ORBX not as good as i expected

A mate of mine has ORBX Australia i couldnt wait to see it. I thought we would check out the streets we live in and then have a look at Ayers Rock. My surrounding area is all residential. ORBX shows lots of tall buildings which is completely wrong. Ayers Rock has buildings and homes near it which is not correct. I will say the senery is very nice but its not accurate. Is this how it is for all addon seneries? Are US and Europe seneries also generic?

Thanks

A mate of mine has ORBX Australia i couldnt wait to see it. I thought we would check out the streets we live in and then have a look at Ayers Rock. My surrounding area is all residential. ORBX shows lots of tall buildings which is completely wrong. Ayers Rock has buildings and homes near it which is not correct. I will say the senery is very nice but its not accurate. Is this how it is for all addon seneries? Are US and Europe seneries also generic?

Thanks

 

Hi there,

 

The regional sceneries from Orbx were never intended to be exact replicas of their real life counterparts, so if this is what you were expecting, then yes, you would be disappointed.

 

If your wish was to see your own street from the air then I'd suggest purchasing an add-on which uses satellite or areal imagery. The plus point to this type of scenery is that from 2000+ feet and above these sceneries will give a very good impression of what's actually there, but the negative of this type is go lower and you'll find that everything starts to look as flat as a pizza.

 

This is where Orbx regional sceneries come into their own. For the VFR pilot they are regarded as a must have as they give a great representation of what is there, and for somebody who enjoys this type of flying, I whole heartily agree.

 

Landing at one of their custom made airports is simply breathtaking and if you've never experienced this, then I highly recommend either purchasing one of their fantastic airports or sampling one their freeware offerings:

 

https://fullterrain.com/freeware

 

Hope this helps.

 

Happy flying!!

 

Dom

 

Edit...adding Global and Vector adds greatly to the experience:

 

Global

 

https://fullterrain.com/product/ftxglobal

 

Vector

 

https://fullterrain.com/product/ftxgvector

I have FTX EU England but all the freeware seems require FTX Global to be present or am I misunderstanding something.

 

Alan

I've been getting the best of both worlds, Orbx and photoscenery, by mixing the highly-detailed and accurate Orbx airports with Megascenery photoreal scenery. So, when taking off and landing, at low altitude, there's the great 3D Orbx airport scenery. And then when at higher altitudes, there's the accurate photoreal scenery.

 

If both the photoreal scenery and the Orbx scenery are enabled in the FSX scenery library, the Orbx airports take precedence in the airport areas, and the photoreal scenery takes precedence everywhere else. The blending of the two types of scenery isn't perfect, of course, but often isn't bad.

I have FTX EU England but all the freeware seems require FTX Global to be present or am I misunderstanding something.

 

There are no freeware EU England airports but if there were you would not need FTX Global because you have FTX EU England. There are seven freeware airports for the NA regions and seven for the AU region(s). There are, of course, the OZx freeware airports for Orbx regions - from memory there are 340 OZx Australian airports and a bunch of NA ones. If this all means you are misunderstanding something(s), then I guess you are :)

 

Orbx freeware page

The regional sceneries from Orbx were never intended to be exact replicas of their real life counterparts, so if this is what you were expecting, then yes, you would be disappointed.

 

Yes I hope OrbX make that clear in their adverts or a lot of angry people will want their money back..;)

If you want to see your house, street, rivers, rails and massage parlours etc in their proper places, the keyword you need when buying scenery is 'Photorealistic' or 'Photographic' because basically it's simply a photograph of the ground that you'll be flying over and therefore 100% accurate.

I use 'VFR Photographic Scenery GenerationX' (commonly known as GenX), I can't speak for other brands, but in GenX you also get bumps, hills, mountains and airport buildings, and the odd 3D landmark building like Windsor Castle.

The following shots are GenX over Windsor, England.

 

1- At normal altitudes the houses give the optical illusion of being 3D even though they're flat. If you lived there you'd be delighted to be able to pick out your house and your mother-in-laws.

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-windsor1_zpslzphtgpi.jpg~original

 

 

 

2- At lower altitude, a touch of blurriness begins creeping in, this is normal for photoreal scenery and can't be helped-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-windsor4_zpsmm3lcmgy.jpg~original

 

 

3-and almost on the deck the illusion is gone and we see the houses are pancake flat except for Windsor Castle.

