2 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Laminar seems to dislike a lot of things that make XP12 look better!!!! Instead of banning these types of discussion, they should have a non-support section for those that want to use these types of additions! 

Those pesky folks at Laminar are ruining everyone's fun 😈

It's pretty simple, if you ain't paying for ortho, it ain't yours. There are a few legal exceptions to the rule, and they usually revolve around government-sponsored schemes and your mileage will vary (NAIP, Copernicus, New Zealand... Netherlands...Spanish Imagery services... etc)

Flight simmers have always had a dubious history with recognising what is actually legal or morally correct (See the recent debacle with FSLTL scraping Flightradar24 data*). The streaming APIs for ortho are very expensive, and buying ortho/photogrammetry outright is also expensive. 

Can't control what people do, but you'll have to do any of that without our help or affiliation. That's not really something up for debate from our side.


* 

2 hours ago, DeltaWho said:

Those pesky folks at Laminar are ruining everyone's fun 😈

It's pretty simple, if you ain't paying for ortho, it ain't yours. There are a few legal exceptions to the rule, and they usually revolve around government-sponsored schemes and your mileage will vary (NAIP, Copernicus, New Zealand... Netherlands...Spanish Imagery services... etc)

Flight simmers have always had a dubious history with recognising what is actually legal or morally correct (See the recent debacle with FSLTL scraping Flightradar24 data*). The streaming APIs for ortho are very expensive, and buying ortho/photogrammetry outright is also expensive. 

Can't control what people do, but you'll have to do any of that without our help or affiliation. That's not really something up for debate from our side.


* 

Hi,

I don't use any freeware/payware mapping program or ortho4XP tiles in X-Plane 12 since I only fly at night, I'm back to default. I fly MS2024 for my day flights. I'm referring to re-shade as well as the Nvidia app for filters. I get the legality of the mapping programs, I'm amazed that the payware mapping program is still around with links found in online forums. But that's another story.

But yeah, they are ruining my fun by making it harder to get their matte finish night environment looking closer to real. 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iojWRx6xcxRBVMZ0_JtS46R2usq2Phhw

Edited April 25Apr 25 by Mike_CFII_MEL

14 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

I'm referring to re-shade

As stated multiple times before - ReShade introduces bugs/crashes for many users (not all), but the logic "if it does not work for you, do not use it" - while sounding logical and pragmatic - blows right past the large majority of users who then either turn to Laminar Research for "support" or proclaim on the social media/forum venue of their choice what a "buggy mess" X-Plane is and how they "can´t even finish a flight" before it crashes on them.

I would love to live in a world where people are knowledgeable, smart and sensible. This one isn´t the one. This is the one where a product needs to be "foolproof" to field it. Guess why.

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Litjan

I use Map Enhancement with Google Pro subscription and SimHeaven with Orbx Global Forests v2 … works very well for me.

 

6 hours ago, Litjan said:

As stated multiple times before - ReShade introduces bugs/crashes for many users (not all), but the logic "if it does not work for you, do not use it" - while sounding logical and pragmatic - blows right past the large majority of users who then either turn to Laminar Research for "support" or proclaim on the social media/forum venue of their choice what a "buggy mess" X-Plane is and how they "can´t even finish a flight" before it crashes on them.

I would love to live in a world where people are knowledgeable, smart and sensible. This one isn´t the one. This is the one where a product needs to be "foolproof" to field it. Guess why.

Been using reshade for years on multiple computers/hardware without issue, if it were bugs I'd suffer from the same problems as others... More than likely users that don't know what they are doing. What about Nvidia filters, is that loaded with bugs/issues or is that just too difficult for end users to manage?

3 minutes ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

if it were bugs

You are likely right, and the developers at Laminar are likely wrong, they disabled ReShade in error, I guess. They don´t know the next thing about coding and X-Plane, should have asked you for advice, I guess.

4 minutes ago, Litjan said:

You are likely right, and the developers at Laminar are likely wrong, they disabled ReShade in error, I guess. They don´t know the next thing about coding and X-Plane, should have asked you for advice, I guess.

Maybe they should have!!! I remember Ben telling me it was "IMPOSSIBLE" to have 3D rain effect without the 3D panel. Yet here we are!
 

 

Please don´t be surprised if I don´t react to further posts from you - I simply can´t read them 😂.

3 minutes ago, Litjan said:

Please don´t be surprised if I don´t react to further posts from you - I simply can´t read them 😂.

Fine by me, all you do is come in here and defend Laminar! I see you on discord, I get the reasoning behind it all. 

Guys guys!! Today’s Sunday. Too much unkindness and suffering in the world. @Mike_CFII_MEL I want you to look at @Litjan and say bless you my friend. @Litjan you tell @Mike_CFII_MEL thank you for making the world a better place by all your contributions. Friends always. Do it and do it now!!

