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Review: Orbx - EU Germany SouthBy Nigel Porter /images/reviews/orbxgeso/t/2017-10-5_13-26-10-267.jpgI have always been a fan of the Orbxairports; my collection started off with just about all the Australianones - I particularly liked Melbourne and Brisbane, but the smallerones were also very atmospheric. I was quite saddened by theirannouncement a few years ago to not continue with the larger airports,but realised that they had been pushing the limits of FSX and itsmemory issues for too long. Nonetheless, I followed them into thePNW, but as atmospheric as their small airports were, I was missingflying the big stuff. At this point I chose to re-evaluate what I wanted from mysimulator; the costs were getting ever higher, and, being a retiredpilot, I was looking for a simulation that was as real as possible.This new direction immediately made me look at the general scenery ofOrbx outside the airports, and I was not impressed - roads startingand ending in the middle of nowhere for one thing. So I jumped campand went into photo-scenery, and removed most of my Orbx collection.It has always been a mystery to me why Orbx chose to do the scenerythe way they do, rather than use photo-scenery as a base, but that isbest addressed to them directly. /images/reviews/orbxgeso/t/2017-10-5_13-28-46-203.jpgA couple of years went by, and during that time, I had decided toconcentrate on Europe for my flying, and although Orbx made someexcellent airfields within the UK, their main scenery of the UnitedKingdom portrayed the same faults that I had seen elsewhere, and in myopinion, detracted from the immersion of the experience. My head was turned however, when I saw the recent release photos ofInnsbruck. Here at least, there appeared to be a change of direction- Orbx, like before, was pushing the boundaries with a closer tie (ormix) of photo-scenery, and this appeared to be confirmed with therelease of Bilbao. So it was with a great deal of anticipation that Iawaited the release of Germany South, as it was a region that I didnot have in my photo-scenery collection. InstallationI downloaded the zip file of Germany South from the Orbx site, butcould not figure out how to install it, so was forced into installingtheir FTX Central to install the scenery. Personally I am not a hugefan of this system because, should Orbx close for whatever reason inthe future, products that have been purchased will no longer beavailable. However, upon installing FTX Central, the installationworked well, and even quite rapidly. It also recognised the fact thatI had both FSX and P3Dv4 on the same drive and offered to install itinto either product, or both. /images/reviews/orbxgeso/t/2017-10-5_16-8-58-354.jpgFirst ImpressionsI started the simulator with all other products un-ticked in orderto monitor what effect the scenery had on my PC. The first thing Inoticed was that the scenery was popping into view as I passed overit, not a mile or two in front as is the norm. Frame rates also werenot very good, and depending on where you were, they could vary from50 FPS (frames per second) to 11 FPS. It wasn't long before I heard thegraphics card warning sound and the inevitable CTD (crash to desktop).I therefore reduced the autogen and LOD radius; however, two CTD'slater, I decided to install GES on another hard drive, which also hadFSX Gold installed to see if it would be any different. This second installation also went according to the book, andbefore long I was flying in the same regions between Stuttgart andMunich. This time though, for whatever reason, the FPS were morestable at around 35-45 FPS, and the scenery was popping into view at arespectable distance, unless one happened to be flying at 250 knotsand above. There was not a single CTD, and VAS was generally ataround 2.5 GB, so clearly there had been a problem with theinstallation on the previous hard drive. /images/reviews/orbxgeso/t/2017-10-6_9-47-23-388.jpgSecond ImpressionSo now I could finally analyse the scenery. Orbx have certainlymade some progress with their roads, especially between and withinvillages, but in bigger towns you still get roads crossing throughhouses and other roads. However, it appears that they (ORBX) have intheir library a couple of "models" of urbanism, plus a couple ofindustrial areas, and these get cut out willy-nilly as if withscissors, and then stuck into place to represent villages, etc.,without it seems, any great care to their surroundings. Buildingsoverlap roads and/or lakes, and the roof colors are incorrect for thedifferent regions, which was disappointing. I really feel moreattention could have been made here. On the other hand, the forests, mountains and fields are far betterportrayed, and give a better overall impression of the area; completewith seasonal variations. However, it is clear that it would benearly impossible to use this scenery for VFR flying, as the villagesbear no resemblance to their real-life counterparts. Motorways, powerlines and railways do to some degree help a bit, but if the town youare looking for has none of these nearby, you stand little chance offinding it. In saying that, for IFR flying, or flying large aircraftabove 5 or 10 thousand feet, GES works well - one gets a general ideaof the lay of the land and its character and colors combine well withthe TAXI2GATE Munich and the Aerosoft Stuttgart add-onsceneries. Using airports in conjunction with Germany South, causedFPS to suffer - I was down to the low 20's until some distance awayfrom them (FSX remained reasonably smooth however). /images/reviews/orbxgeso/t/2017-10-7_17-22-17-297.jpgI had to stop and analyse this product for quite some time, as itisn't cheap at 54.95AUD (roughly $41.50 US or £32 Sterling), anddouble that if you plan on purchasing the whole of Germany. What didI expect for my money? Clearly it would take many man hours to createeach region because of their size. However, I do feel more care couldhave been exercised with the shape and placing of towns, villages, etc.For example, warehouses on industrial areas (when situated next tofields), were cut in half, which was really disappointing. Surely itwould not have taken that much effort to cut around the buildingsbefore sticking them into place. Funnily enough, although forests aredone in the same way, they did not distract as much. During testing I came across one village where about 50% of thehouses were floating about 500 feet above the rest of the houses inthe village, but I just put that down to a bug not seen by the betatesters. /images/reviews/orbxgeso/t/2017-10-7_17-30-9-643.jpgSo, where does Germany South fit into the big scheme of things? Ifyou want scenery to fly over that gives a general impression of acountry without great attention to detail, then it works well. Whilst Germany South shows a slight improvement over some earliersceneries, it is (in the opinion of this reviewer), only a slightimprovement over the stock scenery supplied with FSX. If you wish formore accurate scenery (with less VAS problems), albeit with far lessautogen, then there are several suppliers of both payware/freewarephoto-scenery for the whole of Europe on the internet. ConclusionOrbx has always found a way of pushing the frontiers of what ispossible in FSX/P3D, and in doing so have produced some classicsceneries. They did for some time, stop making large airports whichwas a shame, but they now seem to have overcome the obstacles thatprevented them in the past, and this has resulted in some verycredible recent releases. /images/reviews/orbxgeso/t/2017-10-7_19-18-15-99.jpgGoing back to Germany South; I have to say I am disappointed withthis product. Having seen the inroads Orbx have made in regards totheir more recent sceneries, I had expected this to mirror (to somedegree), these advances, especially after having seen the amazingpre-release photographs of the up and coming Netherlands with TrueEarth. Sadly though, this only makes this scenery add-on look like arelic from the past. Nigel Porter Purchase Orbx - EU Germany South Reviewer Michael Hayward had quite a different impression of Orbx - GermanyNorth; read that reviewhere /images/notams/notams17/orbx1002/top-header.jpg