Hi all,

In the OrbX Central application, I noticed I had TrueEarth England North and South available for install in the XPlane12 products. I'm considering installing one of them to take a look at these sceneries in their XPlane12 "native" (at least officially) format. But I'm wondering: do I need to install first the corresponding default scenery area from the XPlane Installer app or not ?

Currently in my XPlane 12, I think I have only installed the North America West base scenery area, on top of which I have installed the OrbX TrueEarth Washington scenery. That scenery is still for XPlane 11 but it displays reasonnably well in XPlane 12. This limited area is due to the limited amount of space currently available on my disks (computer is outdated and I don't want to buy more disks for it right now).

I don't remember if the installation of the base scenery was really required or not, so I though I would ask here 🙂

Hi Daube,

not really sure about True Earth, but probably it won't work without the base scenery. If you install airport addons without the base you splash into an ocean, no way without that. Regarding space limits why not try AutoOrtho like Map Enhancer? You get excellent and pretty current scenery everywhere for free (or even better by Pro version). At least you avoid a lot of disk space without Orbx TE. Have fun,

Fritz

The thing is, OrbX TrueEarth come with their own mesh and ground textures, that's I was wondering if I needed the default scenery underneath...

Concerning AutoOrtho, I have used it in the distant past, but I don't remember the technical details about the scenery tiles that it needs 😕

 

A side question enters the room 🙂 

As i wrote earlier,  the OrbX TrueEarth Washington scenery is currently installed in my XPlane12. However, it's just the "SD" version, which comes with low resolution ground textures, but uses less disk space. Nevertheless, that scenery takes AGES to load. From the menu to the cockpit, it lasts maybe more than 5 minutes !!

I'm considering trying the "HD" (higher res ground textures, maybe 1m/pixel or smaller) version of that scenery instead of the "SD" one, which might be able to fit on my current SSD drive. But now I'm really concerned about the loading times. If the SD version takes so long, won't the HD version take even longer ? 

Edited April 11, 20251 yr by Daube

Yes, you need to have the XP base region installed.

And SSD or even better, NVME, is one of the best ways to improve loading times.

If you have anything on a spinning disk HDD, it will take ages for any sim to load.

My computer has no HDDs inside, all are SSDs. I don't have NVME though, but my next computer will.

 

if your planning to be GB true earth and a payware aircraft such as the tolis a320 neo or more so the 330 neo and some payware scenery then expect the frames to take quite a big  hit in the day and even more so at night 

 

Really ?

So far Xplane 11 and 12 have never disappointed me in performance when looking at complex sceneries... The "SD" version of the TrueEarth Washington scenery doesn't impact much on my old machine. I understand the "HD" version comes with the same autogen/scenery objects, but higher ground textures resolution (no impact on the FPS) and might also include higher definition terrain tiles/mesh. Maybe these last ones are a problem for the performances ?

On 4/14/2025 at 11:52 PM, fluffyflops said:

if your planning to be GB true earth and a payware aircraft such as the tolis a320 neo or more so the 330 neo and some payware scenery then expect the frames to take quite a big  hit in the day and even more so at night 

 

I've never noticed an appreciable difference in XP/TrueEarth/[insert 3rd party aircraft here] performance based on time of day or day of week.

AFAIK, that only happens in "the other sim that just released last November"

What have you seen?

3 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

I've never noticed an appreciable difference in XP/TrueEarth/[insert 3rd party aircraft here] performance based on time of day or day of week.

AFAIK, that only happens in "the other sim that just released last November"

What have you seen?

the night light fps drop issue has been around since release and i dont use that other sim.  I refuse to do pay to beta like most of the community now do.

Edited April 17, 20251 yr by fluffyflops

On 4/11/2025 at 9:13 AM, Daube said:

I don't remember if the installation of the base scenery was really required or not, so I though I would ask here 🙂

It isn't, you don't need the base scenery installed for the area as the TrueEarth region completely replaces it.

14 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

the night light fps drop issue has been around since release and i dont use that other sim.  I refuse to do pay to beta like most of the community now do.

Oh, I thought you meant IRL time of day!!!

(And that's my IRL day job sneaking in.. 😁)

8 hours ago, tonywob said:

It isn't, you don't need the base scenery installed for the area as the TrueEarth region completely replaces it.

Is there a region where the X-Plane scenery & True Earth scenery truly overlap?

I.e., if you want to fly UK to EU, you still need XPs Europe, or UK to Eire, same.

If KLAX to KDEN then you need XP US West, and so forth...

I guess if you strictly limit yourself to just flying within the specific TE region, but it'd be weird to see the effect of that if you're close to the border, etc...

I guess what I'm saying is that it's usually the TE that creates the practical issues (like disk space & performance), so why not have the XP scenery installed, too....?

No… X-Plane’s current scenery mesh system is based on 1x1 degree tiles. These tiles never overlap, and country borders are irrelevant—unless they happen to align exactly with a 1-degree boundary, like the border between the USA and Canada in the Pacific Northwest :)

For example, with TrueEarth England, we got lucky—France conveniently started just outside the tile boundary. But Ireland was a much bigger challenge.

I’ve been raising this issue with the LR devs for years. The 1x1 tile limitation makes it really difficult to distribute scenery regions cleanly. Offering something like the Netherlands would’ve been a nightmare, since I’d also need scenery and data for Belgium and parts of France, just to make it work properly.

I’ve been assured that the new scenery system planned for future versions of X-Plane will address this limitation—as much as it’s currently possible (similar to what MFS is doing).

N.B. Overlay sceneries (those that don't use a mesh) can overlap and they use exclusions to block out each other

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

No… X-Plane’s current scenery mesh system is based on 1x1 degree tiles. These tiles never overlap, and country borders are irrelevant—unless they happen to align exactly with a 1-degree boundary, like the border between the USA and Canada in the Pacific Northwest :)

For example, with TrueEarth England, we got lucky—France conveniently started just outside the tile boundary. But Ireland was a much bigger challenge.

I’ve been raising this issue with the LR devs for years. The 1x1 tile limitation makes it really difficult to distribute scenery regions cleanly. Offering something like the Netherlands would’ve been a nightmare, since I’d also need scenery and data for Belgium and parts of France, just to make it work properly.

I’ve been assured that the new scenery system planned for future versions of X-Plane will address this limitation—as much as it’s currently possible (similar to what MFS is doing).

N.B. Overlay sceneries (those that don't use a mesh) can overlap and they use exclusions to block out each other

Thanks for that - it slipped my mind that you literally have the inside scoop on stuff like this 🙂👍