Where is ORBX going with Regions

[bradley27]

This is a post ive wanted to make for awhile now with personal concerns for where this great visually enhancing and game changing brand are going.

 

Now i am just 1 in lord knows how many that have heavily invested into this brand and its products. I own Global, Vector, OpenLC Europe and USA and am eagerly awaiting the massively needed OpenLC Asia later this 2019? I have also brought several of your airports and airfields too over the years and then not to forget brought the full UK/Ireland, Norway and Germany regions too including the trees pack.

 

I cannot tell you how incredible and stunning the sim is to fly in. Some of the airport packs like Dubrovnik, Innsbruck, Bilboa, Arlanda, Southampton are works of art truly and i have never thought twice about spending my money on them at all, Cityscene Barcelona is wonderful and i will be buying into Orlando and Nice no question.

 

Where i make my opinion though is based on the concern that these packs are now becoming way too big in their disk size and massively questions what happens down the road.

 

Ill elaborate atad more...Amsterdam TrueEarth was released and absolutely looks brilliant, i want it no question about it but i haven't brought it based solely on the size it takes up on the disk...i mean 77GBs!??!?! Thats just one small European nation!

 

Now UK TrueEarth is coming and again i love what i see but i have two issues..the same as before and then i question...well what was FTX England about then!? What are the differences in the product that then and made out to be the most accurate product/rendition of the UK ever made for FSX/P3D and this now polished and rebooted version due to drop in the coming weeks?

 

I just cant see where it stops and what we as the customer do when we have brought into another hardrive which is full because it now holds theoretically speaking Spain, Germany, Holland and France TrueEarths.... Do we end up having 4 harddrives linked to our setups in order to enjoy the products you bring? Theres no force to buy them but we are all for the most part invested in this hobby and will buy these products provided it makes sense in cost and space on the drives.

 

I have always wondered but never questioned this nor has it held me back from buying previous products but what do they all do together (yes ive seen the illustration).

 

Example..Global as the base, Vector 2nd (optional) and then if like me you add OpenLC europe (now OpenLC Europe enhances textures and landclass correct?) so then what you get is an upgrade for Europe visually over FTX Global. Then you add FTX England...so now you have a specially crafted pack which now wipes out OpenLCs UK upgrade and in-turn replaces it with FTX England textures and landclass...Correct?...then you add TrueEarth England...so now whats happening!?!? Im just abit lost with it all....It just seems like we are using up unnecessary space with duplicated files for the same area.

 

On par with all of that FTX Ireland was also a mare on FPS or so it was if you used AS Mega Airport Dublin back in FSX.....There were updates with improved POIs being made awhile ago for the UK and then there was talk of the same being done for Ireland which i really was hoping for as it seems Dublin will get a new rendition of EIDW in 2019 from MK Studios and i really cant be asked to face the same performance issues in P3Dv4...but its also been noted a TrueEarth Ireland is in the mix......so is this the end for FTX Ireland updates on performance?

 

Im wondering if its just me that wonders/worries/questions why these packs are even being considered at such a large sizes which then puts all your other investments in Flytampa, UK2000, Simwings (the list goes on) at risk when you run out of room to store all of this eyecandy on and then what are we doing buying FTX England and then having TE England thrown into the mix...? Where are they complimenting each other?

 

This is merely alittle frustration, and if anyone can explain that would be most helpful as im sure i cant be the only person that feels its getting alittle out of hand with what at the time was a very exciting Region process giving us Norway, Germany and the UK & Ireland we have now basically scrapped this series for one that gives the thrills but also eats up all your disk space. By all means i may have aspects incorrect here too so do correct me otherwise.

[teecee]

Sorry, but I have to say this. You and you alone can make the personal decision "enough is enough". due to health problems and a somewhat older system I decided to stop at prepar3d v3.4.. It looks great to me, and suits my flying style. I will grab anything that can be used at this point, but have no interest in all the newer scenery's (PR etc). Terry.

[Reed O'Bear]

I hope they continue making regions as I will buy those but not the products like True Earth that takes up a lot of space.  Orbx has to come up with new and improved products to appeal to customers so they can stay in business.  It is like anything else from cars to iPhones to computers where they make some changes every few months and many people that bought a new one last year will feel compelled to go out and buy another one.

[Ken Terry]

Bradley, time will allow development of cheaper more efficient massive storage.

Here is a picture in 1956 of a 5MB storage device from IBM being unloaded  by a fork truck from a Pan Am plane.

Meanwhile as TeeCee says, it's your decision what to buy or not buy.

Cheers

Ken

[teecee]

Hmm.. you reminded me of something Ken. I was sent to Melbourne for training when TAA first introduced Tarzan, a computerized reservations system. We ware taken to see the unit

and I kid you not, it was the size of a semi-detached house, and had less computing power than most of today's hand held devices. Terry.

