Dr Vesuvius

That strikes me as the very definition of "useless". Which is a shame, and a bit different to what "unsupported" means in Ultimate Edition (basic functionality and working ATC, vs the app simply not working at all). But I suppose a fully functional speech-to-ATC plugin for 20 Euros was a bit too good to be true. I bought the full MCE long before Lite came out, and bought it primarily for ATC interaction. Personally I found it worthwhile for that alone, with the ability to shout at a co-pilot a dubious bonus. Since I seem to fall somewhere in the grey area between being a serious simmer and the much maligned "casual simmer", it's just simply a matter of MCE Lite being a product that's not aimed at or suitable to me. Dr V

I've just uploaded the first episode of the new season of my FSX Let's Play series on YouTube. In this episode we go right back to where it all began, with a quick and casual VFR flight from Barton Aerodrome to Liverpool John Lennon. This is the very first flight I did when I first bought FSX, and also the first video I did for season 1. This time we get to do it using some of the new toys I've acquired since then (AccuFeel, Active Sky, FTX England, TrackIR) and I discuss my goals for Season 2. Season 2 is all about improvement. After a year of flying FSX I still consider myself a rank beginner. Help me improve my skills, system performance and all around flight-sim experience by following along and sharing feedback in the comments below. If you're a veteran flightsimmer, share the benefits of your experience with us. If you're a beginner like me, then ask your questions here and we'll try to find the answers together. Regards Dr Vesuvius

I see. That does make perfect sense now. I'd not heard of spoilers being used for attitude control until now. Thanks for taking that time to answer, chaps. Dr V

Could someone help me make sense of what we're looking at in the second video? I'm not terribly familiar with the 767 control surfaces. So I can see the flaps are down for takeoff, but is that the spoiler deployed above them? Why would the pilot have that engaged for take-off? Or is it just broken and flapping around loosely? In which case those passenger screams seem a little more justified! Regards Dr V

Ah well, you see, I primarily fly over the original "Green & Pleasant Land", which under GEX looked neither pleasant nor sufficiently green. Default & GEX "greenery" seems designed to be a compromise that could apply from temperate zones in the north all the way to the mediterranean. FTXG currently uses textures perfect for the northern climes (which makes sense if you consider it's probably borrowing textures from EU England, Wales and Scotland) at the cost of sandier, drier climes. Dr V

I have to admit, the same fundamental thought had occurred to me too. GEX Europe did seem to offer a *slight* improvement over default textures, but certainly no quantum leap in aesthetics or realism. Switching between a GEX covered area and a non-covered area didn't seem to be *that* jarring. Seeing how well thought of GEX is and the screenshots some people produced with it, I genuinely and sincerely wonder whether there was something wrong with my GEX installation. Dr V

Just wanted to say that I came to this thread *after* trying to use the search as described. Unfortunately enough people in the forums mention SweetFX without directly discussing the setting used to render such a search useless. Thought for the day: every "learn to use the search function" post will, at some point be the future, be found by someone using that search function. Respectfully Dr V

In actual fact, based on my reading of the videogame press, we're currently in a "golden age" of PC gaming. Even Next-Gen gaming consoles are barely as powerful as a typical gaming PC, and will immediately start falling behind from day one. On the business front, things like tablets may be fine for travelling, but for day-to-day use aren't going to replace the standard desktop PC for the bulk of staff. There's just too much a PC can do that a tablet can't, and too much a tablet can do that a company wouldn't want its employees doing. Throw in the growth of Linux - which is not for everyone, I know - as an alternative to MS Windows or MacOs, and PCs are doing just fine.

