A new FTX England?

[Trustdesa]

Hi Guys,

 

I generally use ORBX for the USA for VFR flight there as it seems pretty accurate and I do not fly there in real life, however I do fly in real life in England and after a few tries I am very disappointed by my purchase, once tried against the like of GBPRO for Xplane which is free.

 

Reading review online seems that wrongly placed land-classes (towns,villages and even forests) really spoil this region therefore I would really like to hear from ORBX if they have plans to get this region done by a proper developer? If one can do better himself with free tools on a different sim I am sure with ORBX tools they should be able to do the same.

 

I have tried a couple of flight and it was impossible for me to navigate not even using larger landmarks, even some larger known town such as Marlborough in Wiltshire are the correct shape or size (it looks like a tiny small village), shape of the forest same thing, the one near Popham, another very known airfield, looks kind of okay then all of a sudden there is a bold patch for no reasons.

 

Would purchasing ORBX Vector plus FTX Europe lead to a better result with shape of villages and forests than the region itself? 

 

Thank you in advance! 

 

 

 

 

[John Dow]

Hi

 

Could you post a couple of screenshots of where you believe the accuracy of the scenery is below reasonable expectations?  Include coordinates so that we can check that what you're seeing is as it should be.

 

Also, when requesting help for an ORBX product, an order number is required:

 

 

[Trustdesa]

Hi John,

 

With pleasure, after this busy day at the office is finished I will do that for you, I have already taken them yesterday and I was really surprised to see a better job done with free tools, I would not expect to see a high road "wider" even though you can see that in GBPRO however at least the shape of a wood or a town as you would not really look at roads when doing VFR (at least never done it in years) but the shape of things yes, without it is just a random scenery with some 3D landmarks.

 

England being extremely flat makes this lack of basic scenery details not worth having it unless one just want to do some tubeliner flying at which point defaul with global would do the trick.

 

I will post some examples later on today with details and coordinate, I have already some screenshot comparing P3D V4.1 ORBX - Xplane 11 GBPRO vs Google Map (again this just for basic shapes I am aware it would not be possible to replicate everything).

 

I am glad John / ORBX is no longer working with this developer if I heard correctly, talk to you later on and thank you again.

 

In other hand PNW is simple amazing.

 

 

EDIT: No problems with regards to the order number I have it in my inbox  (I have got a collection as I am buying a lot from US however I am holding of any EU region as I am now scared they are all as bad as this one). More than help it is just a question about what's the future for this scenery and other EU regions.

 

[Benny]

I think that te developer are trying in général to give a feel... an approximation of what a region or a country look like. 

This is a hobby flight simulator and not a navigation aid. Just remember what FSX look like many years ago.

 

Ben

[Triplane]

"I generally use ORBX for the USA for VFR flight there as it seems pretty accurate and I do not fly there in real life....."

 

So, upon what do you base your "pretty accurate" comment? That would seem to make your assessment of England a little suspect................Doug

[Nick Cooper]

Hello.

Please don't post any comparison shots of  "comparing P3D V4.1 ORBX - Xplane 11 GBPRO vs Google Map".

Photo scenery and generated scenery are two very different things and a comparison is not valid.

 

For a multitude of reasons, generated scenery cannot exactly replicate what is there, photo scenery can show you

what was there when the photo was taken and the best scenery is a combination of photograph and hand placed

autogen and scenery objects.

 

It doesn't do to fly in generated scenery over an area that you know well, photo scenery is the best option if you want

to see your house.

 

 

[MarkH]

7 hours ago, Trustdesa said:

Reading review online seems that wrongly placed land-classes (towns,villages and even forests) really spoil this region

 

I guess this is down to whether it is poor placement of landclass or limited resolution. For really small villages I would expect that the shape can only be approximate because the size of the landclass tiles is quite large in relation to the size of the village. For larger villages and towns it ought to be possible to represent the shape accurately but presumably it will need the landclass data to be correct. I don't know if the data is sourced en mass (and hence may be approximate), or whether it is created manually from looking at maps and satellite imagery. Most likely it is a combination of the two.

 

But it is a good question and one I have never paid much mind to. Being able to navigate by the shape of the towns is certainly a realism factor.

[rockliffe]

Perhaps what would be an awesome 'remake' would be a photoscenery adaptation of the UK. Similar to the current Netherlands project that we have heard about. Now that would be amazing  

[Nick Cooper]

If it didn't already exist for years.

[Trustdesa]

 

5 hours ago, Triplane said:

"I generally use ORBX for the USA for VFR flight there as it seems pretty accurate and I do not fly there in real life....."

