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I don't think it's autogen as such being responsible for the exorbitant loading times. Autogen loads pretty much at the end, around 80% where Orlando isn't stuck much longer than other sceneries. 90% of the loading time is spent around the 6%, at least on my system. That's the stage where usually mesh is loaded, but I doubt mesh is that detailed in the area, thus it must be something else. From my feeling I can imagine it's the hand-crafted models (regulated using the "Scenery complexity" slider). In any case, the designer will have to work on the issue (and keep it in mind for his next projects). Kind regards, Michael

I just got a solution from user theskyisthelimit who originally enountered the issue. Obiously, a bad tile entered the cache and prevents any further action over and over. Here's the solution, should anyone else being stuck here. Go into the map window and "Erase (all) cached data" (upper left) . Credit goes to theskyisthelimit, now I can proceed.😊 Kind regards, Michael

I can run the scenery under Prepar3d4 (and to my surprise with not too bad performance, i.e. 20-30 fps, depending on location) and only a few hesitations now and then, as usual over very dense areas. This is with pretty high settings, only the autogen range slider taken back by two notches. I didn't deactivate residential houses yet, as I don't think it's a good habit as well to request users of "normal" systems (which I would consider mine) to deactivate features from the outset. However, I might give this a try as well. That's exactly what I think happened. The testers were supposedly requested to only test the product standalone without nothing else, and this does work. Which is plainly unrealistic, even more for ORBX where people (like me, I own all of their P3D sceneries) are inclined to "collect" stuff. Kind regards, Michael

I own the scenery and it's nice indeed. However, the loading times are beyond all permissible. Initially, I tried twice and killed Prepar3d twice after 15 min at the infamous 6%. This was already with a SimStarter profile where all sceneries outside NA are deactivated. Next, I looked up the manual to find that I should deactivate two Prepar3d native entries, where I found one only, why ever, and deactivated it. Moreover, I read in the ORBX forum that I should actually deactivate all sceneries except Orlando. Thus, I made a SimStarter profile deactivating anything except Orlando - including the ORBXlibs, as suggested, which I never deactivated so far. This way I could start it within the more or less normal (can this be called normal those days?) 5 min - from an SSD, btw. I've never been in Florida, but the scenery looks really nice. However, if we get into the habit to deactivate all other sceneries to get one single scenery to work, this cannot be the future. Think about airport developers copying this habit and requesting us to deactivate all airports excepts theirs. What about flying from Orlando into the adjacent Open LC NA or even into another ORBX airport definitely requiring the ORBXlibs? As a pure VFR flyer, I am all for eye-candy, but this is a no-go, in my mind. Kind regards, Michael

I tend to disagree here. Although it's hard to find X-Plane's very roots, it's as old as the MSFS/ESP series and both have been gradually amended and improved several times over the years. Even AeroflyFS2, which certainly has a more up-to-date engine, is based on AeroflyFS1 (2012) which again is based on the AeroflyRC engine starting back in 1998. Kind regards, Michael

These are my first steps with Ortho4XP under Prepar3d, while I used it for XP before. This is the recent version from Github. I went through most of this thread and learned quite a lot. - Installed Ortho4XP under I:\Ortho4XP_FSX_P3D-master - Installed imagemagick from the dist folder, - Edited the resample line to ESP_resample_loc=J:\\Program Files\\Lockheed Martin\\Prepar3D v4 SDK 4.4.16.27077\\World\\Terrain\\resample.exe - Ran Ortho4XP exe as admin. - Selected ZL16 - Opened the map and klicked the tile using Shift + leftclick, - Set the check marks according to the video clip - Clicked batch build. Batch bild ran until step 3 completes. Finishes with ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -> Encoding of the DSF file Final nbr of nodes: 972162 DSF file encoded, total size is : 22780951 bytes (21.7M) *Activating DSF file. ESP_build_dir is None inside of resample... something went wrong, so can't run resample ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I found this already reported by someone else early in this thread, but no solution was found. Any advice how to proceed? Thank you and kind regards, Michael

I had a WMR set over christmas from my son and lost the VR menu at a point, too. My bad was, I had tried the Flyinside plugin which seems to change the menu structure. Uninstalling it seemingly doesn't restore the original structure. Uninstalling and reinstalling the Prepar3d client (according to a suggestion by someone) did cure the situation for me. Kind regards, Michael

I think you refer to a method usually termed "autostereoscopic". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereoscopy I could twist my eyes into doing this (in still images) but get crazy pretty soon doing so. While my son doesn't seem to have such diffculties. Obvisouly it depends. Kind regards, Michael

Add me, too. I own the excellent Flugwerk Austria which is 1 season only, too. And no doubt Austria has real Winter contrary to most of GB. The nasty thing is when you fly from Summer-looking Austria into Winter-looking Germany etc. No real issue for me as I prefer flying in my C172 in Summer anyway, but I understand for others in their tubeliners. Kind regards, Michael

This was my idea, too. With growing popularity of photo-sceneries the landclass way of providing 4 or 5 sets of textures may become just impracticable because of storage and bandwith limitations for the average user throughout the foreseeable future. While I am all but an X-Plane fan, Austin's paradigm of not doing texture seasons but providing shader/particle-based solutions may turn out the better solution in the end, despite having been condemned numerous times. I would not be surprised if IPACS - lacking any legacy ballast - came up with a similar solution for their photo-only AeroflyFS2. Kind regards, Michael

Sure. In a sense, we now feel the hole left by the missed Dovetail approach. While this one has been flawed from the very beginning (in my mind), another approach might have been quite successful indeed and filled that hole. Not sure about the fate of the game license of the MS engine. Maybe, MS gave up on it? But they certainly wouldn't if they could squeeze another few bucks out of it. So maybe it's still around to be picked up by someone else? Kind regards, Michael

Your arguments certainly can't be denied, but there are more ones: (i) I still can't make really friends with the other sim (and I tried several times), although solely flying VFR. (ii) I am afraid to loose quite an amount of investement, actually several 1000$ which I could reuse over the years, albeit sometimes with some upgrade fee, (iii) The other sim draws development resources away. As is obvious in the case of ORBX. There may be even more arguments. Kind regards, Michael

I think that's part of the game. The - supposedly - growing number of XP users isn't used to spend a lot of money for addons. Perhaps an Airfoillabs plane and a Mister X scenery per year, the rest is Orthos and other freeware. Okay, factor in one of the recent ORBX TrueThingys now, but that's it. While the number of P3D users being used to heavily investing is - supposedly again - diminishing. Kind regards, Michael

Seems time to leave that hobby. And divert my 1000 $/year for software alone to something better. Neither will I (i) go on stuffing a dying sim, nor (ii) start over with one I never really made friends with, nor (iii) do both in parallel. Kind regards, Michael

It's been quite some time ago (2yrs?), and I don't find the original source either. I think the remark was by Beau Hollis, but not sure about that. Anyway, there is a similar statement by Zach Heylmun, cited by Slayer: Strangely enough, the original links are no longer accessible either. Do they remove or shift threads??? Kind regards, Michael