1) I don't have airports from those vendors, but the airports I do have from UK2000, FWI and TropicalSim seem to be fine. 2) Easy installation. I just installed over GEX. 3) I can't say I've noticed any significant difference in fps or smoothness. My initial response at seeing the price tag was "HOW MUCH!!!!" But then I worked out the AUD to GBP conversion. Then I looked at the cost of GEX, the closest alternative, and realised that it worked out as the price of two, maybe two and a half GEX regions. Even though it meant writing off the GEX Europe I already had, it still worked out cheaper. Finally I looked at the difference in visuals for the area I normally fly, and based on pure aesthetics decided the improvement was worth the cost. The "extra fun was worth the $100" as another poster put it. Now those were the data points that took me from being an OrbX skeptic to an OrbX ciustomer. Your situation might be different (for example, If you already have GEX coverage worldwide, that's a greater investment to write off) so FTXG, no matter how good it is, might not be for you. Dr V

Thanks for the informative post, Scott. It sounds like you're confirming what I'd deduced about OrbX's changes. Dr V

My gut feeling is that we'll see at least some vector data bundled in OpenLC. I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one OrbX announcement that suggested as much. Though they may offer more detailed vector data as a separate product. Or maybe improved coastlines & water features would be part of OpenLC, with road, rail and other man made features being the standalone. It's fun to speculate! Dr V

I just installed over GEX without uninstalling or reverting to the default textures first and haven't had a problem. I did so on the basis that if I did want to revert, I'd want to revert back to GEX, and that I've got the deep-techie Windows knowledge to manually remove all traces of GEX once I was happy with FTXG (I don't recommend that for everyone. Automated software delivery and installation used to be my professional speciality, and I can do things with the Windows registry that would make the angels weep. For everyone else I'd say just forget about the remnants of GEX until your next clean reformat and reinstall. It won't affect anything. Or uninstall it first if you prefer.) Dr V

Jeroen, what you're saying would be entirely correct - if OrbX were keeping to the existing, compartmentalised architecture of FSX scenery. But I've been doing a little research myself and found this interesting set of architecture diagrams from the man himself. http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/58990-ftx-global-architecture-explained/ Now my reading of that FTX Global architecture is that it's modifying underlying foundations , the control files like autogendescriptions.spb and lclookup.bgl that are outside the scenery library heirarchy, and that these modified control files are called not just by FTX regions or OpenLC, but also any 3rd party terrain products too. If that's the case, it doesn't matter where you put an add-on in the library, as it's still going to be through those modified control files, and that's where the possibility for problems can creep in. Again I know next to nothing of FSX architecture, but I do have an IT background and know how to roughly analyse a system. If lclookup.bgl is some sort of landclass lookup table as the name suggests, and OrbX have changed it so that, if you'll forgive a simplified abstract hypothetical example, Landclass #1 is now arable farmland instead of open meadow, and Landclass#23 is now tropical rainforest instead of deciduous woodland, then a 3rd party landclass product that's been coded based on the original default values will now give you the wrong terrain types. That sounds like what might be happening with FinlandX. Reading further announcements from Jon Venema, it looks like OrbX have done their best to minimise the compatibility problems, but the word is Minimise not Eliminate. I don't know for sure if that is actually causing problems, and it could be that my figuring of FSX architecture is dead wrong. But that's where I can see the potential for problems to arise. Let me reiterate: I'm not in the anti-OrbX camp, I'm definitely not an FTXG naysayer. I'm absolutely delighted with what I've seen FTXG and FTX Scotland do to my sim. Even if FTXG+OLC does result in a vendor lock-in, I may very well buy into it anyway, if it looks like the best option for me. Oh and by the way Jeroen, thanks for your work to bring Freeware Norway to us English-speaking flightsimmers. After installing FinlandX I went on to follow your instructions for Norway, and the results under FTXG are as you say quite spectacular. Respectfully again, Dr V

