scianoir

There are both freeware and payware addons available for Liege if you are particularly interest in that airport but, if you are seeing this at other airports, you might want to consider Rex Worldwide Airports HD which will considerable improve the appearance of all default airports and should help your problem. Rex products are frequently available in sales at discount prices. Bill

Whilst I can appreciate your views, disabling scenery library entries is actually a very feasible option if you use a scenery configurator. I have been using one for years (out of necessity in FSX to avoid OOMs as I have a huge amount of addon scenery) and I have created a bank of scenery cfgs for different scenarios depending on the type of flight I am planning. However I guess in P3Dv4, you do not have to worry about OOMs so you are generally able to keep all your library entries active. As such, I can understand your frustration in that you feel you should not have to resort to something like disabling the Orbx object library to achieve a reasonable loading time. However I think Orlando City Scene is just another example of scenery development outstripping the technology required to run it, something we have seen many times over the years in different platforms with various new scenery addons although in most cases the technology eventually seems to catch up with it. I found Allen's explanation as copied above quite informative and interesting and clearly Orbx are working on a long term solution. For 'sightseeing' flights within highly detailed resource intensive scenery areas such as New York, Seattle, Washington DC, etc I have scenery configurations that are very specific to those areas with essentially all other unnecessary scenery library entries deactivated. For this reason I was quite happy to follow the advice to deactivate the Orbx object libraries (and some other object libraries that that I know won't be needed there) when creating a configuration for VFR flights using Orlando City Scene. . For IFR flights however I am not usually too concerned about scenery detail, so my scenery configurations reflect this with most scenery library entries deactivated except for the origin and destination airports and any scenery that might be required related to these. Certainly if I am flying a PMDG 777 into KMCO, I am not particularly bothered about being able to see the huge Mickey Mouse hat in Disney MGM! For this reason in my various IFR scenery configurations any very detailed city scenery addons such as Aerosoft Manhattan, the various Drzewiecki city sceneries and now Orbx Orlando are deactivated. The great advantage of using a configurator is that you only have to do this once so it really is not a burden. While clearly Orlando City Scene is not the object of much love on this forum , I have to say that I am impressed by how well it functions and how good it looks in FSX even with most of the sliders turned down. Indeed my loading time this morning was just 4 minutes 30 seconds which is about the average loading time on my set up for most scenarios and I completed another sightseeing flight in a Stearman of just under one hour from KISM around the scenery area including a touch and go at T2G KMCO followed by a full-stop landing at KORL. The flight was smooth with frame rates in the mid 20s and, using an aircraft with a low VAS footprint, I still had 0.8GB of VAS remaining at the end of the flight. To me in FSX that is a win! Bill

Will ask over on that forum thanks. Bill

For anyone purchasing Vertigo products from Flightstore UK, be aware that Vertigo have a message on their support forum page that they no longer support boxed products purchased from that store as they are "old stock". I discovered this after finding that the SBD on loading has an engine fire (even if loaded with the engine off!) but I cannot find a way to get rid of this engine fire effect and support from Vertigo is non-existent. Poor show by Vertigo but I guess they don't want to see their sale prices (£15.99, which IMHO they are not worth) undercut by the £2 boxed versions from Flightstore UK. Bill

Yes you are absolutely correct - the clue is that the long pause occurs during the "loading terrain data" segment", with those words staring me in the face as I waited!! I agree they will need to work on the issue and I would imagine they are as the issue is the subject of a lot of posts particularly from P3D users over on the FTX support forum. Bill