Incidentally I use the 'Treescapes' addon program with GenX to get a nice touch of some 3D trees as here, otherwise they'd be flat too-

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-windsor5_zpsjz4dadvs.jpg~original

 

GEN X- http://www.flightstore.co.uk/flight-simulation-c499/scenery-add-ons-c543/vfr-photographic-scenery-fsx-c544

The amount of hours that would be required to do what the OP would like would put the price into the unfordable than the fact is in FSX you would probably need to rebuild the scenery engine to even begin to get the accuracy required than there is the overheads in memory usage and load times. I dont think people realise how much time and effort is required just to get airports in the right place and with reasonable accuracy. It is possiblebut there is no pC today that would be able tio run it.

Thanks for your responses. I was under the impression that orbx was real scenery. It does look nice but i dont see the point of it. I have seen Megascenery before, very large downloads and like the images show in the post, it gets blurry. But then the scenery is from photos. I guess the bottom line is learn to fly planes, thats what fsx is about, then when your flying from a to b and your flying level have a look around at the scenery even though its generic. Ill do some more researching into photoscenery. Ill see what i can find.

Thanks for your responses. I was under the impression that orbx was real scenery. It does look nice but i dont see the point of it..

 

I'd agree with you. Basically it's better than the default FSX scenery, but not as good as GenX Photoreal.

I've been googling around and found this review which confirms it-

"With GenX, you can easily navigate from A to B by following what you see below and a road map noting landmarks along the way. That has to be rather more difficult with ORBX as you're not seeing all the roads.. just the main ones and what might be a landmark to you (a pub on the corner) will not necessarily be there with the ORBX scenery"

Here's my FSX Tiger Moth over Henley-on-Thames with GenX photoreal scenery, EVERY road, house and pub etc is in it's proper place (albeit not 3D), meaning I can have a map on my lap (bottom pic) and navigate by eyeball, great fun, but with OrbX you can't do that because OrbX doesn't have every road etc.

 

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/FSX-TMothb.gif

 

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/FSX-henleyb.gif

FTX England actually does include all major, most minor roads, and vector placement of accurate representations for rivers.

 

Certainly sufficient for navigation purposes, and as I have pre-flown routes I have gone on to take in real life and identified POI & nav features that I have planned for and seen out the window of a real plane, then I think that Scatterbrain might benefit from taking some flying lessons with that map-in-lap and see how close FTX actually is, because his assertion is simply wrong - particularly when you factor in seasonality, the effect of light - and the weather.

At the normal transit heights in the South of the UK ("Not above 3,000" is a mantra for radio interactions with ATC) photoscenery is just plain useless. SBK is correct in this regard.

 

What it also does include are thousands of appropriate autogen and scenery model placements that lend credibility and verisimilitude to the landscape. I don't have FTX Australia, but I expect that it does the same.

 

Of course, the limitation of `photoreal` scenery is that it is unadaptable, has fixed colour point and saturation, locked shadow angles and can only be used in one season. The fact that it is, by definition, a photograph and one taken some time ago makes it no more `accurate` than FTX and in most cases, less so. It also cannot be easily amended say, for example, if the cityscape changes as a result of new construction. Southampton now has several new VRP's with highly-visible new landmarks. Not a single one of which is represented in any addon or photoscenery. NO addon is `true to life`- because life moves on.

 

Yer pays yer moneys and yer makes yer choices. The requirement is that those choices are informed. And that is down to an individual informing themselves.

 

Personally, our OP's original post makes me think that his friend has failed to install FTX Oz correctly, as while at no point does it claim street-level accuracy, if correctly installed most downunder simmers have been `wowed` not miffed at the detail and finesse. I'd be willing to bet there is a problem with the installation.

 

Finally, the `fly and see my house` approach to accuracy measurement is a fundamentally flawed method to assessing addon scenery capability. Simming is about the suggestion of realism and the suspension of disbelief. As you cannot possibly know every street, every town, every landscape feature in ANY country, much less one the size of Oz, I'd strongly suggest revising the parameters for accuracy.