[W2DR]

I remember well testing a prototype cellphone network in Chicago over 40 years ago. The "cellphone" we used was installed in a 4-door 1967 Chrysler sedan. The rear seat was removed and the "cellphone" was a compact box that measured only 4'x2'x2'. Those were the days.....take that Apple..........Doug

[dtrjones]

Hi @bradley27 this is definately a thought provoking post. Thank you for sharing. I think this is a valid concern however I see Orbx simply improving there systems for providing more realistic representation of regions that's all. As a consiquence of that, the latest packages will have more demands of the simulator and of course more storage requirements.

 

People will have different levels of simming and have different levels of hardware and require a different fidelity of experience. For that reason Orbx provides a variety of ways to improve a base simulator some of which you've mentioned. The True Earth series is all encompasing and most storage demanding so naturally you'll have to chose carefully before installing these packages but technology waits for nobody and storage hardware developments will make these descions less of an issue in the future.

 

Even today you can buy a 4 Terrabyte Seagate Baracuda for under 100 pounds sterling and you could probably put 100 True Earth regions on there but as with most upgrades the system itself usually requires an upgrade to support the newer components so it can get very expensive.

 

So to sum up I just see Orbx progressing there technology to provide us with more immersive environments but they have a back catalogue to suit simmers with more modest systems. If we are to keep up-to-date with the latest technology then we'll need to update our systems to fall inline to get the best intended experience, but that's only something we can work out for ourselves.

 

Best of luck!

Dave.

[Catalysis]

In a couple of years or so this will all be a less valid concern as storage capacity increases and drops in price. Even now there are decent options for multi-terabyte drives at reasonable cost.

 

We’re entering one of those periods where software pushes the hardware envelope. In the past it was cpu and gpu performance that lagged. Now it seems, for flight simmers at least, storage will be a key focus.

 

I expect everything will even out pretty soon.

[FalconAF]

The "hardware pushing the software development" isn't going to stop.  As long as hardware gets "better" and "faster", software developers will write new software to take advantage of it.  But it's also a 2-way street.  If human beings hadn't wanted software that could do outrageous things (compared to the past), there would have never been any incentive to build or "upgrade" from vacuum tube computers to Cray's (and IBM's that would finally beat a human at Jeopardy ).

 

Our hobby has continually required more storage space for the software it uses as new technologies have been developed.  There is nothing different in the "new" storage capacity required for something like a True Earth product than there has always been for a "regular" photoreal scenery like MegaScenery Earth (MSE).  Heck, the recent "update" of the MSE versions from version 2 to version 3 just increased by about 100% size-wise (my Nevada v2 went from about 32GB to the new v3 being about 62GB).

 

My first flight sim (over 30 years ago) used a cassette tape drive to store only a few KILOBYTES of data.  Now I have a 500GB SSD for my Operating System drive, two 2TB SSD's for my "simulators", and three external "platter" USB drives (two 6TB's and one 8TB).  My P3Dv4.4 alone uses available "storage" of over 2.5 Terabytes all by itself.  I can swap what I want in and out of P3D depending on what type of flying I want to do during the simulation session.

 

If you want to play with all the current bells and whistles available today, having enough STORAGE for it all is just as important as having capable CPU's, GPU's, Memory, etc, etc.

 

And that isn't going to change as newer and more complex sceneries, aircraft, utilities (like weather addons with gigabytes of cloud textures, etc) keep getting developed with new technology.  Having enough storage for what you want to do with the computer is an integral part of the entire hardware configuration.

 

Like some have said above, you can decide to just "quit upgrading" (for whatever reason) and stay with what you have now, or you can upgrade to keep using the new state-of-the-art products.  And deciding to increase your storage capabilities is part of upgrading.  But it isn't anybody ELSE'S "fault" whichever choice you make, or why.

 

 

[Airwolf]

Think like this TE is next evolution of FTX Region products...its is way better.  Just when FTX regions came out, it was way too advanced for 32bit systems and hardware...soon everyone's hardware got better and along with faster storage.  Now we have 64bit sims, we are pushing the sim even further.  Have you tried TE in VR, it is jaw dropping amazing so real, so life like experience - and you get get to experience it in your own home.

 

Pretty soon FTX regions will look dated (the sim people walking around is extremely dated - they all look like 90s graphics but it is done for performance and sim engine limitations etc)- hence the need to evolve and give more to the customers.  Just like any industry; change is progress.

 

Within the next 3-5 years, we will be probably crossing 10TB+ PCI SSDs, even your default windows 10 base installation keeps getting larger and larger.  I have 2 usb of 2 previous window 10 generation installations, guess what they keep getting bigger.

 

Connections to the net will keep getting faster, market evolution is always working.

 

I honestly can not wait to have all my FTX regions converted to TE regions and more.  I want whole of US in TE, maybe global 2.0 will be bigger scale TE based enhancement.  One can dream.

