Orbx

Right, I checked your history and yes, totally OTT reaction to FTXG's USA SW which was subsequently addressed anyway. Looking at your post(s) you really went to town on us, quite appallingly actually. You now have access to the limited user support forum restored (not the full forums). I'll move the technical issue you raised to that area. Olli and Alain are a perfect example of why I don't generally bother visit and post on this forum; I was linked to the OP by one of my staff. Dont expect Orbx support issues answered here at AVSIM, it's not the place to request it.

Thanks for the info, we'll check our records and I'll be in touch. Not sure why you got yourself a ban, usually that happens for anti-social behavior or aggressive posts, so let me check that also. If you are a genuine buyer then we'll offer support, no problems.

You were banned because we could not find proof of your purchases on our database and your quoted someone else's product keys. That violates both our forum and product EULAs therefore yes indeed your rights are forfeited. Read the license agreement and forum terms of use again. We have a zero tolerance policy on piracy and our full support services are reserved for customers who purchase legitimate licenses. If you want to redeem yourself, purchase a legitimate product and email your order number to info@orbxsystems.com and we may review your support access.

A new member at AVSIM five days ago? Thanks for respecting our EULA "Andreas", we shall investigate further.

Hello all, Finally a sensible discussion which has not degenerated into another Orbx bashing exercise or JV hanging Let me just make a few very succinct responses and leave it at that. - We made a decision to end the Sim720 contract a long time ago, but we are bound by a six-region contract which we will honour. - I learnt a LOT from the whole Sim720 experience and am a lot wiser. There is a whole lot more to the whole Sim720 saga than anyone needs to know (or will ever know) - We parted company with Sim720 because of key differences in our approaches to development and quality. No need to say more than that. As a young team they will get better with time. Their new MD is a patient man and has a long term vision for the team. He and I are still on somewhat amicable speaking terms despite our differences. - Orbx is refocusing back to its core team and roots. That is, expect to see our product output slow down since we're using only long-established trusted core developers who truly care about what they craft. This was evidenced in SAK and FTX Global and the recent airport releases by our core developers. We are getting back to basics and have a very clear two-fold product strategy with the FTX Global series and our traditional regions/airports series. - We will continue to do selected UK airports but mostly Q400+ sized now, see the latest EGHI from 29Palms as an example. Lars and Martin are truly masters of their craft and I am proud to publish their work and put the Orbx brand on it. We have some smaller airports coming too, also more up north. If and when we do a small grass strip we sell it for about £10+ like we did with Russ's latest EGML. - We are still passionate about making stuff. We want to change the sim experience for everyone. That focus has never been lost, but sometimes small companies like Orbx suffer growing pains and make the wrong decisions. Hopefully I have learnt from it and can recover some lost faith from our customers. I believe when the FTX Global series of products are finished by end 2015 we will offer three simple turn-key installers that will completely revamp FSX, P3Dv1 and P3Dv2. We are committed to P3D and I was in Florida only a few weeks ago spending some time with the LM team; it's a very exciting new platform which we are pumped up about. The future looks very bright indeed. - Finally, please don't think a topic like this would get shut down on our forum. Mark took the *correct* approach. He did not flame, bash, was polite and not arrogant. That often goes a long way to getting a developer on side. Present an argument and don't soapbox and most developers will let topics like these have a long life. I am sure it would at our own forums too. I won't post here again; my staff and I choose not to post on this forum because our support forums are there for interaction with us, not here. Tom is aware of our stance on that as well. However, feel free to interact with us over at the Orbx forums where topics started in the manner Mark did will definitely not be moderated to closure. You guys now know how to discuss this stuff, I hope this is a turning point for this place. Safe skies to all

Hi Mitch, Thanks for sharing the file, I am sure the community will benefit from this. I have passed your file onto Allen Kriesman (the UTX developer) to see if he wants to patch UTX for his customers. It's not Orbx's place to edit terrain.cfg entries added from other developer's addons, that would be not kosher at all. The other issue with Orbx making mods to terrain.cfg entries for UTX is that it will cause problems when you run the UTX config tool, since it may potentially get out of sync and re-write their older entries back. The proper way this needs to be implemented is to add another tick-box into the UTX config tool app called something like "Use FTX Global vector road lights". I assume you would not mind that your file be used as the basis for them to patch UTX?

