DesertPilot

Very glad CYBD is planned for MSFS, it was one of my favorite sceneries back in P3D. When I finally get back into flightsim after an extended break (due to life circumstances and also waiting for MSFS to become very stable), CYBD will be the very first airport I buy. And I look forward to Orbx releasing additional classics in MSFS!

Very Impressive indeed! Is the photo scenery recent enough to include the new Interstate 11 bypass around Boulder City, which opened in August 2018?

In MSFS 2020's January 16th update, they did announce an alpha SDK for 3rd party developers, and they indicated their eagerness to see what the 3rd party developers can create.

And, from MSFS2020's January 16th update at flightsimulator.com, they made an alpha SDK available to 3rd party development partners, for creating and editing airports, sceneries, etc, with this comment: "We can’t wait to see what our 3rd parties and Content Creators create based on the samples we’re providing!"

Wondering, wouldn't future updates to Chaseplane be delivered only through Orbx Central?

As it happened, Central got stuck again near the end of the Germany North region download. central.log Also, on several occasions, I ran into the "Cannot read manifest" error when clicking "Install" on products. The log contains data on those errors.

As I needed to download some products, I also had some (not all) installs getting stuck right near the end, with just 1-3 files left to install. I found (before reading this thread) that if I quit Orbx Central and then restarted Central, the stuck download/install would automatically restart and complete quickly (in a few seconds). I didn't delete the temporary folder (AppData\Local\Temp\Orbx). After reading this thread, I deleted that temporary folder after another stuck-near-the-end install. That forced the re-download of the entire product (which was successful), but I still had some subsequent downloads/installs (after the first one) getting stuck near the end. For those, I chose to just keep closing/restarting Orbx Central instead of deleting the temporary folder. As a sanity check, I ran the "Verify Files" for each affected product, the verifications were successful (hopefully!). I'm running v4.0.12. | Update: It appears the stuck-near-the-end installs primarily affected the larger products, such as openLC and some regions. The smaller airport downloads/installations completed without any hangs.

As I'm also buying the final products available with the 40% cross-platform discount, I also was curious about 2W3 and KBVS. I checked, and Aimee's announcement makes it clear that LOWI Innsbruck for X-Plane (released on August 7th) is the final product to be offered with the discount. 2W3 and KBVS for X-Plane were released after LOWI.

I look forward to testing how this works with my FranceVFR scenery combined with Orbx openLC Europe...I'm currently using the Autogen Configuration Merger freeware to merge the Orbx and FranceVFR autogen files together.

I just submitted my application...I'm about to do a complete reinstall of Prepar3D and I have been wanting to move the Orbx directories to another SSD, I look forward to that capability in the new Central! And yes, the new backup/restore too. Also, I'll be doing purchases of upcoming products soon, would plan to use the new Central for that.

So I got TEGB South for P3D (with my 40% discount, as I already own the XP version)...and was surprised to see P3D 4.4 taking a very long time to load and then running very slowly, with my 8700K CPU stuck at 100% and my 1080TI's 11GB of memory being fully utilized. I do have FTX Vector installed and active, not sure if that's a factor. I've decided to be patient and just wait for the upcoming Control Panel and P3D 4.5 (and perhaps deactivate FTX Vector), before I go back into this and figure out my optimal settings. In the meantime, I'm having fun exploring all three TEGB regions (and all the Orbx GB airports ported to XP so far) in X-Plane.

I believe the ORBX/Scripts directory contains the autogen description files that are deployed to the P3D Autogen directory by FTXCentral. Perhaps a similar approach could be used for the scenery\World\scenery, Sounds and effects files--have their installation files be available in that directory (or something like that). Ready to be quickly re-deployed into new P3D installs, if the self-contained ORBX directory approach is adopted.

I've been a registered user for years, but I wasn't even aware of those instructions (aside of reading about copying the ORBX directory over in some scattered posts)--simply way too many posts to read through (and I'm busy with life). I think it might be helpful if FTXCentral had a complete, automated backup/restore process that can be done with a few button clicks (and that is visible to users when opening FTXCentral). Granted, the backup/restore might require 400GB+ of available disk space for those users who own virtually all Orbx products. One technical workaround might be for the backup process to simply "move" the ORBX directory (and all other Orbx files in other directories) to a temporary directory on the same drive, before uninstalling/reinstalling Prepar3D/FSX. Edit: Rob's "P3D Add-On method" comment made me think, why not permanently move the ORBX directory outside of the Prepar3D/FSX directory? And add FTXCentral support to automatically "reconnect" the ORBX directory with the new Prepar3D/FSX installation, something like that.