I agree that IS unacceptable Noel and if I was experiencing that then I too would almost certainly be consigning it to my bin of uninstalled products! Out of curiosity yesterday I measured the pause while loading Orlando into FSX (starting the flight at Kissimmee KISM just outside the boundary of the scenery) and it was just under 6 minutes (although it always feels longer while you are waiting!). That is surprising as I would have expected that P3Dv4 would be far better able to cope with resource intensive scenery than FSX. Indeed when I was buying Orlando my thoughts were that if it struggles in FSX I would at least be able to use it successfully when I eventually move to P3Dv4! The loading times I am seeing with FSX however most likely reflect the fact that, of necessity when using FSX, most of my settings are not maxed out, with the autogen density slider just set at ‘dense’ for example. Of course this probably means that I am not seeing all the available autogen in Orlando but what I am seeing still looks pretty good and the flights have been smooth even on my fairly old mid-range rig. So perhaps before you chuck it in the bin, it might be worth giving it one last try with some of the sliders turned down, although I would not have expected to have to do that in P3D! Bill

I have carried out 5 separate restarts of FSX at different airports this afternoon and loaded the Falcon each time with no problems. In addition I carried out one flight of about 45 minutes without encountering any flashing. So it looks promising for this mod but, if I can, I will do a longer flight tonight although as I have said, most of the instances of flashing previously were on first loading the aircraft. Bill

Orbx are not alone in the practice of only testing their products with the default setups and I suspect that many developers just do this. I know Aerosoft's almost stock response over on their forums to any questions or complaints that arise about performance of their products is to say that they cannot test new products with every addon and with every combination of addons that an individual might have and I think this is very understandable indeed. I do however completely agree that they need to add this as a caveat, particularly for newer simmers who might not understand performance limitations of combining various addons, as most of us old hands who have been at this for a while have learned this the hard way over the years! I also think that developers ought to consider adding some measurement of the VAS requirements of individual addons. Like Michael, I'm a "collector of stuff" and I own most of the Orbx sceneries and they certainly provide some great eye candy. To be fair to Orbx the control panels for many of their products do provide switches to turn off certain bits of eye candy for lower range systems. However I agree there are other options out there worth considering, one of which is the very reasonably priced UTX/GEX combination which I used prior to installing the various Orbx scenery areas and which I have to say looked really good. Indeed my plan when I replace my rig would be to install both FSX and P3D on my next one, but use UTX/GEX with FSX for better performance on that platform and my Orbx scenery with P3D. That's a very good performance considering your high settings! Given the limitations of FSX, I was quite surprised that I too was able to run City Scene Orlando fairly smoothly with reasonable framerates in the mid 20s and, to be honest, looking at the complexity and size of this addon I was pleasantly surprised to be able to run it in FSX at all! Unlike you however I use this with FSX in my "Extreme Resource Demand" SimStarter NG configuration where many of the settings are reduced and although undoubtedly this means I am not perhaps seeing as much eye-candy as might otherwise be the case, I am still quite pleased by the overall appearance. Kind regards, Bill

Hi Michael, I also have SimStarterNG and, having used it for years, I now regard it as being almost essential to being able to use FSX without the risk of OOMs. As such I have created lots of scenarios in SimStarter where the scenery areas which I am not using are deactivated. In order to be able to use most most resource intensive city scenery areas in FSX (such as the Drzewiecki and older Aerosoft city sceneries), it is necessary for me to deactivate most sceneries except for the base scenery addons (such as Orbx Open LC), the origin and destination airports for my flight and the city scenery in question, so I am happy with the concept of deactivating unused scenery areas and doing this for Orlando didn’t bother me! Using something like SimStarter, as you know, you only have to do this once, but I do however appreciate that this becomes a much more tedious task for someone who doesn’t have a scenery configurator. As such, I can however understand your reservations about developers expecting us to deactivate other sceneries in order to be able to use theirs and, although for years I have accepted the need to do this in FSX with its 4GB VAS limitation, I am a little surprised that you also have to do this in P3Dv4 which does not, as I understand, have the same limitation. With regard to loading time, I followed the advice to deactivate residential housing in the control panel and that seems to have speeded up the loading process somewhat, although there is still a fair old pause! Kind regards, Bill

