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/images/notams/notams19/orbx1218/orbx-1.jpgOrbx has released a service pack for TrueEarth Great Britain whichupdates all regions of the Prepar3D V4 version. TE GB South V2 Service Pack 1Fixed corrupted mesh scenery file for the complete center part ofthe scenery (high resolution mesh didn't show between Cardiff andSouthampton at all before)Added POIs: St. Michaels Mount, Bredon Folly, Brentor Church, Broadway Tower, Ely Cathedral, Needles LighthouseAligned road traffic to new motorway around Birmingham airportFixed positioning of Tamar rail bridgeFixed mesh ridge in WalesRemoved autogen colliding with Hertford CastleRemove trees colliding with old Severn bridgeFixed floating buildings around London EyeAligned road traffic to Clifton bridgeFixed positioning of Cardiff Castle and StadiumFixed elevation of Snowdon Peak buildingsFixed buildings colliding with some POIs in LondonAdded some default lighthouse models where no individual POIs models were availableFixed compatibility to ORBX's EGTHImproved compatibility to FTX EU ENG and WLS (overlapping PR files)TE GB Central Service Pack 1Added missing autogen in very northwest edge of scenery coverageAdded POIs: Melrose AbbeyFixed watermask issues in various areas (mainly Morecambe coastline)Visual improvements of PR, mesh and positioning of Humber bridgeFixed sunken lake in EGNM approachFixed sunken terrain under Leaderfoot ViaductFixed building overlapping with Sunderland river bridgeAdded some default lighthouse models where no individual POIs models were availableImproved compatibility to FTX EU ENG and WLS (overlapping PR files)TE GB North Service Pack 1Visual improvements and updated road traffic of new Queensferry bridgeAdded POIs: Urquhart Castle, Dounreay ReactorFixed watermask issues in various areas (mainly around Out Skerries and Benbecula)Fixed EGEH and OUK elevation problemsAdded missing M90 river bridge near PerthAligned road traffic on Dundee bridgeFixed area around Waverly bridge spanning over Edinburgh rail stationRemoved duplicated Edinburgh Donaldson's HospitalAdded some default lighthouse models where no individual POIs models were availableFixed EGNS hangars colliding with commercial area buildingsRemoved colliding trees at airports of Bournmouth, Gatwick, Birmingham and CoventryImproved compatibility to FTX EU SCO (overlapping PR files)Source
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/images/notams/notams19/orbx1218/orbx-1.jpgThe complete TrueEarth Great Britain for P3Dv4 comingsoon! The much anticipated update to Great Britain South will releasethis week along with Great Britain Central and North. This product set is perfect for those looking for an exciting VFRflying experience around one of the most stunning places in theworld. From rich golden coasts and lush green fields to urban citiesand towering complexes, you won't find a more comprehensive andup-to-date British flying experience anywhere! /images/notams/notams19/orbx1218/orbx-2.jpg /images/notams/notams19/orbx1218/orbx-3.jpgSource
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Review: Orbx TrueEarth Great Britain NorthBy Stuart McGregor /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_1.jpgI have been an avid fan of X-Planesince late 2013, and I still remember the moment I stumbled across anadvert for Laminar's X-Plane 10, having been a user of FlightGear forseveral months. Quite literally I was blown away with what I saw andhave been hooked ever since. That was a real watershed moment for mein the world of flight simulation, and over that last five and a bityears, yeah I can't believe it has been that long already, there havebeen some amazing changes to X-Plane, not to mention lots of newadd-ons in the aircraft, utility and scenery spaces. The recent introduction of Orbx Simulation Systems to theX-Plane market and the release of their TrueEarth Great Britain serieshas been another watershed moment, and in my opinion, a genuine gamechanger in user experience. Over the last few months Great BritainSouth, and Central have been released and most recently, Great BritainNorth. As I hail from the North East of Scotland, this was all mybirthdays, Christmases and any other celebrations you can think of allat once. Having been tantalised with the details to be found inCentral and Southern parts of the UK, I had a palpable and genuineexcitement of being able to explore my own back yard, Orbx style. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_2.jpgTrueEarth Great Britain North covers a whopping 103,600 square kmor approximately 40,415 square miles of the northern part of GreatBritain, from the Isle of Man all the way up to the Shetland Isles inthe very far north. The product is marketed as having autogentechnology specially designed for X-Plane 11 and Great Britain, withregion specific housing and numerous landmarks and points ofinterest. In the user guide that accompanies the scenery package, you willalso find information from the authoring team with respect to otherfeatures included in the scenery, such as millions of accuratelyplaced trees and forests, more than 1.4 million correctly placed UKstyled buildings, windfarms, light houses, churches, power lines...Icould go on and on. Basically, pretty much every VFR landmark youcould want, along with many hand-crafted custom models of real placesof