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Matt McGee

Orbx Team
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Everything posted by Matt McGee

  1. Orbx Central will let you put your scenery on whatever drive, or drives, you want. I used to have P3D on my c: drive while my Orbx scenery was on my d: drive.
  2. Hi Badl4nds, I'm just on the Orbx beta testing team and don't have any info on Orbx's future plans, so I don't know if it is coming to XP12. I was just asking the OP to clarify which product so someone "in the know" might be able to answer the question.
  3. Which TrueEarth Great Britain are you waiting for? (North/Central/South, P3Dvx.x/XP11/XP12)
  4. Hello G.H., I don't speak for Orbx, I am just a beta tester, so these are just my personal observations. Historically, Orbx doesn't talk much about their future plans, no matter how much people ask or threaten to leave. Feel free to post your questions, because occasionally someone from the staff or a developer might chime in, but don't be surprised if you don't hear anything official about future plans. I can't really talk about what I can see from my position as a tester, but I think it is OK to say that I can only see a few P3D things currently being tested. It doesn't appear to me that Orbx has totally abandoned P3D, though I have. I used to test FSX and P3D scenery, but I don't even have them installed anymore. It seems pretty obvious that MSFS is the new darling of the consumer flight sim community. (No offense to X-Plane, which I also test Orbx scenery for, but market share doesn't lie.) Developers are going to create scenery that they think people will want to buy, and most people seem to be buying for MSFS 2020. With MSFS 2024 on the way, I would not be surprised if the small number of P3D products currently being released gets even smaller in the future. Again, this is all just my personal view.
  5. Seems to work fine for me and some other people who have replied too. The OP’s suggestion that “a single "on Special" tab would simplify my spending”, seems to directly conflict with your own complaint, “Some of the lists are long so I usually give up.” Given the number of products on sale, a list of all sale items would be correspondingly long, thus exceeding your attention span. The current format of first selecting a category of interest (ie. Europe) results in a shorter list of products that you can then sort for an even shorter list of products to look at. My guess is that most people have specific airports, counties, or developers that they are interested in. Not just “something on sale”. Just open the region where the interest is and sort the products by name, price, or developer. Whether I am looking for a specific airport, or just scanning the products in a particular country, OC and Orbx Direct seem pretty straightforward to me. Just my personal opinion. I would say that organizing products by theIr geographic region and making them sortable by name, price, and developer is both logical and intended to simplify customers finding what they are interested in. Orbx isn’t moving around products like a supermarket.
  6. So right! Out of curiosity, I opened Orbx Direct and scrolled through all the MSFS products at a speed where I could read the product names and also see the red sale prices. It took me 6 minutes and 55 seconds. There are currently a lot of products on sale, so a filter of only things on sale would still have a pretty long list. Within each region you can already sort by Name, New, Price, and Partner, so you can already get the lower sale priced products listed first. I'm not against the ability to generate complex searches of the product library. As the numbers of products grows, the time it takes to scan through the products will grow too. Being able to filter searches by tags such as: product type (Airport, Cityscape, Mesh), airport type (Grass, Paved, GA, Regional, International), developer, country, best selling, or other tags, would be nice. However, I don't currently find it unduly difficult to just scan through the current products. A "benefit" of scrolling through the whole list is that I sometimes stumble upon products that I would not have thought to search for. Everybody is different, but I am more likely to get a product that I have a personal interest in, than I am to buy something just because it is on sale. Happy holidays!
  7. What did you do that the universe is punishing you Don? (Trying to be humorous!) Sorry, I know how frustrating it is when stuff doesn't work, especially when it is working OK for others. For what it is worth, I'm not seeing the issues that you are after the latest MSFS 2020 update. The default toolbar at the top of the screen works and so does the pop-up round one for Flow Pro. NZA Simulations' NZMF looks really good on my PC. (Once I uninstalled the conflicting Asobo version included in World Update XII.) Sorry I don't know what is going on with your sim, but take heart that it can work. It just might take a bunch of troubleshooting and perhaps re-installing. Like Graeme, I am also puzzled about your "default 737". I have the Premium Deluxe version of MSFS and don't have a 737.
  8. Many products get released without ever having a preview post in the Preview Announcements forum. Just because you don't see a preview post, doesn't mean Orbx isn't developing anything. I am aware of several Orbx products in development and I suspect there are more. There are also several updates being tested.
  9. Great minds think alike Rob! I am currently taking screenshots too! Just finished the fourth one. Will post when finished. Edit: Here are screenshots of each location, in order from the OP.