For anyone familiar with the Orlando area, Orbx have released scenery for this in their City Scene series. This is a very nice addon for the area including much of the Disneyworld complex, the city itself and the International and Executive airports. Obviously an area such as this has the potential for a vast number of special point of interest addons but Orbx, clearly with a view to minimising resource impact, have have very cleverly created this scenery using POIs which they have classified into 4 levels of detail and accuracy (Levels 0-3). The most detailed hand made POIs (Level 3) are used for accurate depictions of some iconic structures in the area but are quite limited in number because of their resource implications. However there are a huge number of Level 2 (mostly accurate and fairly detailed) and Level 1 (somewhat accurate but not detailed) POIs which really have been very cleverly designed and fairly accurately positioned as well as a vast number of Level 0 POIs (essentially regular autogen) and, together with photoreal ground textures, the overall effect is a pretty realistic appearance of Orlando and Disneyworld. Clearly the developers had a dilemma as to how to balance realism (given the potentially huge amount of ‘eye candy’ in this area) with performance and resource usage, but I think they have succeeded in this difficult task extremely well here. The only surprise for me was that they don’t seemed to have modelled Cinderella's Castle in Magic Kingdom perhaps THE iconic structure in Disneyworld, but perhaps the detail of this had excessive resource implications or maybe there might have been some sort of copyright issue with Disney. However I would not want to get into a debate that this should have been included and that should have been included as I can understand the very good reasons behind the limited number of Level 3 POIs and, as I have said, in my opinion, the resulting scenery looks very good indeed. The two airports included are an improvement on the default airports but are not very detailed, apparently to minimise the resource impact. However the scenery can be used with other airports such as the T2G version of KMCO with a modification incorporated into the control panel to take this into account. A slight downside with City Scene Orlando is that loading of this scenery can be quite prolonged (in both FSX and P3D) with a long pause during the ‘loading terrain’ phase and this is the subject of discussion in the Orbx support forum. Using FSX it paused for about 10 minutes with me at the 36% stage and P3D users seem to be experiencing similar prolonged loading but it does seem to be worth the wait! In my enthusiasm to have a first look at this scenery (in FSX), I loaded it without looking at the control panel or manual and suffered an OOM while on the runway during my first take off roll! However reading the manual first and modifying some parameters on the control panel is essential and allowed me to have a number of flights around the complete area without further issues although the VAS footprint, as might be expected, was quite high. I used the default Baron and then the Vertigo Stearman (because of its very low VAS requirements) but I suspect using an aircraft with even a moderate VAS footprint in FSX with this scenery could push you very close to the OOM threshold so FSX users will need to be very selective about aircraft type! Clearly VAS usage would not have the same implications for P3Dv4 users who presumably will benefit from the ability to run this scenery with their sliders maxed out but even in FSX this great scenery addon can be enjoyed with care. Highly recommended for someone who might enjoy a bit of low and slow sightseeing over Orlando! Bill

Bought the Vertigo Stearman soon after moving to FSX and have really enjoyed flying it over the years. It is a great aircraft for low and slow flying and has the added advantage of a very low VAS footprint which is great for flying over resource intensive addon scenery in FSX without having to worry about OOM issues. This as well as quite a number of other boxed products for FSX and FS9 are available for just £2 at Flightstore UK with some great bargains to be found in both aircraft and scenery for anyone interested. At just £2 each for the boxed versions at Flightstore UK, I couldn’t resist ordering the the Hellcat, Bearcat, SBD, Avenger and Vans at the Flightstore (total £13.95 including postage) and look forward to a few hours of cheap flying in a few new types when these arrive. Bill

FSW should now have found a winning formula - interior textures which seem to equal Carenado’s, systems modelling and reliability which exceeds Carenado’s and a support system which leaves Carenado at the starting post!! Bill

That is correct - it’s range is about 1000nm more than the Falcon 50 so the 605 should be able to do flights like NY or Washington to London comfortably non-stop in both directions whereas the Falcon would probably require a fuel stop particularly on westbound flights against the prevailing winds. Bill

Since last night I have done a few additional test flights using this latest mod in the Falcon totalling just over 3 hours flying with no further instances of flashing, so things look good! Bill

They were certainly up there amongst the best developers for FS9 and let’s hope they keep up that standard with this new product. Bill