openLC USA has major vector data improvements

[John Venema]

Hello all,

 

Just ahead of the beta testing commencing I just wanted to show the significant vector data that has been added to openLC USA, particularly on the eastern side of the USA.

 

Before:

 

 

After:

 

 

This data was used to improve the layout of cities and towns, placement of golf courses, railway yards and other features so they are correctly bounded and look more cohesive.

 

Whilst this is not a replacement for FTX Vector by any means, it does enhance the way our custom landclass is represented.

[Bermuda425]

Wonderful job to get us in the mood for exploring!

[Vora]

So we are talking about vector-based LC for special urban LCs (like UTX does?)

[John Venema]

OpenLC already contains vector LC but this in a further enhancement to take it to the next level, yes.

[pmb]

Will this help to mitigate roads wildly cutting through residential areas, which still is my main issue with OpenLC EU? Can we, as a result, hope for better structured large cities? That would be a great improvement.

 

Thanks and kind regards, Michael

[Dadtom65]

Hi Michael. Is that the grey roads that cut through houses and the like and ruin the scenery. Yes I hate them as well, was thinking of saying some thing about them a while back, but I am not up on scenery design so thought better not to. Derek.

[pmb]

Yep. According to the map, I see vector data integrated into the Metropolitan areas, which would give me some hope in this respect.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[KORDATC]

Haven't been this excited for a product since FTX Norway!

[John Venema]

Will this help to mitigate roads wildly cutting through residential areas, which still is my main issue with OpenLC EU? Can we, as a result, hope for better structured large cities? That would be a great improvement.

 

Thanks and kind regards, Michael

Roads cutting through images of buildings is never going to be solved when using landclass + vector based scenery, that just the nature of how FSX/P3D works.

If the road system in every city and town in the world was a North oriented grid (i.e Melbourne Australia) then the problem could be greatly diminished but sadly that's not the case.

[Turboarrow4]

It feels like the next time bandit is coming up... Great to see, JV, how you and your team put the virtual world more and more closer to reality. I really enjoy every single minute overflying your sceneries. 

[B77X]

Can't wait! Get in ma belly flightsim!

[Augustin Winther]

Wooaw! That's amazing!

[fabs79]

4 hours ago, John Venema said:

Roads cutting through images of buildings is never going to be solved when using landclass + vector based scenery, that just the nature of how FSX/P3D works.

If the road system in every city and town in the world was a North oriented grid (i.e Melbourne Australia) then the problem could be greatly diminished but sadly that's not the case.

Funny, I always thought that Melbourne was the best looking city in all the FTX regions, and wondered why ORBX made large cities look worse in subsequent releases. It never occurred to me that it had to do with how Melbourns streets were aligned.

[Deacon Blue]

I can't wait! Thank you John & Orbx!

[Orbxtreme]

Very nice news, anything that helps improve the eastern coast of Canada and USA will always be welcome. Great work!

[JPL19]

Will the western areas have this same level of data available as well?   Thinking Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado etc.

[cabnz]

Thank you John. I'm also looking forward to this one

[neucoas]

John, wow!! One question: will OpenLC USA cover the areas of the FTX Regions for the ones who don't own them all? Obviously not at the same level of detail

Sent from my XT1034 using Tapatalk

[John Venema]

Yes OLC will cover all of the USA but clearly our focus and effort has been spent on areas where we have no FTX regions, which is the logical thing to do since we encourage everyone to get the regions - they offer a much, much better overall fidelity versus the Global triple-layer-cake due to their handcrafted nature.

[caaront]

John, I could not tell on the map, are Northern and Central Texas quite detailed also?

 

Thank you.

[Larry Hickerson]

Now this is what we have been really needing in NA.  Most excellent.

 

Just one Question,  John Venema !  Will this mean the day of the Regions are done in NA and we can expect more GLOBAL AIRPORTS and SCENERY packages to include  enhancements to scenery areas like the Colorado Rockies?

 

Regards,

 

Larry aka Pappy @ EagleValleyAir

[Greggy_D]

I take it OpenLC USA will need to be above FTX Vector in the Scenery Library?

[Gypsy Pilot]

8 hours ago, John Venema said:

Yes OLC will cover all of the USA but clearly our focus and effort has been spent on areas where we have no FTX regions, which is the logical thing to do since we encourage everyone to get the regions - they offer a much, much better overall fidelity versus the Global triple-layer-cake due to their handcrafted nature.

 

 

I hope that this means that you are planning to some day include the American Southwest as regions to fill in that huge void in the map.  

Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern Idaho contain some of the most interesting and beautiful scenery in the US.  Each zone contains it's own vegetation type.  Not all deserts are the same.  It would be great if one could tell if they were flying over the Joshua Tree Desert, the Sonoran Desert, or the ubiquitist Greasewood areas around them.   

[John Venema]

19 hours ago, Greggy_D said:

I take it OpenLC USA will need to be above FTX Vector in the Scenery Library?

 

Yes it does, and you'll need Vector installed to see the total solution since openLC USA enhances Vector and relies on it for the location of roads and motorways etc.

[John Venema]

19 hours ago, EGE001 said:

Now this is what we have been really needing in NA.  Most excellent.

 

Just one Question,  John Venema !  Will this mean the day of the Regions are done in NA and we can expect more GLOBAL AIRPORTS and SCENERY packages to include  enhancements to scenery areas like the Colorado Rockies?