  10. The User Guide tab on Orbx Central's NZMF page also has the instructions for disabling the World Update XII versions of Milford Sound, Martins Bay, and Quintin Lodge.
  11. I really like the KBOI airport, but that does seem a bit expensive! I'm sure @Nick Cooper or one of the other Orbx staff can help you with this issue. Just FYI: Since I am a beta tester, I don't see prices when I am logged into OC. If I go to Orbx Direct without being logged in, I see a price of 25.85 AUD for KBOI.
  12. Honestly, the time between seeing a product's initial beta and its release can vary by quite a bit. I've seen some betas with virtually nothing wrong with them. Testing went quickly and they were released in a mater of days. I've also seen betas that were in earlier stages of development. We'd test what was there, knowing that other elements and features were still being worked on. We would look at subsequent builds until all the elements had been added. These can take weeks or even months to progress from beta to release. Here are some of the things that can affect the speed at which a scenery goes from beta to release: - Size of the scenery. It is a lot faster to test a small airport like W16 First Air, than a large one like YMML Melbourne. - How quickly the testers get their testing done and reports in. And how many of us are available to test each day. - How many issues the testers find. Sometimes there is virtually nothing wrong. Other times, there might be a bunch of issues. - The time it takes to fix each issue. Some things are easy to fix, other times there may be some weird bug that is hard to fix. - The amount of time per day the developer (or developers) can devote to fixing any issues the testers have identified. Out of curiosity I took a look at the timeline for EU Great Britain - North. I helped test Beta 1 and then two subsequent release candidates. It took 33 days from seeing the Beta 1 until it was released on Orbx Central. I am not trying to hint at anything, just showing an example of how long something covering as much area and with as many points of interest as Great Britain - North took to test and release. A similar product might take less time, or it might take more. I really does vary from scenery to scenery.
  13. I have been an Orbx customer and regularly on the forums for over a decade. In my opinion, Orbx has always been pretty tight lipped about what was being worked on. It isn't anything new. There have been some road maps released in the past, but also complaining from users when something was delayed or cancelled. Perhaps that has affected their sharing of information? I have no inside knowledge of Orbx's customer engagement strategies. The Preview Announcements forum does have plans and progress from some developers who choose to reveal what they are working on, but I don't fault devs who are focused on production more than engagement. Personally, I am more interested in the quality of the scenery actually being released than I am in projected plans. I assume development strategies are complex. Like what happens when a developer is considering, or already working on, an airport and hears a competitor is developing the same one. Does he or she skip or stop development, or do they race to be first to market? Not a clue about EGLC v2 decisions. I do know that Orbx has many independent developers who choose that they want to work on based on their own desires or interests. Regarding your original question about EU Great Britain - South for MSFS, I am unable to comment on any scenery which I might be beta testing.
  14. I agree. If a product has been announced, but then cancelled, I think that customers should be informed. I also think that if a product has been announced with a particular release date and is then delayed, some sort of update is warranted. But these are exactly the sort of issues that are completely avoided by not announcing product plans. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind hearing what developers are working on. Screenshots and progress reports are great, if a developer wants to provide them. However, in my opinion, this opens a potential can of worms for the developer. If products are not advertised until they are about to be released, customers won't have built up any expectations or feelings of entitlement, and therefore won't be disappointed by a delay or cancellation. There is also no demand for progress updates. I respectfully disagree with your view that there is "no harm" in communicating that a previously announced project is cancelled. Again, if it was announced, I think people should be informed of cancellations. But even if promptly informed, I expect that many will still have some negative feelings toward the developer or Orbx for failing to deliver on a product they were excited about. I also think you are underestimating some people's feelings of entitlement. How hard is a quarterly update? Why not monthly? Weekly? It isn't that hard to post an update at the end of each day, it only takes a few minutes, right? There are comments in this very thread from people who seem to feel they are entitled to Orbx's plans and updates, even though Orbx has a pretty well established history of not talking much about future developments or providing progress reports. I agree that announcing future developments may potentially generate excitement about a product, though I have no idea if that actually affects sales in the end. For instance, - I would be excited to hear KNUW was being developed. - I would be disappointed to hear it was delayed (or cancelled). Being delayed would also cause a desire for ongoing progress updates. - Excitement (impatience?) while waiting for release. - If it was just released without warning, I would just be excited. - Whether I had been waiting or just found out, I would buy it when it was released. So is "excited - disappointed - it's about time - purchase" a better customer experience than "excited - purchase"? Are actual sales affected either way? A potential positive for advertising a product in development is that if I knew Orbx was developing an airport and a competitor released a version first, I might wait for the Orbx version. I'm not sure I see much else which is entirely positive about advertising development or releasing road maps. Again, just my opinion.