Funny thing is, I just installed FinlandX *after* installing FTX Global, and everything appears to be fine. But then I don't know the country that well so I could be missing subtleties. While I'm gut-feeling certain that FTXG itself won't have made any changes that render other packs using landclass incompatible, I'm not 100% certain that OpenLC won't either. No JvE, I'm not confused or upset. Heck that's the second time today someone has wrongly called me that... I must have my confused and upset face on today! :-) No let's just say that I'm mildly concerned about an ambiguous data point that I'd like resolved. NickN has suggested that OrbX have changed landclass calls in some fundamental way that will cause unspecified compatibility problems. The only rebuttal I've seen so far has basically been "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" While that may indeed be true, it doesn't give me any further hard facts to help clarify the issue in my own mind. There may indeed be fundamental changes, but designed to maintain backwards compatibility. There might not be any such changes. Or there might be something installed as part of OpenLC that will impair compatibility to some degree, from a minor glitch to a dealbreaker. It's not a world shattering issue that has me on the edge of my seat. I don't feel entitled to storm onto the OrbX forums and demand that Jon Venema explain himself this very instant! No, but it's still an empty tick box that I think I'd like to see filled before I start down the OpenLC route. I'd be disappointed if installing OpenLC Europe meant that I couldn't run FinlandX or the excellent freeware Norway bundle over the top of it. Even then it might not be a dealbreaker, but I'd certainly like to make the decision with my eyes open. If that simply means buying OpenLC on day 30 or 60 instead of on day 1, then so be it. I have to say though that the person or persons responsible for the anti-OrbX sockpuppetry have done a lot to strengthen Jon Venema's side of the dispute. When one side is caught resorting to that sort of activity, it makes me naturally lean towards placing more trust in the other. Respectfully to all concerned. Dr V

ROFLMAO! There's a more serious thought though, has anyone flown down there with FTXG to see if the green creep has spread that far?

I have many mixed feelings about this.. Generally, theoretically, I disapprove of companies riding roughshod over SDKs and standard methodologies even if they do give a short term improvement. It almost always leads to incompatibilities with other products and forces you into a "company store" like Nick alludes to. I should be disliking OrbX on principle, and in truth this is something that has put me off buying any of their products until now. But while I've a lot of sympathy for Nick, feeling that GEX is being forced into obsolescence, the bottom line is that it's simple market forces. OrbX are producing a new global texture pack that is cheaper than worldwide GEX coverage, that a lot of people feel looks an awful lot better than current GEX textures. Saying that OrbX have made it so that FTXG users can't use GEX smacks of stating the bleedin' obvious. One thing that does throw up a warning sign for me is this point.. 3. Once they launch their LC product no one else can provide any texture product that works with the FSX system unless the developer is willing to develop and work directly with their scrambled LC calls and believe me we refuse to ever succumb to that monopoly or tyrannical practice. What worries me slightly, speaking as someone with only a minimal understanding of the inner workings of FSX, is how much will these "scrambled LC calls" affect other landclass products. Does this mean that once OpenLC is installed you won't, if you wanted to, be able to still use other landclass products for certain parts of the world? Currently UTX and FTXG play very nicely together. Will that be broken once OpenLC starts to be installed? Honestly I don't have a preconceived answer, or even know if those are worthwhile questions or completely misplaced concerns. They're just "worst case scenarios" that occur to me. For now I'm just going to shrug my shoulders and go back to enjoying flying over a simulated Britain that finally looks like the real thing in a way that GEX could never quite manage. Just personal opinions, no offence intended to anyone. Dr V

As someone else has already pointed out, different companies that distribute electronically do things different ways. Some allow unlimited downloads of your purchases for an unlimited time. That to me is a positive thing, a good service to the customer and something that would encourage me to purchase from that company. Some place limits on the initial download, but if you contact support will offer a relatively painless re-activation to allow you to redownload at a later date. That's also good customer service and another positive. Some give you a limited time and/or number of downloads, then charge you a fee to redownload. That's.... acceptable. They're within their rights to recover costs, though as someone else says, the "administration fee" is likely to far exceed the wholesale bandwidth cost. It's certainly not a positive thing, offering no advantage to the user. At best it's neutral. Then finally some companies give you a limited time, then if you miss the boat you're SOL. Buy the thing again. Needless to say that's a negative and would certainly put me off buying from them. Ironically, some companies that appear to be in this final category, if you contact them and politely explain your situation, will often be sympathetic and provide you with a fresh download. Comparing requesting a re-download and requesting fresh physical media is very last-century thinking. In an age of electronic content distribution, companies have a simple choice. They can, at fairly minimal cost, provide an excellent bonus service to their customers. Or they can choose to "recover their costs"... with of course an additional fee to cover..ahem.. "administration". Or exploit it even further with a "download insurance" fee. For a clue as to which way the future lies, take a look at the "big names" in electronic content, and see which option they've gone for. Purely personal opinion, no offence to anyone intended. Dr V