 

Regards,

 

Larry aka Pappy @ EagleValleyAir

 

No, we are planning more regions in NA but as you can see using the FTX Global triple layer of products achieves quite a tremendous result until dedicated regions are crafted.

 

You can see the growing number of FTX Global airports on the FTX website which indicate that we're very much adding region-independent ones.

[John Venema]

20 hours ago, caaront said:

John, I could not tell on the map, are Northern and Central Texas quite detailed also?

 

Thank you.

 

Yes but they use FTX Vector for their detailed information which is already quite good quality data. We've enhanced details mainly in the areas where good data was lacking.

[caaront]

Thank you

[TBurd01]

On 4/19/2016 at 10:46 AM, Gypsy Pilot said:

 

I hope that this means that you are planning to some day include the American Southwest as regions to fill in that huge void in the map.  

Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern Idaho contain some of the most interesting and beautiful scenery in the US.  Each zone contains it's own vegetation type.  Not all deserts are the same.  It would be great if one could tell if they were flying over the Joshua Tree Desert, the Sonoran Desert, or the ubiquitist Greasewood areas around them.   

Pretty much all of Idaho is covered already, perhaps you mean Wyoming? Don't forget Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.

 

Utah could probably be it's own region by itself. Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Zion, Arches, Capitol Reef, Moab as detailed as Monument Valley would be simply amazing. If that level of detail could be achieved, then it would be a pretty penny I'd pay for in a heartbeat.

[Gypsy Pilot]

9 hours ago, TBurd01 said:

Pretty much all of Idaho is covered already, perhaps you mean Wyoming? Don't forget Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.

 

Utah could probably be it's own region by itself. Bryce Canyon, Cedar Breaks, Zion, Arches, Capitol Reef, Moab as detailed as Monument Valley would be simply amazing. If that level of detail could be achieved, then it would be a pretty penny I'd pay for in a heartbeat.

 

AMEN!!

I meant Utah.  I would love to try to fly the Green River at 100ft AGL in my Drifter,  I bet the Goosenecks would be a real challenge.

 

Dale

 

[TBurd01]

It would be some epic flying indeed.

[FalconAF]

With this announcement from JV, the release of OLC/USA will be what finally makes me reinstall Vector and uninstall my UTX/USA.  Finally, I will have an all ORBX all USA coverage area.  Really looking forward to that.  Thanks, JV.

 

 

[walterg74]

Is the comparison against default, or global vector?

[John Venema]

Both, this is incremental vector data not seen in both default and Vector.

[caaront]

Texas, Mineral Wells, Fort Worth, Dallas, Mineral Wells, lol.

 

Just kidding, I love ORBX and am very happy with things as is knowing that they are always working hard to improve our simming experience as a whole.

 

FTX/ORBX is the best.

[Griphos]

This seems like a very nice improvement. I have a question about FTX Vector. Is there a way to use it for the rivers and coastlines, but turn off the road data?  I find the land class roads much more believable and don't need accurate roads. If not, if I just use Global base and this new land class, what will I be missing, other than roads?  Will I not have the accurate coastlines, etc?

[shortspecialbus]

Yes, you can do that in the FTX Global Vector Configuration Tool which you can access in the "Tools" tab of the "Settings" section of FTX Central 2.

 

-stefan

 

[Penzoil3]

The southwest, once again does not seem to exist at all. Sigh...

 Sue

[trans_1007]

What happened to Texas??

[Griphos]

Thanks for that info.  Well, then, given the sale, perhaps it's time...

 

Can someone tell me how much hard disk space Global Base, Vector, and OpenLC for NA will (is likely to) take?  

[FalconAF]

5 hours ago, Griphos said:

Thanks for that info.  Well, then, given the sale, perhaps it's time...

 

Can someone tell me how much hard disk space Global Base, Vector, and OpenLC for NA will (is likely to) take?  

 

Seeing as no one has responded to your question yet, I'll give it a shot.

 

But...it depends on what you mean by "space"...and WHERE.

 

For downloading the products, the *approximate* ZIP file sizes will be:

 

Global Base - 4.41 Gigabytes

Global Vector v1.30 - 6.6 Gigabytes

Global Vector Update to v1.35 - 241 Megabytes (small compared to the others)

The CURRENT OLC NA/Alaska/Canada is - 2.60 Gigabytes

 

So for those alone (not including any increase for the OLC/NA when it is released)  the "space" for downloading the ZIP files alone is *approximately* 13.8 Gigabytes if you did them all at the same time.  NOTE you would double the required space after you extracted the files from the ZIP files (both the ZIP files and the extracted files would be on the disk until you deleted the ZIP files, but you could download one ZIP at a time, extract it, delete the ZIP, etc, to reduce space requirements).

 

Now, if you are talking about how much more space the INSTALLED files would require in your flight simulator and on THAT hard drive, that should be LESS.  Global Base is just going to replace many of the default texture files in your current sim, so it won't increase your sim size by the whole 4.41 Gigabytes.  Global Vector would require quite a bit more space if you don't already have a different vector program installed in the sim (like a UTX product).  OLC Landclass probably will increase the flight simulator size because it contains more landclass files than a default sim installation, but again it is also replacing many of the default landclass files too.  So it is difficult to give you an exact "space increase" requirement for installing the products in the sim and on that drive.  But the above should give you a rough idea of what you are dealing with.

 

Maybe someone from ORBX has more exact figures.  I just gave you ballpark ones, depending on what you meant by "space".  It's quite possible someone from ORBX may correct some of my info above (particularly the increase in sizes to your flight sim installation and that hard drive).