 

The ONLY true method is not to opine based on a computer screen, as `Kid does, but to opine based on what you really see out the window of a real plane. Take a test or sample flight with a real pilot in the real world. make sure you trace your route (usually a local flight around the airport or field) then come back and fly it in the sim.

 

THAT is a true gauge of accuracy and frankly, nothing else will do, so it is to be done before investing in ANY addon solution.

 

Certainly not the opinions of simmers with thousands of hours on a desktop computer that contains a myriad of personal modifications, tweaks, individual software & hardware differences and driver setups, or crap installation.:pilot:

with OrbX you can't do that because OrbX doesn't have every road etc.

 

I'm not sure that's fair - the idea is that you can navigate visually as the Orbx regions include vector data for roads, rivers, coastlines, lakes and railways. (Presumably there is a limit to how detailed this vector data is, so I would guess not every minor road is included.) You should also be able to navigate by towns and villages, although again the accuracy depends on what level of detail the Orbx landclass data goes down to. It will be better if you are navigating in an area that is unfamiliar in the real world, since above a certain level of detail the textures you are seeing will be generic.

,,FTX England actually does include all major, most minor roads.......the `fly and see my house` approach to accuracy measurement is a fundamentally flawed method to assessing addon scenery capability...

..OrbX..I would guess not every minor road is included..

 

There ya go guys, you're confirming what I already said about Orbx/FTX not containing all minor roads and houses..:)

Original poster Newbie also said "My surrounding area is all residential. ORBX shows lots of tall buildings which is completely wrong. Ayers Rock has buildings and homes near it which is not correct."

 

So all that is pretty conclusive, namely that OrbX/FTX gives a very pretty approximation of landscapes for general flying, but if you want to see your house and everything else in their exact proper places, Photoreal scenery should be your choice..:)

You failed to understand my post, which I urge you to work through again, slowly.

 

Many minor roads in the real world are practically invisible - you see 'suggestions` in the landscape of their presence, route and direction but you don't see the roads themselves, or vehicles thereon.

Not from the real air in a real plane.

In fact you don't always see something as big as motorways as they can be within cuttings or have high ground and vertical obstructions that block the slant angle view. The approach into Redhill is a perfect case in point. It uses Buckland Lake rather than the M23 as VRP precisely because from certain angles, you can't actually see the north/south motorway even from 1,000 AGL. It's very similar into Popham, which sits right alongside the A303 yet can be tricky to see from even a mile away from certain angles.

 

Something which clearly you lack knoweldge of, SBK. Get that knowledge and then we can talk again with an opinion that actually counts. Get some seat time in the real world and we can put to bed most of your fanciful notions about `approximation` and which comes closer - photoscenery or Vector.

 

I alluded most appropriately to our OP seeing non-residential properties in a region of residential - that alone given what I know of FTX Aus tells me something is amiss in the installation. The solution comes from OP posting a screenshot from his friends computer, and we can then compare this to a known correct FTX Aus install.

Guys, guys, I know how we can settle this once and for all!

Here's a shot of Plymouth UK in GenX Photoreal, I can see my house, the pub, the chip shop, the helipad in the Citadel, the funfair on the Hoe, and every road, streets, alleyways, houses and buildings etc all in their exact proper places, so I honestly can't see how OrbX/FTX can possibly beat that.

Please prove me wrong by posting a shot from the same spot in OrbX/FTX..:)

 

PS- to avoid confusion can you tell us if OrbX and FTX are two separate programs or what? My reading is that OrbX was the original, then they later updated it and called it FTX, and it's now bundled together and sold as OrbX/FTX, is that right?

(and what does FTX stand for anyway?)

 

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/sub2/FSX-GenX-Plymouth_zpsqljhnoiy.jpg~original

Guys, guys, I know how we can settle this once and for all!

Here's a shot of Plymouth UK in GenX Photoreal, I can see my house, the pub, the chip shop, the helipad in the Citadel, the funfair on the Hoe, and every road, streets, alleyways, houses and buildings etc all in their exact proper places, so I honestly can't see how OrbX/FTX can possibly beat that.

By giving us 3D scenery to fly over as opposed to 2D scenery.

 

PS- to avoid confusion can you tell us if OrbX and FTX are two separate programs or what?

Orbx is the company FTX is the product.

 

(and what does FTX stand for anyway?)