Actually our website says no such thing as "fully compatible with UTX". Did you visit the website and read the product description? I guess not. For the record it states: - Works with all 3rd party landclass products - Works with all 3rd party mesh products http://fullterrain.com/product_ftxglobal.html And there endeth my participation in this topic. Good day to one and all.

Let me go on record to say that I did not mention the 'T' (troll) word first, that was Simmerhead! :lol:

Hi John, Yes I do understand your original intent but it was not clear to me if you also wanted to create a way to port our textures. I am more miffed about the outcry and hullabaloo that followed my post more than anything else, it really does get out of control too quickly, too often. I know and respect the work of Allen Kriesman (the UTX developer); I've had dinner with him, communicate with him now and again and we even licensed some of his custom tools for Orbx to use on our regions development. That may surprise some folks. People read far too much into things and imply sinister industrial espionage etc. If Allen or Flight1 want to work with Orbx to release a texture compatibility patch of some sorts I am open to the idea, but since we've announced a competitive vector product that option may now be less viable now. That said I am open to ideas because UTX does have a strong market share given it's had it to itself for six years or so. Indeed I had almost added the "take the ball and .." analogy to my long reply above but I thought it would not take too long for someone to say those very words. You get the prize Brian! :lol: I have never been anything else other than unapologetically terse when I see any post about potential manipulation of Orbx assets. In some cases the community has benefited from this approach, as in the case of Gordon Madison over at FSDeveloper who was using our Orbxlibs without fully understanding the implications of doing so. Long story short? He's now on the Orbx development team and the community has benefited from his outstanding skills with the release of CBB7 Tipella as freeware. So now I can add being a petulant child and unprofessional to the laundry list of pleasantries aimed in my direction. Thank you.