interest such as sports stadiums, castles, bridges and many otherfamous landmarks of note. The guide provided is short and sweet and nicely laid out,providing an overview of the product along with information on theauthoring team, installation guidelines, compatibility information,and where to get help if required. One additional feature describedis the FTX Control Panel where a choice can be made between using thedefault road textures or having transparent ones. Personally, Iprefer the look of the default roads, and having the option to chooseis a nice feature and caters for personal tastes. If you are notfamiliar with the FTX Central Control panel (if you are a Windowsuser) you can use the panel to install and control the features ofyour chosen scenery as described in a little more detail later. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_3.jpgThe TrueEarth North package is currently retailing at 54.95 AUD orapproximately 40 USD which seems to be the standard package price forall scenery in this series, and when you take in to account the actualsize and level of detailed provided in the package, to me at least, anuplift in the selling price does not seem unreasonable. As with all Orbx sceneries you will need an account to be able topurchase their material, but this is a two-minute job to set up if youalready do not have one. If you already have an account, I am sure youwill know what to do, it is just so easy. Being a Windows user, I wasable to take advantage of their FTX Central installer to download andinstall the scenery which is a fabulous way to do things in myopinion, however, if you are using one of the other platforms such asLinux or MacOS, for now, you will have to manually download andinstall the scenery. To be honest, this shouldn't really be anydifferent to most other scenery packages out there, so not a majorshowstopper in my opinion. The download is quoted as being about20.81 GB, so be prepared for a bit of a wait, however I really believeyou won't be disappointed. While you wait, why not scroll through theadditional screen shots available at the Orbx home page just to getyou in the mood, you can then get a further feel of what it is you areabout see. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_4.jpgOnce done, you will end up with additional folders in your CustomScenery folder with everything you need in there. FTX Central willgive you access to the User Guide and a means of uninstalling thescenery if you so wish, however a copy of the 10-page User Guide canalso be found within the main scenery folder if you don't want to runthe tool every time. One thing to remember is that you may need tore-order your scenery.ini file depending on how you have it organisedto ensure the scenery shows up correctly. If you have any issues withscenery not appearing, this is always one of the first things to checkin my experience. Due to the size of the files and the limitations in my own storage,I ended up storing the TrueEarth files on an alternative hard driveand linking these to X-Plane using a shortcut in my main CustomScenery folder. I found this works very well and allows me tomaximise the usage of my various drives. There is a work around thatyou can also use which allows FTX Central to recognise the sceneryfiles on a second drive which means they are easy to update. I posted aquestion on their forum and received a very quick answer on how to dothis. Basically, you copy over a second X-Plane.exe file to the folderwhere you wish to store the scenery files, add a Custom Scenery Folderto put the files in, include a scenery_packs.ini file, then createfile shortcuts that you then add to your main Custom Sceneryfolder. Bob's yer uncle! It works... Next time you then run FTXCentral you will see both versions of X-Plane and you can then choosethe surrogate and update your scenery accordingly. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_5.jpgMy assessment of Great Britain North was using X-Plane 11.31 andX-Rotors AW-139 v4.0, my new BFF, by the way. My current systemconsists of an Intel i7 5820K 3.3 GHz CPU (overclocked to 4.0 GHz),GTX1080Ti 11 GB GPU and 32 GB of Kingston RAM at its core. My systemsettings are at the high end of the range with objects on max, HDR on,although shadows switched off. I also use SkymaxxPro and I manuallyselected the weather to be fine with clear skies, a smattering ofclouds and visibility of 20 miles or so. Throughout the series of testflights, frame rates were generally in the high 20's to mid-30's, andbasically my system was able to cope well with the scenery and thedetails provided. I had no big issues throughout. It is alwaysdifficult to really predict how sceneries will impact the myriad ofend user systems, so all I can say is that I didn't see anysignificant change in performance when using these sceneries. Theauthors do claim in their literature that they are designed tomaximise framerates as much as possible, always a bit subjective Iknow, but as I said no real issues in my system. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_6.jpgIn my tests I experimented with a few areas from all over Scotland,from the heavily populated Central Belt including Edinburgh andGlasgow, right up to the stunning and remote Shetland islands just soI could get a good feel for what was on offer. With such a vast areato cover it was not possible to explore every nook and cranny of thenorthern part of Great Britain, however I believe the areas coveredgive a pretty good indication of what to expect. Being totallyself-indulgent, I also spent an insane amount of time flying aroundthe North East of Scotland... well, how could I resist! Starting from Shetland and Scatsta airport on a nice sunny day, Ionce again realised just how beautiful a country the UK is, and it isonly from the air that you really can appreciate it. Having flown inreal life many times from the Shetland islands to various North Seaoil platforms, I was just blown away by the realism of the scenery. Iabsolutely loved the coast line details, the way the water merges withthe land and the fabulous beaches. Believe it or not, in Scotland wehave some fabulous sandy beaches, just the sea temperature doesn't getmuch above a few degrees even in summer... From the air looking down,this really feels like the real deal when you are looking out thewindow at the rugged and beautiful islands. The landscape details arejust fabulous. Even the Sulom Vow Oil terminal is marked with a fewlarge oil storage tanks and a flare just to make me feel at home. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_7.jpgFrom what I observed, most of the landmass is well represented,although there were a couple of occasions where there were steep dropsand the ground textures looked a bit odd and stretched, however thiswas only a couple of occasions and didn't really detract from theoverall experience. Flying south over the Orkney islands I headed toWick on the mainland, the journey was fabulous. I just don't haveenough superlatives to describe just how much I enjoyed seeing myhomeland in glorious technocolor and detail down below. Theplacement of the houses, along with the cars and vehicles driving onthe left side of the road, was just brilliant. As I mentioned earlier,I personally prefer the default road textures, however these can beremoved to display the transparent ortho version, just a personalchoice. I saw a few lighthouses and radio masts along the way and anever-growing number of windfarms all accurately placed on their realspots. There is something quite majestic about these machines whenobserved from the air. You can often see the shadows that the realunits cast on the ground, again adding to the realism. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_8.jpgSo, after arriving at Wick I headed off across country towards theHighlands and the scenery is just breathtaking. Deep remote forestsand dark and cold lochs scattered all around the country, and theyreally blend in well with the scenery. With the new particle effectsmaking the most out of the engine exhaust haze and the majesticScottish scenery below, it just doesn't get any better than this. The ominous silhouette of the mountains in the distance as Iapproached was like something out of Lord of the Rings, and when Iarrived, the detail in the ground texturing once again did notdisappoint, even to the point where there was some snow evident on afew of the mountain tops. I could almost smell the fresh air,particularly with all those wind farms twirling away down below. Ithink it is fair to say that Orbx have done a fabulous job inreplicating the rural parts of the north, and although I could havetoured around all day taking it all in, I decide to head south tocheck out the more populated urban parts of Scotland. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_9.jpgPart three of my journey started at Prestwick on the westcoast. After stopping off for 18 holes at Royal Troon's championshipgolf course, I flew north up to Glasgow, then east over to Edinburgh,north past Dundee and eventually landing in my home town of Aberdeen.Now the scenery changes quite dramatically from mountains and lochs,to cities and motorways and I loved every minute of it. Just beingable to spot numerous football and sports stadiums, many of them Ihave been to, gave me such a buzz, and this is the sort of detail thatdifferentiates the Orbx scenery from more DIY ortho scenery. Nowthere is absolutely nothing wrong with ortho scenery, and in fact Iuse this in many other places I fly, however the Orbx TE series justtakes everything up a notch in its realism. No clouds covering thepictures, cars on the left side of the road, and so many windfarms....didn't realise we had so many! The view from 5,000 feet or so is just fabulous, and when you turnoff the lights, then just wow! You can just imagine all the folksbelow tucked up in bed, there is something quite magical about flyingat night and the TE series doesn't disappoint from what I experienced.With lights turned back on, the metropolis that is the Central Beltwith Glasgow sprawled out below was superb; Ibrox, Parkhead and Hampdenfootball stadiums, not forgetting cranes along the Clyde, old gasworks storage tanks, the exhibition centre and loads of other localhistoric landmarks were all present. My frame rates did take a weebit of a hit when downtown, low to mid 20's but still flyable. Ishould mention that this area has always been a challenge for mysetup, even without the TE scenery, but as I said no majorstutters. Heading east, Edinburgh was next on the list, and again theurban sprawl below was superbly detailed as I followed the M8 motorwayto the capital. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_10.jpgAs I approached the ancient city of Edinburgh from the west, thethree Forth bridge crossings stand like sentinels across the water andprovide fabulous VFR landmarks, and as I progressed, I found variousother landmarks such as the Royal Yacht Britannia docked at the OceanTerminal in Leith, both Tynecastle and Easter Road football stadia,Murrayfield the home of Scottish rugby and not forgetting the historiccastle towering above Princess Street and the Royal Mile. The seat ofScottish power is also there in the shape of the Parliament Building,the Palace of Holyrood, the iconic Walter Scot monument, and loads,loads more. Heading west, I flew past the Falkirk wheel, which is afabulous piece of engineering if you have never seen it, then hung aright to take me into the Kingdom of Fife and then on to Dundee and upthe east coast to the Granite City of Aberdeen. Crossing the river Tay, the railway and road bridges are likeoutstretched arms welcoming you into Dundee, and where you will find afew local landmarks such as the RRS centre where Captain Scott'sAntarctic Ship can be found, and not forgetting Tannadice, the home ofDundee United and literally across the road, Dundee FC'sstadium. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_11.jpgFollowing the A90, I headed off north to Aberdeen a journeywhich by car takes about an hour, and is normally dull as dish water,however this time, it was quite the opposite. Being able to follow theroad I have driven on so many times in years gone by, gave me a realbuzz, and as I arrived at the outskirts of Aberdeen, the nostalgiacame flooding back. I passed the Shell fuel station where I used towash my car, the historic Bridge of Dee, the Winter Gardens greenhouses in the Duthie park, Pittodrie football stadium down at thebeach (freezing in winter), the resolute Marshall college, and notforgetting the iconic suspension bridge near Tory, the new sportsvillage off King Street, the exhibition centre at the Bridge of Don,the Golf Road tower blocks, Aberdeen Universities' new library, andfinally the historic King's College. Great for weddings by the way!For an Aberdeen lad like myself who is now living abroad, this wasjust like coming home, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. This for me is why the Orbx TE series is worth every penny; the factyou get so many famous landmarks that you can really relate to (notjust some jumbled up mass of generic objects). With the leaps andbounds that X-Plane has taken over the last few years, the sceneryreally comes alive and you can truly immerse yourself for hours at atime. I appreciate if you are at 30,000 feet then who really cares, butfor anyone flying VFR like myself, I can't speak highly enough of theexperience and just how much genuine pleasure I have received fromthis and the other TE sceneries. /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_12.jpgIn saying all of that, I believe it is also important to balancethings up a wee bit and point out a couple of small things that Ibelieve could be improved upon. I know I am just being picky, howeverI thought it worthwhile to share my observations nevertheless. Eventhe "best of the best" can always be improved. What I noticed wasthat on occasion, some of the roads were a bit "messy" when in theurban areas, and it was a bit tricky to work out what was going on attimes. I also found the occasional bridge to be a bit stranded inmid-air, and the most annoying issue was that there were trees inplaces where there shouldn't be from time to time, i.e. in the middleof roads. One other thing to be aware of is that the base mesh andoverlays must be slightly different to the default, as I found that inat least a couple of my own airport sceneries, they no longer alignedwith the roads and will have to be adjusted. Just something to beaware of. So, there you have it, my views, thoughts and observationsregarding the TrueEarth Great Britain North scenery from OrbxSimulation Systems. If you are a regular flyer in and around the British Isles, I wouldcertainly give this some serious consideration, as the overall effectand level of detail really is fabulous. A real game changer forX-Plane 11 in my opinion. I am not sure what else the Orbx team haveon their roadmap, however hopefully, this is just the start of manysimilar scenery packs for the rest of the globe, because I was trulyimpressed with the quality of their work. In saying that, I alsoappreciate that at 40 bucks a pop, you are looking at the guts of 120dollars to just cover the whole of Great Britain which may not be ineveryone's budget, however if you can stretch the money, and you havethe hardware to get the best out of it, I would go for it. For me atleast, I am now pretty much set for life, as being able to tour aboutmy island home in all its beauty from the comfort of my living room isall I need to keep me interested. I am also sure there will beupdates along the way adding new features, so it just doesn't getbetter than this! /images/reviews/trueeagb/t/Cessna_172SP_G1000_13.jpgOne thing I have realised through this experience, is that althoughthere is a big old world out there, with so many fascinating places tovisit and see, sometimes it is worth just having a closer look at whatis on your own door step, as it is often surprising what you willfind! Stuart McGregor Purchase Orbx - TrueEarth Great Britain North