Google it.

By giving us 3D scenery to fly over as opposed to 2D scenery.

Orbx is the company FTX is the product.

 

Thanks but I'm still waiting for somebody to post an OrbX/FTX screenshot of Plymouth to prove me wrong..;)

Thanks but I'm still waiting for somebody to post an OrbX/FTX screenshot of Plymouth to prove me wrong..;)

 

It is not a question of right and wrong, it is personal preference.

 

I know what my house looks like, no need to see it in the sim.

 

I, personally, prefer a 3D world.

It really depends on what you want. Around here, photoreal scenery isn't exactly real for at lease half of the year (no fall, winter and spring scenery). And as mallcott points out, when it comes to navigation, the minor roads aren't really useful, at least not here. Major roads, towns and railways are what I always used for cross country flights when working on my licence. I also prefer the 3D scenery from the likes of Orbx vs the flat photoreal scenery. Not to mention the part about photo scenery quickly being out of date around here. If I want to see my house, I just load up Google Earth (which can be years out of date itself) and zoom in.

 

Perhaps one day we will have a sim with built in 3D scenery based on 2D aerial images.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/07/pix4d-turns-your-2d-aerial-photographs-into-3d-maps-on-the-fly/

Thanks for the Genx screenshots they look amazing. I found another photoreal site, Blue Sky Scenery. By the looks of it they do just the US.

BS does the western US and it is outstanding as well as FREE... but... as with other photo real, it is limited autogen.

It really depends on what you want. Around here, photoreal scenery isn't exactly real for at lease half of the year (no fall, winter and spring scenery). And as mallcott points out, when it comes to navigation, the minor roads aren't really useful, at least not here. Major roads, towns and railways are what I always used for cross country flights when working on my licence. I also prefer the 3D scenery from the likes of Orbx vs the flat photoreal scenery. Not to mention the part about photo scenery quickly being out of date around here.

 

http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/07/pix4d-turns-your-2d-aerial-photographs-into-3d-maps-on-the-fly/

 

Not entirely true if you create your own photoreal scenery, as SbuilderX gives you the option to create winter, hard winter, spring, fall. It is however sadly true when you look at the payware photoreal sceneries out there (not to mention the odd terrain coloring).

I also like and enjoy the 3D scenery while flying, and greatly appreciate the work Orbx does, specially with their excellent airports and local areas like Northern California. Because of my enjoying both Photo and Orbx I did create a blend for Northern California, which accurately shows the coastline and oceans, but lets Orbx take over a few miles from the coast.

In the end, it is a matter of preference, as Bean says.

Not to mention the part about photo scenery quickly being out of date around here.

 

This can be a problem with with non photo scenery as well. Some of the source data that Orbx uses for the Canadian portion of the FTX PNW region is over a quarter of a century old! You can thank the Canadian government for that; their GIS database isn't the latest and greatest, but at least it is free. :D

I'm surprised ORBX did not pay more attention to major sites such as Ayers Rock.

 

I only have the free Tasmania region in FTX, and I think it is way better than UTX/GEX Europe, and preferable to 2D photoscenery - which I also find takes ages to load so you can't enjoy it in a fast aircraft (looks worse than default FSX scenery in the F18).

 

Honestly though I think most scenery add-ons aren't worth the price. UTX is one of the cheaper ones and it might be worth it if you're frustrated by inaccuracies in the roads, landclass and coastlines in areas you're familiar with. GEX doesn't add that much in my opinion, and some of the textures look too exaggerated, almost cartoon-like.

I've got VFR Real Scenery for Wales and Orbx EU England. The VFR is best for navigating when you are above 2000 feet but the Orbx is prettier and the airports are much better than the VFR ones. Because of this I find myself setting off from English Airports with Orbx, flying around Wales with VFR and landing at another English Airport with Orbx.

I've got VFR Real Scenery for Wales and Orbx EU England. The VFR is best for navigating when you are above 2000 feet but the Orbx is prettier and the airports are much better than the VFR ones. Because of this I find myself setting off from English Airports with Orbx, flying around Wales with VFR and landing at another English Airport with Orbx.

 

Hi GridNorth,

 

would you say FTX England is worth it? I see they also sell Southampton airport, which is my local one. But the price has always put me off.