2 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

In the grand scheme of things, as an end user, who cares? Not me. I will happily pay for Map Enhancement Pro until such day it gets shut down. It is way better than those awful default terrain textures. I wouldn't even use XP without some ortho. 

(Please don't cry if you are offended by my opinion on this, just scroll on by :-)) 

Same here, I would not have investigated XP12 without a method to get ortho into the sim. Without The Map Enhancement Tool I wouldn't have discovered how good a simulator XP12 is - the default terrain textures are indeed awful.

If MET and Ortho4XP were shut down, AND the new scenery in development wasn't some form of ortho (does not need to be a streaming solution), I would be reconsidering my use of XP12.  I wouldn't want to switch back to MSFS, but it is important for my use of a sim to see what is there in reality.

3 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Please don't cry

Did you also let your kids down this gently when you had to shoot their dog?

 

3 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

those awful default terrain textures

Level-D sims look just about the same in many instances. I don't hear of IRL pilots using the sick bags before they hit turbulence during training sessions.

There have been a number of times when I've had to zoom in on the textures from 30kft to make sure I had actually found a bad ortho tile that refused to load and hence showed the default textures instead. I'd say about 50% of the time the textures can actually be very convincing. I rarely build ortho tiles for every single square km I plan to fly over. That or I'm focused on something else in the sim, e.g. looking to scratch an engi-nerding or beta testing itch. XP is very much a tinkerer's sim.

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

Level-D sims look just about the same in many instances

Of no relevance to a home flight simulation where satellite imagery has been in use for years.  When I was training for my PPL in the UK 25 YEARS AGO, I used commercial addon satellite imagery to practice cross country flights before doing them IRL.

The cat is out the bag, and many many people will not consider XP12 because of the awful terrain tiles.  We are all aware new base scenery is being developed, and I look forward to see what can be achieved without the option of streaming ortho.  However, the option to use tools like OrthoXP and the Map Enhancement Tool, will encourage people to at least try XP12.

I have no problem using these tools as long as they are available.

 

 

I think it’s not new and most of us will agree that the ground-scenery needs a refresh. Laminar is fully aware of and working on it. And since 1-2 years I am also one of those who would not want to use XP without Autoortho, although another very important aspect of the visuals are the lighting of the sky, shadows, reflections and clouds. In that area XP is now fantastic in my opinion.

Edited July 4, 2025Jul 4 by Franz007

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Did you also let your kids down this gently when you had to shoot their dog?

What? 

 

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Level-D sims look just about the same in many instances.

This isn’t a real life sim. It’s a bit of fun. 

5 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

although another very important aspect of the visuals are the lighting of the sky, shadows, reflections and clouds. In that area XP is now fantastic in my opinion.

That aspect of XP12 got me interested, and the ability to use ortho sealed the deal for me to ditch MSFS.  I would hate to go back to MSFS as my sim,  but ortho is so important to me, I would have to go, losing this lovely new atmosphere in XP12.

I agree. And the good thing is that solutions like ME or AO fills the gap until we get a (perhaps even better) solution 🙂

16 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

the option to use tools like OrthoXP

Indeed and LR proactively created the APIs to enable it. O4xp has made cameo appearances in various bug fix lists in the past. You won't get a stronger nod of approval than that.

I have no doubt that if the legal and financial boxes could be checked simultaneously, that LR would have integrated this natively.

 

6 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

real life sim

Sure it is.

I don't think it's "awful". I'm merely pointing out that there is purpose in simulators beyond oogling scenery and that there are other ways to look simulators than "awful". You and Bits would toss the baby out with the bathwater simply because it isn't your baby. Noted and disagreed-with.

25 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

You and Bits would toss the baby out with the bathwater simply because it isn't your baby.

What?

32 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

I don't think it's "awful".

Yes, we all have different wants in a flight sim, and my use has to include ortho scenery. In that regard, default XP12 scenery is awful.  I have talked to many people who I have suggested take a look at XP12 - often they close the sim very quickly when they see the terrain.

32 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

I'm merely pointing out that there is purpose in simulators beyond oogling scenery

I use flight sims 99 percent of the time flying GA in VFR conditions.  I try and fly exactly as I would IRL, and that will require ortho for accurate ground features. Some of the flying IRL and in the sim will include oogling the scenery.

I look at an RW airfield plate that points out a church should be avoided, greenhouses on the downwind leg to be flown over or some grain silos to be used for the turn to final - default XP12 scenery will not show these features.  SimHeaven will show many of these features at the correct size and in the correct location.  If not shown by SimHeaven, the ortho will show them.