 

So, upon what do you base your "pretty accurate" comment? That would seem to make your assessment of England a little suspect................Doug

 

Though* 

 

Suspect about what exactly? If you go on https://skyvector.com/?ll=47.559546111,-121.863725833&chart=128&zoom=3 - and I see you are from Florida - you can pick a route and actually navigate it following features, now if you do the same with a VFR charts and ORBX England you could well end up thinking you have purchase ORBX SOMALIA as very little is there to help you navigate so please elaborate the suspect? Besides just google PNW Accuracy and you get a plethora of residents praising how accurate it is, do the same of England then you have your answer

 

@Nick Cooper I actually just spent 35 minutes making side by side however if it is against the forum rules I will not post them, you asked me to do so earlier on? Anyway go to:

 

Old Sarum - Salisbury apparently has way more area than it has in real life

Royal Wotton Basset - Not so royal here as it is not something you can recognize if not because you see "something near Swindon" there are built up way over they should be and nothing where it should.

Bourne (between Popham and Pewsey Vale) - that bit it is very busy in the south west as Popham is extremely popular and simply there are three villages (STOKE, HURSTBOURNE TARRANT AND UPTON) on a road with a two woods on the left of them, even here all you can see is a road (which by all means is correct).

 

I appreciate they are two different products, and we are going a bit of topic, however as reading online seems a widespread idea that ORBX England is so bad some did not even reinstalled it on a second install of the sim let's go back to the post and just find out if there is any plan to have this "re-made" by someone decent at all? Or, would you consider Vector more accurate than ORBX England? If the latter is the case I would get that one instead. 

 

Also I have found a post from your CEO on a different forum (***-outhouse I put some * to cover the name in case it is also against the rules) saying that "You welcome this feedback so region can be updated" however here you are now saying not to give any...how does that work? Did this change since 24/03/2011 when the post was made?

 

To me it seems a job not well done because we are not talking about small details but HUGE variances on large areas which is rather annoying really as much as I see that the new products are better value and of course PNW is top notch! 

 

By the way I am sending you a PM with my purchase codes and the screenshot as it took me time to run both sims and take them.

[Nick Cooper]

As I attempted to explain but clearly failed, generated scenery is simply not capable of the accuracy that you expect.

It can place generic housing where there are settlements and generic woods, fields and so on but it cannot represent

exactly what a place looks like from the air.

 

It can fairly represent what is there but it will be a representation, not a replication and will not display the degree of accuracy that you want.

For this reason there is no point in making detailed comparisons but if you feel you must, please go ahead and post your screen shots.

there are no forum rules to say that you cannot do this.

 

As to updates, EU England is on version 1.6 which indicates that there have been six updates.

There are at present, no plans for any more.

[Trustdesa]

3 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

As I attempted to explain but clearly failed, generated scenery is simply not capable of the accuracy that you expect.

It can place generic housing where there are settlements and generic woods, fields and so on but it cannot represent

exactly what a place looks like from the air.

 

It can fairly represent what is there but it will be a representation, not a replication and will not display the degree of accuracy that you want.

For this reason there is no point in making detailed comparisons but if you feel you must, please go ahead and post your screen shots.

there are no forum rules to say that you cannot do this.

 

Hi Nick,

 

I appreciate that, I just do not understand how come other products from the same line do have these features, I did small scenery for FSX, P3D and XPlane from some UK Airfields, mostly for my personal use, and landclass annotation can follow path even with basic tools and FSX SDK. Besides as said above Netherlands will have similar feature so wondering if other region may be done with new tech isn't a wishful thinking, just wondering.

 

Anyway I get the answer to my question is "No there will not be"

 

 

[Nick Cooper]

The proposed Netherlands project is entirely different in both composition and intention.

I regret that you are not happy with the EU England product.

[Trustdesa]

3 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

The proposed Netherlands project is entirely different in both composition and intention.

I regret that you are not happy with the EU England product.

 

Shame it would have been great to have something similar for other regions as it would have really made it "made for VFR" - I am still happy with ORBX England when flying things for just you need an idea of what's around such as tubeliner, by all means then it does its job, however I just think that for VFR isn't suitable at all as really you can't follow any route unless it is a road, but then it would be flying cars simulator  

 

Curiosity, would Vector + OpenLC Europe more suitable for the scope or combined they offer similar performance? 

 

Thank you very much again

[Geezer]

I've read on this forum that England was made by someone who didn't do a very good job.  Really, we're discussing landclass.  We're not looking at a few houses in the wrong place.  It is not difficult to place cities, forests etc correctly and the lack of this product doing that shows its weakness.  If it's not up to Orbx quality, why not just admit it and make it better?

