ORBX Global with US Cities X

[dogdish]

I have ORBX Global/Vector/OpenLC NA/Trees HD

 

Looking at getting US Cities X

 

Los Angeles

Las Vegas

New Orleans

 

I see these were created by Lime Sim who contributed to some of the ORBX Regional products.

 

How well do these blend with ORBX?

 

How well does the airport parking work?

 

Los Angeles includes Catalina, but I all ready have ORBX Catalina, so would have to be able to disable/remove the US Citites version.

 

Do these products SUCK and is there better choices?

[CRJ_simpilot]

Looking at the product it appears they are just buildings. Since ORBX is landclass it should work alright. I might just buy their products. Looks cool. Vegas looks nice. I always fly there. Too bad there's no San Diego.

[dogdish]

I bought the US Cities X - Las Vegas. It was a whole $14.99. Also updates all the airports in the Las Vegas valley. There is also a freeware section of Las Vegas Downtown (Search for downtownlasvegasx.zip) in the FlightSim library that is designed to go with it.

 

It's a improvement, but you can definitely see the borders where the US Cities X - Las Vegas ends and ORBX begins. Actually ORBX Global is TOO green for the Las Vegas desert. I also have FS Global 2010 mesh and there is a problem with some floating buildings.

 

Took a helicopter down the strip and the buildings are quite ugly up close. Flying over the rooftops is OK.

 

As long as you don't mind the scenery mis-match, it's OK for $15.00 and I would NOT get it if you have ORBX Southern California region that covers Las Vegas.

[CRJ_simpilot]

I never mess with mesh. You often find all of your altitudes are off and then you have to edit airport elevation after airport elevation.

 

 

I expect there to be borders where the city starts and ends. That's just the way it is. I wonder if Mega Scenery will fix that greenish crap with ORBX? I bought Colorado and have yet to instal it. It's like 15 damn CDs. You'd think they'd put it on a few DVDs instead. Gesh.

[dogdish]

ORBX scenery was designed around FS Global 2010 mesh so it works well just about everywhere. The default McCarren airport sits on a slope in the Las Vegas valley with the mesh installed so I had installed a AFM (Aerodrome Flattening Mesh) to fix it. This was the reason for the floating autogen buildings with the US Cities X - Las Vegas installed which has it's own flattening mesh.

 

When I removed the AFM, there are no more floating buildings.

 

The more I fly around with it the more I like it. Probably get LA next.

[Rupert]

I admit I'm an Orbx Junky! I truly love almost every one of their products I've bought. Having said that, have you checked out the ORBX free scenery? They have several products you can download free if you have already bought other software to work with them. I really like the freeware Portland Oregon as well as several others. ;)

[dogdish]

Absolutely Rupe!

 

Started with the 2 Global airport packs, liked them, then got them ALL!

 

Regarding the US Cities X products, they are only daytime textures :mad: (except for Las Vegas which they added night textures to).

 

I guess for the LA scenery you could pretend like there was a power outage in LA when you fly at night.

[CRJ_simpilot]

Well that sucks. I may just buy Vegas then.

[ColR1948]

On the subject of Orbx, I am seriously thinking of taking it off my sim, one of my pet hates is static aircraft, which there seems to be lots of it in their scenery.

I have spent a lot of my pension money on a fair bit of Orbx scenery but I might just have to write it off as a loss.

I'm not sure how to modify it so either I'm stuck with it or I take it off and look elsewhere.

[dogdish]

Well your not the first person to hate the static.

 

I'm thinking of a few ORBX airports like Catalina with the DC-3 sitting there and how cool it looks. The statics at Monterey and how it wouldn't be the same without them.

 

The ORBX developers try to put them out of the way and leave room for AI aircraft and they don't reduce frame rate much. So I don't have a problem with them. But it would be nice to be able to switch ALL of them off instead of some of them.

[ColR1948]

Well I found a way to eliminate them but it also eliminates a few other things too but I can live with it.

I went in the Settings then Scenery and just unticked the FTXAAL_ORBXLIBS, it also might have done me another favour because there were also a lot of parked cars at some airfields, and now I can add extra parking for ai aircraft etc.

 

Col.

[CRJ_simpilot]

I too can't stand static aircraft. When ever it's offered I opted out of it. I already have TONS! of AI so no need and it would just drop my frames anyway. I need ma parking spaces! :D

[dogdish]

I would think MORE AI planes would drop your frame rates even more then static aircraft especially when they do something other then sit at a gate like a static aircraft ;)

[CRJ_simpilot]

They would indeed. 90% or more of the AI I use have dxt textures for better frame rate capability. I adjusted the slider to 30% AI so my parking spaces have an average amount of planes to simulate realism. I haven't seen a frame drop due to AI, it's largely where I go to, like areas with a hell of a lot of buildings like NY or Mexico City. Also using FSDreamTeam airports I'll get some frame drops. And that's with me locking the FPS to 25 and using the Comp. in my Sig. All and all my Sim is pretty smooth. Even with Active Sky Cloud Art injection using 1024 pixel clouds. And I've adjusted that setting in FSX.cfg. I don't want to go any higher than that.

 

 

With static A/C you just pretty much added another building-like object and like I said, some airports, especially FSDreamTeam airports can and will cause a frame drop. Plus the static A/C is annoying to have wasting your parking spaces as you can understand.

 

I did have a fairly decent frame drop with KPAM Tyndal in Florida with all of the buildings there and the F22's, etc from MAIW. Even though the A/C limit is 30%. I think in this case it's not so much the planes, but the buildings themselves. I've had this very thing happen to me when I built Area-51 and added a substantial amount of buildings there and I never did complete where all the building were. But then again, this was FS2004 running on a Dell Dimension 4600 with a 3.0GHz Northwood CPU. Was pretty good for such an old Proc. though. I even played Call Of Duty Modern Warfare on it. I can only imagine that if I installed my FS2004 backup to the computer I have now frames would be vastly different.

 

I really should look at the MAIW A/C I have installed and see if they are dxt, and if not, convert them. There's a utility (can't remember the exact name now) called Meatwater something that will convert the textures. I have it somewhere on a backup CD.

[ColR1948]

@CRJ,

I am a member of MIAW and they did at one time have only FS9 aircraft and scenery, but as of late they are also doing a lot of FSX aircraft and scenery.

As you know though most FS9 aircraft work in FSX so that isn't a problem and I can honestly say their models are first class and work perfect.

 

Col.

[CRJ_simpilot]

Wasn't implying that their models were bad or anything. Just said I needed to check the textures for the A/C I do have installed and make sure they are dxt. They may in fact be dxt, I'm not entirely sure. The A/C from MAIW I do have installed never had a FSX option. So I just use the planes and converted the flight planes to FSX format. Such was the case a few days back when I downloaded Tyndal KPAM.