriate building height etc. 

OK, so the developer manually annotates the photoscenery to tell the sim what autogen to place and where.

One more question: are you the developer, do you work for the developer, or are you affiliated with the developer in any way?

Thanks.

Dave

Edited March 19 by dave2013

[dave2013]

I am very interested in FC Scenery's products and I am seriously considering purchasing at least a couple of their continent packages. 

However, I would never spend hundreds of dollars on something unless I could try it out first, sort of like a test drive before buying a car.

Why doesn't FC Scenery offer a single U.S. State or a small country for free so that potential buyers can see if they like it?

Just an idea.

Dave

[tktheo93]

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

I am very interested in FC Scenery's products and I am seriously considering purchasing at least a couple of their continent packages. 

However, I would never spend hundreds of dollars on something unless I could try it out first, sort of like a test drive before buying a car.

Why doesn't FC Scenery offer a single U.S. State or a small country for free so that potential buyers can see if they like it?

Just an idea.

Dave

 

 

2 hours ago, dave2013 said:

I don't understand what you mean by this.  I didn't ask if it was a lot of work, but I'm sure it is.

 

OK, so the FC Scenery photoscenery uses either the stock autogen or ORBX, so the autogen is not custom.

 

OK, so the developer manually annotates the photoscenery to tell the sim what autogen to place and where.

One more question: are you the developer, do you work for the developer, or are you affiliated with the developer in any way?

Thanks.

Dave

1) The point I made, is that no living human being could possibly add custom autogen to country-sized areas in P3D. Or if that could be done, it would take a lifetime. You could add areas, yes, but that would involve fiddling with textures, etc. Hard work equals more time and that wouldn't benefit anyone. That was my point and perhaps something for you to realize. In other words, not possible. However, with Orbx HD autogen and proper RDShade settings, it surely beats MSFS from a high +15 000ft altitude. 🙂

2) Semi-manually. Databases are used, but in the USA, OSM data regarding vegetation and autogen is really out of place.

3) No have nothing to do with development, nor am I affiliated with him. I have spent over 1500€ in his work over the years, so I think I can quite objectively speaking provide feedback. That is what I do, if there is something that needs improvement, I'll let him know.

With that said, I think that I have an above-average understanding of how P3D works system-wise, and I have been experimenting with autogen and photoreal for many many years. I was closely involved in testing freeware photoreal for Scandinavia with winter textures and autogen, autogen for Ohio, and various other countries. That is the reason I know how the development works. To be honest, the amount of work is huge. I have had various photoreal sceneries and the day I bought my first FC Scenery, well it was the last day I needed to be involved in the quest to hunt for proper photoreal. With my over 1500€ spent, I can confidently tell you that he's work is the best out there; yes, in every aspect. The color matching, performance, and autogen grids are spot on. Did you watch my screenshots from the link? Those are all taken while flying with FC Scenery's work.

Cheers,
Théo

 

 

 

[dave2013]

1 hour ago, tktheo93 said:

With my over 1500€ spent, I can confidently tell you that he's work is the best out there; yes, in every aspect. The color matching, performance, and autogen grids are spot on.

Thanks a lot for answering my questions. 

I'm likely going to get at the the USA and maybe Europe as well.

Dave