Thanks Matthew, I'll be sure to use those directions in the future (especially the Orbx stuff that doesn't reside in the ORBX directory). Especially when one of the ways to disabling specific regions is as simple as deactivating those in the scenery.cfg file, I believe. Perhaps add "Deactivate" option to FTXCentral to accomplish this for selected sceneries (along with a corresponding "Activate" option for deactivated sceneries). Edit: I just reread carefully the previous posts, and I see Rob already made the deactivate/activate suggestion several posts ago.

Last week, I decided to do a fresh install of Prepar3D 4.4 from scratch (because I wanted to clear out some junk, including some old 3rd-party airports/sceneries I no longer use). But before reinstalling Orbx, I made sure to copy the "ORBX" directory from my backup of my previous Prepar3D 4.3 directory over to 4.4 (and then deleting the User Documents/Versions folder). That saved FTXCentral from downloading a few hundred GB of data. Aside of speeding up my Orbx reinstall, I wanted to help avoid unnecessary use of Orbx's download bandwidth. I wonder if FTXCentral could be enhanced to allow users to do a complete backup (and then restore) of all the installed Orbx stuff, to help with FSX/Prepar3D reinstalls? Edit: I composed this before seeing JV's response above...

Perhaps add Orbxdirect/FTXCentral support for the purchase/usage of additional download "blocks" (bandwidth) that can be used to cover the costs of downloading the additional TE seasons at LOD15? Beyond the first or two free downloads that would presumably be covered by the base price of the TE seasons products. As for me, I plan to buy just the LOD15 summer-only products, for the time being (until I can afford 4TB SSDs).

The release of Meigs Field for X-Plane 11 convinced me to finally purchase X-Plane 11 itself! Along with, of course, Orbx Meigs Field (that I also have for P3Dv4 and Aerofly FS2). And I must say, I am impressed with X-Plane's graphics, I enjoyed flying from Meigs Field over to O'Hare, with the beautiful, crisp buildings, vegetation, roads, traffic, etc. Each of those three flight simulators has its own unique attributes that I like, and I look forward to Orbx's upcoming products for all three simulators!

Yes, the lighthouse is roughly halfway between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz. Perhaps the Pigeon Point lighthouse could be added to the NCA region, if NCA is ever updated in the future.

Actually, that map is old, Orbx has since changed its plans. South America will be the next openLC product.

Aviation-related in a way...my own tinnitus in my left ear was caused by the failure of my ear to pop while doing a steep landing into the San Diego airport on an airline fight decades ago. I had bad allergies that apparently caused my left-ear eustachian tube to swell shut. Painful. Anyway, after getting to the ground, my left ear finally popped with a rather explosive sound, causing tinnitus that I've since fully adapted to over the years. Since then, I've always taken decongestants when flying. Heh, I normally don't even notice my tinnitus, but reading this topic has caused it to noticeably ring away! Time for me to go read other topics.

Oh wow, this is incredible!!! Due to current life pressures as well as my frustrations with pauses/stutters in P3Dv3 (even with a 980Ti), I took a break from flight simulation (including a break from buying the latest Orbx products). But AFS2 is perfect for "light" flying, and I may well start buying Orbx products again (for AFS2)!!!

It was those frustrating pauses/stutters in P3Dv3 that caused me to just put aside flight simulation at the start of this year (I'm also busy with life right now). I believe in my case, those pauses may be related to loading of complex scenery areas as I fly over certain areas (as I can consistently recreate those pauses). I'm keeping an eye on the latest developments and am especially interested in whether the upcoming 64-bit P3Dv4 will have further scenery loading optimizations that help ease those pauses, time will tell.

Some more details were posted on the IPACS forum today on the 10GB update. It mentions "an upcoming region release", hmm.... EDIT: I just saw the post by @alcliff mentioning pretty much the same thing.

Check out this recent post by John Venema...current estimate is within next 0-5 months for openLC South America.

A post by JV from last October....I believe there has not been an update since then: