andy1252

Don't hold your breath. Orbx has become the least communicative company in this whole environment. I no longer expect to hear anything about their products or plans from them. And I no longer bother with this forum - but saw a post elsewhere that Orbx was apparently down so I just popped over to see what had happened, spotted this post, and thought I'd check in the unlikely event of anybody from Orbx having responded. Used to be great, now just a great shame.

I used to spend all my forum/online type time here until a couple of years back. I pop in occasionally now just in case there's anything of interest for me but mostly to use the PM system to communicate with one other person. For me, two things happened, around the same sort of time. Firstly, Orbx itself changed. I don't find much to interest me in their own products anymore. I bought pretty much everything there was for P3D and XP up until MSFS came out, and it was always absolutely top class. I no longer feel that to be the case. And for me, Orbx has just become another SimMarket or similar. And I felt that any even mild criticism or suggestion about any of the products or processes being implemented in the new Orbx world were not welcome on the forums. Oh, and Nick and Iain, if you read this I'm definitely not talking about you two guys here. You're both models of diplomacy and discretion. Secondly, the forums started to feel a bit too banal. I found little of real interest being posted and instead it was becoming an endless stream of "Happy Birthday xxxx" stuff. So now I live mostly on avsim. Yes, it's got its fair share (and then some) of opionated so-and-so's but there is a lot of useful discussion and info as well. They have a rather over anxious attitude to language sometimes ("offensive initials not allowed" made me laugh) but generally the mods keep things calm without getting too officious (although, like all forum software, a "dislike" button would be a useful way of perhaps discouraging some of the folk). I happened to pop in today to see if there was anything in the announcements, and saw this. But I doubt I'll be back to read any response (if given) for another month or two. Avsim can be a bit of a bear pit, but it's easy enough to just ignore folk (as in "just ignore him" rather than the "ignore" button - even an annoying git can still have occasional moments of lucidity) To those of you who have stayed - enjoy!

#6 there is pretty much a perfect shot, Filou. Truely wonderful

I don't wait for stuff to appear via Orbx these days. I'll buy direct if possible, or more often than not SImMarket. I'm afraid I don't feel any loyalty to Orbx these days and I don't feel like Central is a big enough convenience to make me want to use a "one stop shop" approach. I can keep track of things ok.

Didn't know about this until a couple of weeks before it came out. Got all excited. Bought it straight away and downloaded it with all the available DLC. Removed it and got a refund after about 20 minutes of use. Personally, can't see any benefit, or even any difference, over FS2. Some have said it's better with VR but for me a pointless exercise. More than happy to keep on occasionally using FS2, but not impressed with FS4. At least Steam are instant and unquestioning about refunds, as long as you haven't used the software for more than a couple of hours.

Hi Landon, just happened to be passing through here and saw this. I suspect these reports are much more to do with the LOD/main thread issues that some of us have been having since SU9 than anything to do with the 737 itself. (and I don't really do tubes, and definitely not ones I have to actually learn how to fly, but I'm actually quite tempted by this. It does look so purrrty!)

I don't visit here much these days, but I have to say - if I wore a hat, I'd take it off to you Filou. These are magnificent shots, and really show the time and care you put into this. Thank you.

For me, the airport itself is splendid, but the other various buildings around the island are really not up to par. There are two issues really. The first, I'm happy to admit, is a bit subjective. All the new buildings are far too clean and look like they are some sort of marzipan sweetie. Not a single roof has any weathering, and all the buildings look ridiculously new. In @Britjet's examples above, for me the default buildings are an order of magnitude better than those supplied in this addon. The second issue unfortunately amplifies the first. These new buildings are all to the wrong scale - they're way too big. Which just makes their shiny bright presence way too obvious. If you look at this first shot below, you can see the height of the trees at the edges of the car park - And now look at the hight of the trees in front of this building, they barely reach the top of the ground floor - And here's the nearest set of buildings I could find next to the actual airport buildings I realise these houses are up an embankment from the airport buildings, but even so they are about the same height as them. Is there any way to easily exclude all these buildings on loading, maybe a couple of individual files that can be set 'building model.OFF' or similar? These buildings take the shine right off what is otherwise a pretty amazing bit of scenery. I've just upgraded to a 55 inch HDR monitor (not TV) and the environment here is just breathtaking (doesn't show up in the screenshots due to the problems grabbing HDR screenshots), but these buildings totally spoil it for me. They don't belong in MSFS.

Thanks for the reply, Nick. Shame the appropriate developers can't be bothered to check this forum but nothing surprises me any more. I will try creating fake entries (symlinks or similar) in the Orbx library folders for those products I already own via the original vendors. I hate looking at Central and trying to remember if the very few I don't have flagged as owned are genuinely stuff I don't own or just stuff I decided I don't want - a rare but occasional thing. I'm perfectly fine about getting my updates from the original vendors, I just wanted a more accurate list of what I own.

So, two months later and no glimmer of a response from Orbx. Not even an acknowledgement. I wasn't expecting Orbx to jump to implement such a request, but an acknowledgement would strike me as a reasonable minimum response, not to mention being somewhat more polite than just ignoring me. I can understand not replying to every little post in the general forums, but this is supposed to be a support forum, and so I assume is monitored. If such a request, which I thought was reasonable and politely made, was seen but no response made - then that is simply impolite. If it was never even seen, what is the point of a support forum? I'm not looking to create trouble here, or have a "throw my toys out of the pram" moment, but this sort of thing is pretty much what I meant in my comments about the way Orbx is perceived by some to have lost the plot a bit. Just on the slight chance that anybody on staff bothers to read this, I would still like my original request to at least be considered. If it doesn't happen, fine. But a bit of courtesy to a fairly serious customer wouldn't go amiss either.

Like a few others here, I'm another oldie who has bought a lot of Orbx stuff over the last few years. Up until a couple of years ago I probably had every single product for both P3D and XP, and I was another one of those who thought that Orbx could do no wrong with its scenery. But I am also amongst those who feel that Orbx is losing the plot these days. Ever since the partner program got into its stride, I've felt (and posted a couple of times to say so) that the focus has been far more on corporate growth and identity at the expense of core quality. I still buy a lot, but not quite all, of Orbx products, and a lot of the partner products. And I am a big buyer of scenery for MSFS generally (I have somewhere approaching 1800 folders in my addons linker folders, admittedly that also includes liveries but still the majority of that is scenery), and I don't fly P3D at all now, and XP maybe two or three times this past year. But Orbx is now middling at best in terms of quality, in my opinion. And it's not just the "throwback Thursday" stuff. I've thought that several of the cityscape products have looked a bit plasticky and unreal, and it's rare for me now to get that real "wow" from an Orbx product. Plus, as a couple of folk have mentioned, MSFS provides such good basic scenery that the urge to buy yet more of the same-old-same-old airports is beginning to recede, even for a committed scenery junkie like me. Most of my interest nowadays is in areas outside Orbx's traditional areas. I am far more interested in exploring those parts of the world that have effectively been denied to us in the past in the previous sims - places like Africa, Asia, middle Europe etc. Having said that, there are plenty of Orbx airports that I would love to see properly ported across or redone for MSFS, places like KPSP, Bowerman, most of the OZ and NZ airports etc. The fact that they existed and were pretty good in P3D has possibly stopped other developers going ahead to produce their own, as they might reasonably have assumed that Orbx would swing in with an impressive version at some point, but I suspect that won't hold true for much longer. Truth is, there is freeware out there for MSFS that makes some of the Orbx MSFS stuff look poor. So like a lot of other folk, I suspect, I haven't totally given up on Orbx, but I don't see it as anything special these days. Which is a shame, but that's life. I support the concept of brand loyalty, but only up to a point. For myself, I feel that Orbx has squandered a lot of the goodwill that it has built up over the years with a combination of mediocre releases, and what I consider to be a very defensive attitude in the forums. I no longer bother to come here generally - I pop in occasionally to pick up messages and I just happened to see this thread today on one of those occasions. It may well be that Orbx will regain its position of eminence in the scenery business, and I would be well pleased if it did - but I'm not holding my breath. I'll keep checking on Central to see what's new, but I will also keep buying partner products from other sources if I already have a setup with them, and I'm sure I'll keep on buying Orbx stuff, but in some cases it's getting to be more in hope than expectation, as the saying goes.

Would it be possible to add a feature to Orbx Central to allow a user to either hide individual products or mark them as already owned or similar? There are some products I have already bought from the original vendor or other sources and being able to hide them makes it easier to see which actual products I don't have and may want to buy.

Pretty stunning stuff there Pete

Well, I'm not personally convinced this is completely true. There is really no need for the level of detail provided in the basic sim if they only ever planned it to be a pure flight simulator. It is really a world simulator, and currently we just fly in it. I would not be surprised to see other aspects (trains/ships/boats) being catered for in the sim in future, in a much more integrated fashion than the currently available addons. If you are flying around in this sim in something like the spendid H135, then building detail is a primary part of the experience. I may be a bit more extreme than most folk in my preference for scenery and low'n'slow flying (as far as I'm concerned you could remove all the big tin from the sim and I probably wouldn't notice), but I suspect there are a very large number of folks who use this sim in a very similar way - way more than in the other sims. Plus, I've just been looking at the announcement shots for Shoreham and Elstree and they do have nicely weathered and decayed textures to some of the buildings, so the techniques are obviously available. Like I've said before, I'll keep on buying the stuff - this is not me having a hissy fit - but I will always be pushing for what I know you folks are capable of, and I don't feel Orbx is always achieving that with the city packs.

Don't come here much these days but popped in to check announcements. Same comment for this as for the Shoreham airport - truly wonderful work on these textures - the real world is a grubby old place and these two airfields have got this handled really well.