Oh boy the bush lawyers have come out to play Please if I may, allow me to clear up a few things? Firstly, I am not some money sucking $^%hole who cares for nothing but trying to get every last cent from unsuspecting customers and by deceiving them with false marketing claims. If you read this topic it would appear as though I am a tyrant controlling poor minions making stuff you all like and want but who must really hate working for big bad JV and Orbx because he's such a bad selfish guy. Seriously folks, some of you need to get a grip on reality. Here's the facts of the matter: 1. Most people who have actually met me find me to be a pleasant and reasonable person who is quite social, relaxed and fun. Yes I have a penchant for sarcasm, call it a character flaw. Hardly the profile of an egomaniac exploitive tyrant being portrayed here. Ask any one of the Orbx team who have met me what I am like and you'll get an honest answer. Ask anyone who has crossed me, stolen from me, peeved me and you'll get an equally honest answer, usually along the line of "he does not put up with BS from anyone". 2. Orbx has written permission from MS in 2007 to modify core FSX files as long as they are backed up and switched. That's what we do, so whilst we do things outside the SDK in some instances (which we must do to make FTX anyway), we are within the bounds of the permission we got from ACES. End of argument on that one. 3. My reply to the OP was specifically about Orbx's unique intellectual property, being *our* textures (not modified Microsoft ones) which are unique to our product and do not fall under any copyright or content control from Microsoft. It's the standard reply I give to any post on any forum where we see the potential for our intellectual property to be abused. Sorry if I did not appear to be politically correct in the construct of my reply. The whole intent of the FSX SDK was for third party companies to create new unique content which those third party companies own and control. We are totally within our rights as a company to protect our IP and that is all we do, and vigorously. This hysteria being bandied about which accuses Orbx of stealing MS textures and modifying them is just nonsense and bordering on being libelous. Please think about what you post in regard to such claims. 4. You don't *own* any Orbx software. You only pay for a license to use it. You don't have permission to modify it, share modified copies of it, share code or apps that move our files around in public or use any one of our files. That has been made clear to everyone for the last seven years since our first product so I am somewhat surprised that people now think we're being unreasonable in protecting our IP? I had no problem with AVSIMmers finding a solution to the vector lights because it involves modifying a core FSX file terrain.cfg, not any Orbx files. See the difference? 5. We have never promised anywhere on our forums or website that FTX Global would create unique new textures to replace the UTX landclass textures which ship with it. Why would we do that? It's not our place to stomp on another vendors' textures without first contacting them and forming a working partnership with Allen and Flight1 to do so. We would have made a specific point in our marketing that we catered specifically for UTX and indeed added vector lights and their landclass textures for perfect integration. Nope - we did not claim that, all we said it was "compatible". And it is 100% compatible and works perfectly fine when FTX Global is installed. Indeed all the screenshots which we still have on our official product page for FTX Global that show UTX + FTX Global are from my laptop where I installed UTX USA and just pressed the V key. No deception, no misleading, no false promises. It does begin to grate on the whole Orbx team when we're repeatedly accused of being misleading, photoshopping screenshots, making false claims - the list goes on. Anyone who has legitimately purchased an Orbx product knows it delivers exactly what it says on the box and they generally come back as repeat customers. I say "generally" come back because there is a small segment of the market that seems to think developers and vendors need a 100-page manifesto attached to every product released to cover off every single caveat and possible infringement of people's consumer rights. (Sarcasm intended). Finally, we have no obligation at all to add new textures to ensure UTX is a seamlessly integrated addon with FTX Global. We are releasing our own competitive vector product in partnership with PILOT'S so why do you think we would go out of our way to add such integration? Clearly it should have made sense to anyone who knows even a little about landclass scenery that if UTX comes with its own 3D lighting and custom textures that you would not see the FTX Global lighting and textures when those are enabled? Why don't you disable them in the UTX control panel and then get the full benefit of our tech? That's what I expect the majority of people do, but then again I am addressing a small vocal minority here. I am sure this post will be pulled apart, quoted ad infinitum, bush-lawyered too hell and it will provide for a tasty meal for those who need a feed, but I feel that we really do have to spend far too much time as a team on explaining ourselves to such a small vocal group of people that I begin to wonder if we are in the right business at all. Perhaps we should go do something else where our work is appreciated a bit more instead of being ripped apart, stolen, unfairly criticised and generally the whole team, (not just me) given a bad taste in our mouth by only a few inconsiderate people. Would you rather Orbx did not continue to support FSX, keep releasing new content, keep reinvesting its income to more R&D and expanding its team? Keep doing what you're doing and you may just get your wish.

Any tools or files that modify or manipulate Orbx textures or files contravenes the Orbx FTX EULA. Please do not go down the path of modifying or moving Orbx texture assets or we will take swift legal action.

Hi there, I notice in shots 10 & 11 you're using objects from our Orbx libraries. Please can you remove them from your scenery as this is a breach of our EULA. Thanks!

No problem at all, that will work fine.

We're still testing and tweaking the lights and also doing some SW USA LC fixes as well. FTXG is a very long term ongoing project and there will be constant fixes and upgrades to the base pack for free, including texture, base LC and lighting improvements. The biggest benefit of the V1.1 patch is the improved performance with lights. Just doing a test over Denver, CO right now with X-Dense autogen at night and pretty much locked at 30FPS and it looks like a sea of light. I can now also run bloom without too much stuttered. Now that I think of it, JP from RealityXP gave me a new bloom shader about five years back which runs even better, I might dig it up and publish it since he gave me permission to do so.