45 minutes ago, Patco Lch said:

Guys guys!! Today’s Sunday. Too much unkindness and suffering in the world. @Mike_CFII_MEL I want you to look at @Litjan and say bless you my friend. @Litjan you tell @Mike_CFII_MEL thank you for making the world a better place by all your contributions. Friends always. Do it and do it now!!

I take no ill will from these conversations, when they are over they are over. I will however stand up to statements of sarcasm as clearly was the intent of the following remark.

"You are likely right, and the developers at Laminar are likely wrong, they disabled ReShade in error, I guess. They don´t know the next thing about coding and X-Plane, should have asked you for advice, I guess."

3 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

What about Nvidia filters, is that loaded with bugs/issues or is that just too difficult for end users to manage?

Those filters are implemented on the GPU driver level. Same priciple to what tinted glasses do to your perception of your surroundings. If something goes wrong, you just take them off and file a complaint with the manufacturer. Reshade is like a third party DIY kit that reroutes the signals between your eye nerve and brain through a chip in order to apply all sorts of fancy filters. It may work for some, while others will have issues. You will surely understand that a neuro- or eye surgeon will not be happy about having to deal with what amounts to reckless beehaviour when they could spend their time to curing actual medical issues like natural blindness instead.

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Bjoern

On 4/25/2026 at 11:08 AM, DeltaWho said:

It's pretty simple, if you ain't paying for ortho, it ain't yours. There are a few legal exceptions to the rule

Depends on your country and the source of imagery, it's a bit more involved (in the US anyway) as USDA NAIP, IFTN, NDOP, OSIP (local state) are funded by us (tax payers) so the imagery is available for free as it should be.  Now packaging that data for use in a flight simulator is certainly a service which can justify being funded by users of the service.

Never have been a fan of ReShade (replacing DLLs that the developers of games/sims rely on is not a good idea, even more so for security considerations in this day and age).  All the ReShade functionality can be and should be provided "in sim" so as to be in the optimal execution of the graphics pipeline rather than forced as post-processing (aka ReShade) which can be an expensive (not always) hammer and chisel method to image adjustments (and a good way to cheat in online combat type games).  I think if LR want to stop it's usage, they will need to open the door (features in the graphics settings) to permit end user "adjustments" so as to be manageable. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Bjoern said:

Those filters are implemented on the GPU driver level. Same priciple to what tinted glasses do to your perception of your surroundings. If something goes wrong, you just take them off and file a complaint with the manufacturer. Reshade is like a third party DIY kit that reroutes the signals between your eye nerve and brain through a chip in order to apply all sorts of fancy filters. It may work for some, while others will have issues. You will surely understand that a neuro- or eye surgeon will not be happy about having to deal with what amounts to reckless beehaviour when they could spend their time to curing actual medical issues like natural blindness instead.

The big problem I have with L/R and some that come here from discord to protect them, they paint everything with a broad brush. Perfect example was show above, Ben wasn't interested in full flight deck flyers or the 3D rain effect we wanted, so the broad answer was it's impossible when I asked him at the expo.

Same holds true for reshade, they claim it introduces bugs/crashes. I've found with extensive testing that it is "NOT" reshade itself but the filters people try and use. Not all filters are compatible with XP12, nor are some filters compatible with other games/programs... But the easy paintbrush answer is it's buggy.

and yes... there are people that don't have a clue and shouldn't even look at reshade, let alone download and play with it... But it is what it is.

Edited April 26Apr 26 by Mike_CFII_MEL

3 hours ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

The big problem I have with L/R and some that come here from discord to protect them, they paint everything with a broad brush. Perfect example was show above, Ben wasn't interested in full flight deck flyers or the 3D rain effect we wanted, so the broad answer was it's impossible when I asked him at the expo.

Same holds true for reshade, they claim it introduces bugs/crashes. I've found with extensive testing that it is "NOT" reshade itself but the filters people try and use. Not all filters are compatible with XP12, nor are some filters compatible with other games/programs... But the easy paintbrush answer is it's buggy.

and yes... there are people that don't have a clue and shouldn't even look at reshade, let alone download and play with it... But it is what it is.

I guess a demonstration of "why" is in your screenshot is that while it works it also shows the wiper blades clearing the screens without wipers actually being rendered, so it's not working perfectly. Unless you got it working, but again - more tinkering...

The biggest difference here might be that Laminar have to support whatever they put out, across thousands of hardware configurations and levels of skill - you don't, and whatever you've done may not be compatible or possible with future features that you're not privvy to. "It's not possible" doesn't necessarily mean "right now" it may mean "going forwards with whatever we have planned" but rather than lead you into a conversation it comes across as a brick wall. The guys at Laminar aren't stupid and equally they're not obliged to tell you what their plans are or necessarily why they can't do something you'd like.

In fact rather than having a problem with Laminar, you should be grateful you're able to tinker at all - I imagine it would be far simpler for them to simply lock down the graphics rendering and force you to use whatever they deem is correct - but they don't.