Much as I 100% share the OP's delight in what FTX Global has done for the areas I usually fly, I have to consider the people who typically fly in more arid climes, which FTX Global turns unreastically lush and green. Until the coming OpenLC expansions fix that problem, I don't think we can give FTXG the prize for the universally best add-on when it's making things look subjectively worse in some people's eyes. But apart from that, I agree 100% with Seshquashtoo as to what this does for temperate climes in FSX. Helo_Head: I was a GEX user too, but I felt it never quite got the tone right for the British Isles where I normally fly. For me, FTXG is a welcome replacement. If you're 100% happy with what GEX does for you, then no it's probably not worth it. But if you fly in temperate zones and feel that somehow it's not quite the right shade of green I suggest you look through the various screenshots and videos being posted of FTXG to see if it's more to your liking. The other case where I think you'd see a massive benefit would be if you already own one or more of the existing full FTX regions and would like to fly freely between them and the rest of the FSX world. With FTXG everything will at least look like part of the same consistent world, rather than flying between a real-ish world and Toonland. Dr V

There are also a couple of sets of pre-recorded cabin crew announcements floating around the usual flightsim download libraries. Wav playback is in fact the only way you can do most cabin crew announcements, as they tend to be too long for the voxscript response length limit. Interesting that you can trigger a cabin crew script from a copilot script. If you can then do the reverse that raises the intriguing possibility of scripting an autonomous conversation between the two.

In the latest, full length video I take Rob Richardson's freeware De Havilland Vampire for a spin over the countryside around UK2000's RAF Cosford. Some of you might be particularly interested to note that this is the first vid I've done with FTX Global, and you get a good look at what it does for the British countryside. Thanks for watching, if indeed you do. And as ever comments and feedback are welcome, here on in the YouTube comments. Dr V

To all the people viewing this thread and not watching the video.... you do realise that's a four minute and forty one second runtime, right?

In the latest video I recreate the longest non-stop flight in the world, at that time. Seriously, don't even think about clicking the video unless you have the time and commitment to watch the whole thing through from take-off to touchdown. (I had so much fun with this, I did a follow-up flight later that day, which you can read about on my blog) Regards Dr V

You make a good point, Jeroen. There's definitely a case to be made for doubling up - OpenLC for landclass (and additional textures), UTX for vector data. Though I'd be a little worried about mis-matches between the two causing further problems. And if budget is an issue it becomes a little trickier to justify the extra expense based on diminishing returns.. Anyone tried explaining the difference between landclass & vector data to their spouse/partner/Keeper Of The Privy Purse? Like you I'm using UTX Europe and I'll probably get OpenLC Europe, if only to see how much of an improvement it actually can be, and if they do play nicely together, But back to the OP's question.. for the areas that UTX don't cover, and assuming they didn't have FTX-G or that wasn't an option for some reason, what alternatives are there to the SceneryTech landclasses, for places like South America, Africa or Asia? Dr V

I think Woodhick might be thinking in terms of the upcoming OpenLC enhancements to FTXG, which promise enhanced landclass data. Re: Scenerytech, I picked their South America pack for a recent video. It definitely improved things, giving small villages and towns where none were previously. It didn't improve the shape of the coastlines or anything handled by vector data that UTX handles. If you're in the same boat as me, looking for options for a good landclass foundation for FTXG's shiny new visuals, I'd wait and see what the OpenLC offerings are like. I suspect UTX is going to remain the first choice where available, with OpenLC being the next best thing. Dr V

I think the only advantage it would offer you would be if you ever wanted to hop across the Irish Sea, North Sea or English Channel to areas not currently available as full blown FTX scenery but still within GA range. With Global those destinations would at least look like part of the same, consistent world as the FTX regions you have. Dr V