[John Dow]

You know what?  I regularly fly in SE NSW, the area around where I live, and also the north island of New Zealand, an area I know well.

 

In both these areas, the landclass features are poorly represented.  Villages are badly shaped, or if smaller than 100 people, often missing entirely.  Farmland and bush are approximately correct if taken to the nearest km.  Areas where there are peri-urban settlements can be shown as sparsely populated farmland.  But I can still navigate VFR quite easily.  Roads and topographic features are the main things I look out for.  Often, where a village is missing, a nearby lake, small hill and an intersection of roads is all I need to tell me I'm where I expect to be.

 

These sceneries, including England, were developed long before semi-automation was developed to help accuracy, as has been recently demonstrated in the Germany North and South sceneries.  The developers were faced with 1km x 1km landclass tiles that had to be chosen from a limited selection of available landclass types.  It was simply not possible to draw exclusions and polygons for every single element in the landscape.  Each 1km x 1 km tile was assessed against Google Earth to check that it was as close as possible to the actual landclass. 

 

The landclass system of terrain depiction was designed to only ever approximate reality, and sceneries such as England, Australia and New Zealand demonstrate the best available work that could be done with the technology of the day WITHIN BUDGET.

 

As Nick has said, if you require an accurate representation of every landscape feature to within a few metres, then photoreal technology is required and the ORBX regions have never claimed to be photoreal, only landclass.

 

Finally, I have made several successful VFR flights across England referring only to online maps similar to WAC Charts to navigate, and although some features were missing or not well represented, the overall fidelity of the scenery meant that I never had any problem completing a flight.  I will admit it takes a bit of flexibility in approach to ignore the faults and only concentrate on the positives in the scenery, but then again I am aware always that I'm flying across landclass scenery, not photoreal.

[Guest]

If anyone wants to do VFR, the Channel Islands are the place to fly. Except cattle, 90% of what should be there is set at the right place. You only need normally 10% of POIs from the real life to do VFR

 

[tdavart]

I love Orbx stuff, but England was a bit of a let down. I'm not talking about landclass placement, but the quality of the texures. Do a flight about 1000 feet over a PNW urban area, then do the same for England. The difference is stark. But honestly that is the only one in the bunch that I haven't cared for as much. As I mentioned before, I would gladly pay for a photo-real version.

[norfolk mike]

Since the preview shots of the 'new tech' FTX Netherlands, my already waning interest in "generated" scenery has waned even further. If you want hyper-accurate 'low and slow'  coverage for the UK, then (as already stated) you really need photoscenery, accepting its own shortcomings. FTX England gives an 'impression' and that too has its place.

 

I have photoscenery covering the entire UK, France, Switzerland, The Balerics, Canaries, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Corsica and Sardinia, and bloody hell it takes up some HD space!

 

Having spent some time checking out the Aerofly stuff, and that's probably the direction I'll take when Orbx has done the Netherlands and PNW. It would be hard to believe that at some point a photorealistic England won't be incorporated within their DLC catalogue, and for me, that would be huge!

[dogtrack]

1 hour ago, norfolk mike said:

and bloody hell it takes up some HD space!

 

LOL....tell me about it.  I have the whole of Western Europe, NZ and the complete lower 48 States.  Plus all relevant objects and agn.  Last count worked out at 24x2TB HDDs, just for storage in an "unpacked" and "packed" condition.

That said....still love my US West Coast LC with all its seasons and sexy little airfields

[ROLSTON]

Not wanting to be critical of  Orbx  products but the England real photo scenery I have always used is the one by Horizon made several years ago
It is superb , but I do not know if it is still available ? I have it on discs and use it in my SFSX. Also I use Earth Sim trees with it.
They did it for Scotland as well but the colour saturation was very weak, so I chose Orbx Scotland instead.  (image Mach Loop Wales Horizon}

 

[Nick Cooper]

I have had that since it was Visual Flight photo scenery for Fs2002 and Fs2004.

It is very good but there is no comparison to be made with EU England.

They are two different methods of producing scenery and mutually exclusive.

[Fizzelle]

My thanks to the original poster for mentioning this. I used to live in Hastings and loved the VFR from Shoreham to Lydd in real life and could never understand why the Orbx scenery looked wrong. Now I know why! It's the reason I moved to X-Plane so I could generate my own photo scenery and that's a great hobby in itself. Now, to add to the clamour, if Orbx could do a "Netherlands" on the UK as it were, that would be just dandy!

[Guest]

The topic goes around in circles so thank you for sharing your opinions