4 hours ago, Pugilist2 said:

The current XP12 default scenery looks very dated and does not look realistic

You are the first one to point that out.

1 hour ago, peroni said:

Is the scenery update coming in XP12? I don't think there was a clear commitment on that, all we know is they are working on it. Have I missed something?

Oh and Sid hinted at 3d grass nearly four years ago but then a lot of things have changed. Just to give a possible scale of timings.

 

 

I don’t think they have announced for which version yet. Tbh I think they don’t know when it will be ready, so it must be difficult for them to announce anything.

1 hour ago, Franz007 said:

You are the first one to point that out.

So, what's your point of quoting that? 

Pleased to present... the first look at next gen scenery

 

Edited October 20, 2025Oct 20 by Ray Proudfoot
Large space removed.

Very nice. Finally, the streets and coastline are nicely contoured. There's just something wrong with the autogen... 

On 10/17/2025 at 1:51 PM, Pe11e said:

Honestly if they deliver anything below FTX Global + OpenLC quality, I will be (highly) disappointed. Let's be real, ORBX did a truly fantastic job 12 years ago (plus OpenLC releases in the next couple of years), so I simply can't see a reason why LR + MisterX can't deliver anything similar, or even better in 2025/2026. I truly hope they can surprise us.

Then I’d say you should steel yourself to be highly disappointed 😢 

the Orbx FTX & Global is chock full of satellite imagery, even if old school low res by today’s standards.

And don’t forget, the Orbx FTX, et al, library was quite an expensive suite of products - each region costing between half and equal to the full price of X-Plane itself!

What we may see for XP is an evolutionary but still significant improvement to SFD Global (by MisterX). 
I haven’t used it in quite some time, but it used a mixed library of raster ground images and highly regionalized AutoGen. 
the result was a significant upgrade over default scenery and I enjoyed the product. 

but it was never even close to Orbx anything…

im really hoping LR have some crazy surprise in store for us, but without sat imagery, well… 🤷

On 10/17/2025 at 11:51 PM, andy1252 said:

think I will load up maybe v4 and the Orbx stuff,

If you happen to have v5, the performance & atmospheric visual improvement over v4 is astounding. I got fully 50% higher frames

like improved enough that it’s worth considering a v5 purchase…

On 10/18/2025 at 10:32 AM, Patco Lch said:

I wonder if ORBX isn't leaving a lot of money on the table by not doing some Global and regional land class scenery for Xplane. 

IDK… I’m not sure the demand is there. 

they did a good job updating TrueEarth GB for v12, and the upgrade price was just a few dollars. Absolute no-brainer to grab it  

but in the last year or two since it released there have been exactly zero updates to the rest of the  TE regions, let alone anything new. (and few if any…?) updates to the matching airports, etc. 

id happily spend some bucks on new or upgraded Orbx regions, but it seems I’m a true minority.

44 minutes ago, UrgentSiesta said:

Then I’d say you should steel yourself to be highly disappointed 😢 

the Orbx FTX & Global is chock full of satellite imagery, even if old school low res by today’s standards.

And don’t forget, the Orbx FTX, et al, library was quite an expensive suite of products - each region costing between half and equal to the full price of X-Plane itself!

What we may see for XP is an evolutionary but still significant improvement to SFD Global (by MisterX). 
I haven’t used it in quite some time, but it used a mixed library of raster ground images and highly regionalized AutoGen. 
the result was a significant upgrade over default scenery and I enjoyed the product. 

but it was never even close to Orbx anything…

im really hoping LR have some crazy surprise in store for us, but without sat imagery, well… 🤷

Yes, the base images are ortho, but every single texture is customized, changed, so you could possible never find the exact location. The commercial usage of public ortho images is illegal, so they either bought commercial license for ortho imagery from some provider, and customized it for FTX Global needs, or they used a bunch of images for each texture, to make it unrecognizable. But it's obvious that the second option is a huge risk for a company like ORBX is, I highly doubt they did it that way. My vote goes to commercial license, like they are using ortho for almost all addon airports.

5 hours ago, Franz007 said:

You are the first one to point that out.

No, I was the first one to point that out, in my original post. 🙂
And yes, he was pretty soft on words. I would say that default scenery is atrocious. 😄 Don't get me wrong, default scenery has some bright spots where even I say "well, this doesn't look bad at all", but that are only certain small areas where textures align well to make it look believable. I would say that around 5% of total global scenery looks OKish/believable/passable (like some mountains and farm fields), the rest 95% is just, uggghhhh, nope.

Did I mention that nasty shimmering of the default scenery textures in XP12? Never happens even in XP11. Go figure.

Edited October 20, 2025Oct 20 by Pe11e

Atrocious? Booo. I highly doubt your physiological reaction is that strong.

Thankfully those mountain and farm areas cover a significant portion of the east US where I fly. It's pretty good plausibility. South west US definitely deserves ortho though. It will be interesting to see how LR handles that region.

1 hour ago, blingthinger said:

Atrocious? Booo. I highly doubt your physiological reaction is that strong.

Thankfully those mountain and farm areas cover a significant portion of the east US where I fly. It's pretty good plausibility. South west US definitely deserves ortho though. It will be interesting to see how LR handles that region.

Well, I don't certainly get sick when seeing it haha, but I spend 5 minutes in the sim total, quit, run XP Map Enhancement or AutoOrtho, and re-run the sim. 🙂

It's literally the same reaction when I was running default scenery in Prepar3D of FSX without FTX Global + OpenLC. Like in those cases when you do a complete reinstall of the sim, and run it for a first time in vanilla state to check if everything is ok, with a thought "Well, I forgot how ugly it is without addons". Luckily in XP12 case, it's only default scenery. In XP11 case, it's much more than that (from lighting, sky, clouds, etc etc).

Edited October 20, 2025Oct 20 by Pe11e

It could also just be an improvement with textures alone, in the direction of FTX Global. I think as long as the textures of the scenery and landscape are “believable” it would suffice, more localized to certain regions of the world. Currently, the southern Alps of New Zealand are not even close, as much as I want to use my imagination. It’s the same type of mountainous region that’s portrayed, more like hills, in other parts of the world.

I can only speak for myself but I couldn’t tell the difference of the exact scenery on an approach to an airport in a country or area I’m not familiar with. I don’t need exact satellite imagery for that. With X-Plane already using OpenStreerMap I know there’s already a certain level of accuracy.

3 hours ago, Pe11e said:

No, I was the first one to point that out, in my original post. 🙂
And yes, he was pretty soft on words. I would say that default scenery is atrocious. 😄 Don't get me wrong, default scenery has some bright spots where even I say "well, this doesn't look bad at all", but that are only certain small areas where textures align well to make it look believable. I would say that around 5% of total global scenery looks OKish/believable/passable (like some mountains and farm fields), the rest 95% is just, uggghhhh, nope.

Did I mention that nasty shimmering of the default scenery textures in XP12? Never happens even in XP11. Go figure.

Ah, so you were the first one. I get it now. I was surprised because it really was something I never ever heard before until now. Hence my surprised reaction. So finally someone could express that XP’s scenery could be improved 😉

11 hours ago, DeltaWho said:

Pleased to present... the first look at next gen scenery

Like something out of archivis. Very nice

https://www.archivis.pl/

Edited October 20, 2025Oct 20 by mSparks