We are releasing a V1.1 patch for FTX Global that improves the lights further: - Now 140% brighter - Better FPS again - Now vector roads don't use .fx for much better FPS on vectors - Denser vector lighting - Added intersection congestion traffic brake lights Here is an example at Boston:

I've moved the User Guide PDF to a topic in a public forum: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/61846-ftx-global-user-guide-pdf/

I hate to burst your bubble but our annual revenues have continued to grow exponentially since the "Xmas fiasco" (which incidentally was simply a post-Christmas sale that 99% of all businesses worldwide do at that time of year). I am sorry that you took things personally and stopped being an Orbx customer but it did not affect us, nor will it affect us going forward. I respect it is your choice to do so, but I am amazed it is still being spoken about some two years later as though it was a major turning point in our company's fortunes and we are forever doomed to fail because we have such poor customer relations. It's all about the products guys. My ego is not big enough to think it's about me; I am just one person in a team, and we're proud of what we do.

Er, if we "broke" the standard landclass class calls then UTX, SceneryTech, openVFR, TrueLandscape France etc would all *not* work, correct? And we were stupid to show preview screenshots on our forums using those exact addons from other developers if they did not work, right? Try telling the many thousands of customers now using those LC addons with FTXG that we broke their sim and locked them into our ecosystem, and their investment in previous LC is wasted. No? Didn't think so. We spent ten years learning our craft, firstly on freeware for FS9 then with Orbx for FSX. FTXG is the culmination of a decade of R&D, damn hard work and an understanding our market. We did not appear out of nowhere as newbies and steal someone else's thunder. FTXG is just the beginning; we have a whole series of products planned that will completely reinvigorate FSX/P3D and embrace the new tech in P3D 2.x - we plan years ahead, not a month ahead. Never once in our company history have we panned a competitor's product, and the trend in fact is that we are embracing "co-opertition" between developers in our small community. Anyway, we have work to do, bugs to fix, patches to make, products to release, landclass to make. Life's too short to spend on forum flame wars.

Tom, a few days ago we had a Dominic Smith from the UK (who is affiliated with FScene), post a very scathing negative review about FTX Global on the flightsimstore.com product page. A quick investigation found that he did not own nor had purchased the product. He then contacted the store and asked for his 'review' to be removed, which Adrian did. Perhaps an over-zealous defence of another ground texture product? I am absolutely incensed though, that he would stoop to impersonate the lead singer of one of my all time favourite bands. Some things are sacred!

Hi there, we have posted a lo-res version of the manual on our forums: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/61846-ftx-global-user-guide-pdf/ If you mean the rocky lines across the Thames, yes they are fixed. FTX Global is mainly textures only, so it does not update the landclass around city to reflect modern urban boundaries. That can be fixed by UTX in EU, USA or wait for our openLC series later in the year.

I like beer. Had some the other night over dinner with Matthijs Kok. Who would have thought? Two arrogant Dutchmen, supposed 'bad boys' of the FS community having a laugh and a bit of banter. Anyone watching us would have wanted to join in. We're both teddy bears really, all marshmallow on the inside. What we also have in common is we just don't put up with BS. But I have to say, this topic has provided me with an immense amount of free entertainment, particularly given the OP was faking it. Priceless. AVSIM just keeps on giving, thanks Tom!

If you want an 11 minute unbiased video review of FTXG without ENB, Shade, fancy editing, effects, and also uses the NGX, search YT for 8ZDhp2Py0eU

Julian, my approach is perfectly fine, it's worked for me and Orbx since our inception, and I don't do PMs and email - too busy for that and just not interested. Some folks call me arrogant and that's fine, maybe it's the Dutchman in me. I don't put up with BS, call a spade a spade and don't tolerate rudeness, impatience and the instant gratification that seems to be the norm these days. I could care less about arse kissers (if you think that's what people do) but I do get my back up at the vocal minority who post mainly to feed their own egos and agendas. People know how I operate by now and those who don't like it can choose to not buy our products because of my style, again I could care less really.

Never a truer statement spoken. The vocal minority always seem to make headlines on forums. Typically they represent less than 0.5% of those who purchased the product, likely less. 99.5% of those who purchased FTX Global aren't posting on forums, but enjoying flights in the sim. In Roger's case, he called our product "an abomination" which did not endear him to us to be honest. There are more tactful ways to communicate to a product developer and expect a sympathetic ear.

Hi Peter, We did not touch waterclass in FTXG so not sure what is influencing the Thames water colours for you to be honest.