  15. I don't speak for Orbx, I just beta test, so this is just my personal view. I can think of several reasons that a company, or individual developer, may not talk much about what they are working on. - Once a project is announced, a competing developer may try to beat them to a release of the same scenery. - Some people will continually ask for progress updates. Responding takes time away from developing. - Some people will complain when something is taking longer than initially projected, as if an estimated date was some sort of promise to them. - If a project is dropped for some reason (technical issues, developer's personal life, change in financial viability....), some people will complain as if they had some right to that product being developed. Again, just my thoughts on some of the cons of a public road map or advertising products in development. I understand that people get excited to hear that a particular scenery of interest to them is in development. However, wouldn't they be just as excited (or even more) to just hear that the product was about to be released? Personally, I think that waiting until a product is almost ready for release before announcing it has fewer cons.
  16. For me, Top Gun Maverick was just like Top Gun. (Seriously, make a list of plot points or scenes and compare how many are repeated!) If you liked the first one, I would think you would enjoy the second. If you didn't like Top Gun, you shouldn't be surprised if you don't like Maverick. If you never saw Top Gun, the Maverick trailers are pretty clear on what you are going to see. As for getting half way through the movie and giving up, I don't get it. (Unless you hated the original.) At what point is the movie not just like the original or the trailers? There is a lot of very "Top Gun" flying action in the latter part of the movie.
  17. Carlos, I think Rafal is asking about a way for OC to not display "Santa Run 2022" and the gray (uninstalled) circle on his OC products page. I don't think he is seeing it in the sim. My understanding was that he just doesn't want an entry for it on his product list.
  18. Hi Rafal, I don't know if there is a way for OC to remove or hide a product that you own from your products list. Orbx obviously needs to keep a permanent list of products that each customer has purchased. My guess is that Orbx Central is linked to that list, or part of the same software, and perhaps nobody thought to include a "hide" function in the coding. I'm just a volunteer beta tester and happened to be browsing the General Discussion forum this morning. Unfortunately I don't know the technicalities of how OC works! Submitting a trouble ticket will get you an official answer from Orbx staff who are more knowledgeable than me! Do remember that this post is in the "General Discussion" forum (not a support forum). I don't know how often Orbx staff is screening posts here. The Community Help Forums are there if you are just looking for help from the community, but answers may not be any faster. I see staff reply with answers there, but again, I don't know how often they are being screened. (I assume staff priority is given to answering trouble tickets before scanning the other forums.) If you want a timely and official answer to a support question, an official trouble ticket is the way to go. Orbx is paying knowledgeable people to help you! Just posting in the forums is relying on some well meaning, but random, person like me to happen to open your post and take the time to try to answer your question. (With no guarantee that the answer will be correct, even if the person means well!) Again, just the perspective of a volunteer beta tester.
  19. Rob gave a huge hint with "here's one in Washington." I used to drive on the road at the bottom of the image to get to my parent's house and have flown to the airport a lot in the sim. I won't spoil the fun for everybody else though!
  20. Pretty sure the photo is of the control tower at CYLW, Kelowna, B.C.
  21. I don't think I have any photos at Monroe. My parents used to live in a neighborhood just up the hill and I drove right by it all the time. An instance of taking for granted the things you see regularly! You probably gave the C172 pilot a story to tell their friends!
  22. You got it Rob! Edit: If nobody had gotten it by this morning, I was going to add this second photo of McCall. Edit 2: The main reason I stopped in McCall that day was to see if I could get a couple detail photos of the Air Tanker information signs in the little park next to the fence. I didn't have snow shoes that day and decided to give it a go when there is less snow!
  23. I don't want to give too many specific hints, but it is in North America. The Orbx airport scenery also contains most of the things visible in the photo, apart from the huge snow pile!
  24. Looks like we need a new photo. Here is a photo I took a few months ago. I'll post a slightly more obvious photo if nobody gets this one. Hint: It is not in Australia!
  25. Courcheval has a paved runway, so it isn't there. The vegetation gives a hint that it is in a warmer climate. If it is where I think it is, it is not currently a MSFS airport, so think P3D.
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