32 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

You and Bits would toss the baby out with the bathwater simply because it isn't your baby.

I found the baby because there is an option to get ortho in the sim AND because the new clouds and lighting intrigued me enough to give XP12 a chance.  After a week of evaluating XP12 and the addons available for it, I consider it an overall better sim than MSFS.

However, if the option for ortho was no longer available I would have to re-evaluate if MSFS was the better sim for me.

Edited July 4, 2025Jul 4 by MrBitstFlyer

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

XP12 scenery is awful

Does it trigger a negative physiological response when your eyes make contact with it? I ask because what you're actually describing is "inadequate". It's inadequate for your use case. Hardly "awful".

 

1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I found the baby because there is an option to get ortho in the sim

@Ianrivaldosmith ^^^^  your "baby" is ortho eye candy. Without it you would toss the sim out as an option because you don't care about the other "babies". Got it? Keeping up?

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

Does it trigger a negative physiological response when your eyes make contact with it?

Your replies do that.

 

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

I ask because what you're actually describing is "inadequate". It's inadequate for your use case. Hardly "awful".

The default XP12 terrain is inadequate for my use case.  I also consider the terrain to look years out of date to what has become the norm in gaming.  In my view, they are indeed awful.

 

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

your "baby" is ortho eye candy

Eye candy can be nice to have. For example, SimHeaven has eye candy like seats, bins etc, but I turn those off because they can't really be seen from an aircraft and can negatively affect FPS, so I choose to turn those off.

In regards to ortho, I'm not sure what eye candy you could be referring to. Ortho is just there, nothing to turn off.

 

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

Without it you would toss the sim out as an option because you don't care about the other "babies".

Incorrect, I care very much about the other 'babies', such as lighting and weather. I have been quite clear on that. In fact, I have stated several times, the lighting and weather improvements are what incentivised me to give XP12 a good week of testing to see what it could do.  If ortho was no longer available, I would indeed go back to MSFS as my sim of choice. I would hate to do it because XP12 has got so much to offer, but ortho is top of my preferences because I fly low and slow on nearly every flight.

 

2 hours ago, blingthinger said:

Got it? Keeping up?

A little ironic, as most of my reply was correcting your errors in regards to my usage and desires of XP12.

34 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I also consider the terrain to look years out of date to what has become the norm in gaming.

Just want to comment on that. Here I disagree. I think XP has the best overall looks (ground included to which default airports and lightings belongs) from all sims around simulating the whole world. Except MSFS. XP is second best. You absolutely cannot compare the scenery of flightsims with any other kind of area-limited game. Otherwise I know of sone modern (non simulation) games that would put MSFS’ scenery into shame.

39 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

Just want to comment on that. Here I disagree. I think XP has the best overall looks

I agree, it is the overall looks for a flight sim. 

 

41 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

Except MSFS. XP is second best

XP with ortho is best imho.

 

42 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

You absolutely cannot compare the scenery of flightsims with any other kind of area-limited game.

I agree, I should have been clearer.

21 hours ago, blingthinger said:

From what source(s)? USGS no? That's a free app (a la ortho4xp) that could easily survive a server shut-down.

No idea.

 

13 hours ago, DeltaWho said:

• Sure, if we want to go pedantic bar-for-bar. Hence the asterix and placing Ortho4XP into a morally grey area. But you're still "re-distributing." I think Tony explained it pretty well.
• If you're referring to the slippy map, then no. We have a license, nor do we provide any sane way to download the imagery.

Again we're going into the pedantics of it. We have Google tiles plugins for blender and cesium platforms for Unreal. Just because those tools are free locally, does not mean the final application or output is "free". (That's the attractive allure). This is why you get sites like flightsim.to having to do culls on "photogrammetry mods."

No, you're not redistributing anything unless AutoOrtho and MapEnhancement come with peer-to-peer functionality to take a load off the imagery providers' servers.

The license makes sense as WED is an official tool (made and) supported by Laminar.

 

13 hours ago, DeltaWho said:

Again we're going into the pedantics of it. We have Google tiles plugins for blender and cesium platforms for Unreal. Just because those tools are free locally, does not mean the final application or output is "free". (That's the attractive allure). This is why you get sites like flightsim.to having to do culls on "photogrammetry mods."

Well yes, if you're redistrbuting unlicensed ortho imagery or photogrammetry data as part of a scenery, free- or payware, you're violating license terms, zero argument about that. Still, as long as you keep everything to yourself that you have downloaded using an official API, you're not in breach of anything.

An let's leave it at that. You're in your trench, I'm in mine. No need to put more bodies into no-man's land.