ORBX North America Landclass Frustration

Hi,

i finally saved up enough to buy a new system after being away from simming for a few years. I made sure that I got a system that could handle Flight Sim as well. I chose Prepar3D because of its recommendation and reviews. I also bought and installed ORBX FTX Global, Vector, and the long awaited NA Landclass.

I live in Northeastern Pennsylvania and have been waiting for years for good, accurate scenery that depicts my area well.

When I stopped simming due to my slower computer, ORBX Open NA Landclass was still not available, but I read how great it would be.

Well, after taking the first flight in my home area, I'm somewhat disappointed. The streets in my home area the WYOMING VALLEY, (Home airport is KAVP) are very inaccurate and parts with parks, etc. are also omitted. The streets are curved where they should be perpendicular to one or another as well as straight or parallel. Water areas appear OK and the Susquehanna River is pretty well done, but urban areas are missing in some parts or are visible where there are really none. I'm not being picky by trying to find my house or the corner Burger King, but I should be able to say "there's my housing development".

It just seems that after the long wait, at least in my home area its not much better than the default scenery. I used to have UTX on my old system and streets and urban areas were done well including my housing development. To top it off there are black, water sections that stay black or flash on and off all over, not just in my area.

Does anyone know of a good scenery that is accurate and recognizable to the real world? It would be great if ORBX would finally release some detailed Regional sceneries of the Northeast where one could say "There's my street" or the park near my house. Thanks. Tom

Landclass based scenery will not give you the accuracy you need. You need to use photoreal based scenery. The only developer I know of that has Pennsylvania in photreal is MegaScenery Earth. But it only contains the ground images. No autogen buildings or vegetation are include and it only has day textures for summer.

Hi Tom

 

I believe you have to install Orbx Global Base Pack before you install the Land Class add-ons. You can check with the Orbx website support. I use the Base Pack, open Land Class, and Global Vector add-ons and am very happy with them.

 

 

 

Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.5GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB GDDR5X; ASRock Z270 K6 Gaming MB, 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM; 500GB SSD + 2TB HDD; Windows 10 Pro 64-bit; 34" 21:9 curved 4K Monitor

Johnost,

Thanks for the reply. I installed Global, then Vector, and finally NALC. You mentioned Land Class before Vector. Could that make a diffference? Thanks, Tom

Johnost,

Thanks for the reply. I installed Global, then Vector, and finally NALC. You mentioned Land Class before Vector. Could that make a diffference? Thanks, Tom

 

Well, it looks like you have what you need - I misread. I think Global Base Pack should be installed first while the others can be added at will. The Orbx large-scale scenery is not accurate like photo scenery, but close enough to give good impressions of general geography, city layouts, major landmarks, roads and rails, lakes and waterways, etc., but general housing and trees are generic. On the other hand photo scenery may look great from 3000 feet or above, but collapses to nothing when flying at 500 feet unless extensive 3-D scenery objects have been added by the designer. Orbx sells regional sceneries that are more detailed and accurate, but may not be available for your area.

 

Sorry I can't help you more. By the way, I also have the black water sections problem in P3Dv4. They first appeared in FSX-SE, and I got rid of them by turning off the DX 10 Trial in the Graphics/Scenery section in FSX, but I don't yet know what to do in P3d.

 

 

 

Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.5GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB GDDR5X; ASRock Z270 K6 Gaming MB, 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM; 500GB SSD + 2TB HDD; Windows 10 Pro 64-bit; 34" 21:9 curved 4K Monitor

Hi John,

Thanks for the help and info. I may be able to help you. ORBX says the "black water" problem can be solved by disabling the "Frozen Water Surface (Winter Only)" option in FTX Central under Options. I unchecked it but haven't tried it out yet. Hope it helps. Tom

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the tip, but - mysteriously - I don't see any black spots any more in P3D. Maybe the last update did something!

 

 

 

Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.5GHz; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti 11GB GDDR5X; ASRock Z270 K6 Gaming MB, 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM; 500GB SSD + 2TB HDD; Windows 10 Pro 64-bit; 34" 21:9 curved 4K Monitor

Tom

 

In general I love Orbx products, and anything they produce I buy. However, I too found their landclass for North America really inaccurate. I found Ultimate Terrain by Flight 1 much more accurate than Orbx. The difference where I live was night and day.

 

harlank

Tom

 

In general I love Orbx products, and anything they produce I buy. However, I too found their landclass for North America really inaccurate. I found Ultimate Terrain by Flight 1 much more accurate than Orbx. The difference where I live was night and day.

 

harlank

 

Combining Ultimate Terrain and FTX products is difficult, and should only be attempted if you know what you're doing...