 

  

 

   

[bradley27]

Dont confuse my personal concern with these newer larger sized products as a bad idea...they look incredible i am not disputing that its just their sheer size. I guess as i said before FTX England was at one point the best selling region, now TE is here and i wonder if that has now totally overwritten FTX England? Does it become null and void if you buy into it? The TE series are obviously way more better i get that but is it strategically possible for a user to port over to this new TE series and have space for XXXXXGBs of scenery data on multiple SSDs if your not incredibly well off or funded? I dunno..just seems a very far fetched vision down the line. Push the bar, raise the game...all for that yes i just guess i hadnt expected or considered that it would raise issues in spending more money now in disk purchases too. And yes...no ones holding a gun to our heads and forcing us to buy so it is absolutely in our hands as to what we purchase or not i agree tenfold...its just the practicality of it in the long run.

 

So much so, i saw a post earlier regarding seasonal texture concerns from ORBX for TE increasing the installation size even more... this is my point in a sense right here.

 

Anyway...not at all a hater just abit mythed and somewhat disappointed that i myself am possibly hitting a wall for the first time in 20yrs where i am unable to buy into a product(s) because it essentially creates more expenditures down the very near line with disk space being eaten up due to one or 2 products alone.

[HiFlyer99]

It sounds maybe a bit old fashioned, but P3D in its core is very old fashioned also. Alot is still with uncompressed BMP files.

So you should try mess around with NTFS compression at least on SSDs. You can shrink all texture folders in the ORBX folder with that. Just go in the ORBX folder and type texture in the search bar in the right corner of your file manager.

Give it some time and then you mark all texture folders that has been found and go to properties --> advanced and check "compress contents to save disk space". It will save you tons of GB because of that. Check everything with okay and give it some time until compressions is done. That can take some minutes to compress 100.000+ files, on a fast SSD it should be done in 5 - 15 minutes depends on the size.

 

SSDs wont slow down with that, in theory they are even faster because internal operations are faster than the SATA controller itsself. So less GB have to pass the SATA Controller. But this is not noticable, so the major benefit is saving tons of space.

 

But dont compress the whole thing! scenery folders and other files dont benefit from NTFS compressions much since they are already packed. You can compress as well every single Texture folder from Airports to save space.

 

For the future, storage prices will come way down, especially SSD storage. So I expect 2 TB SSD will cost under 200 dollars this year. For my experience you can even pack those TrueEarth content on a normal hard drive since the ground textures which has to be loaded are pretty big. Modern HDD with read speeds around 180 MB/s can handle them pretty good.  4 TB are usually around 100 dollars today already.

 

I will definitly put TrueEarth South GB on my normal HDD to see how it works. I would not be surprised if only the loading times are a bit longer but once loaded you wont feel any difference... Lets see

[andy1252]

9 hours ago, Ken Terry said:

Bradley, time will allow development of cheaper more efficient massive storage.

Here is a picture in 1956 of a 5MB storage device from IBM being unloaded  by a fork truck from a Pan Am plane.

Meanwhile as TeeCee says, it's your decision what to buy or not buy.

Cheers

Ken

Looks like the rarely seen aborted early Apple product - the "iDontbelieveit". I understand Victor Meldrew was the quality control manager at the time and so it got canned. (that last reference may not travel well)

[robespierre]

I suppose the bottom line is that ORBX must provide what sells well  in order to continue as a viable business.

For myself,I prefer the landclass(if that is the correct description) to photoreal.  I have all the full fat regions and would like to continue to buy new regions.

Disc space is one thing but what about loading times?With P3Dv4 and using simstarter for a 'Europe' option' of default, all full regions,and about 20 airports combo of ORBX and others it takes about 4 and a half minutes to load-don't mention resets and so on!

[Benny]

2 hours ago, robespierre said:

I suppose the bottom line is that ORBX must provide what sells well  in order to continue as a viable business.

 

Well said, it is now obvious that they find a lucrative new market with Xplane. Strange that some time ago it was out of the question Remember Project X, A and others

 

Ben

[Stewart Hobson]

I have no interest in the TE line of products, since the current collection of full fat regions and Land Class products fulfill the necessary conditions of suspension of disbelief while flying in the sim--P3D, FSX, or whatever.  As a Yank flying over England, for example, I wonder if flying with TE GB installed compared to flying with EU England installed would make any difference  in that suspension of disbelief.  I sincerely doubt it--I'm a stranger to England and don't know the difference, on way or the other.  The same, generally, goes for TE Netherlands.  Flying in the sim, I pay less attention to the scenery than I do to actually flying the aircraft--comms with ATC (as sometimes unrealistic as that can be), avoiding bad weather, making altitude adjustments when necessary, and concentrating on landing procedures.  I can do all this without the addition of True Earth or any other photoreal scenery.  So, no TE "anywhere" for me--I don't need it.  Of course, other simmers will be looking for something else from their sims.  Good discussion so far on this thread and lots of opinions.

 

Stew

[wain71]

I currently have all the regions for P3D and I am at the moment very happy with this, however for my XP install I welcome the differences I am seeing with TE products. So my way of thinking is that I will continue with this way purchasing and flying in the respective sims.....enjoying reading the different opinions though...

[Rustyflyer]

25 minutes ago, Stewart Hobson said:

I have no interest in the TE line of products, since the current collection of full fat regions and Land Class products fulfill the necessary conditions of suspension of disbelief while flying in the sim--P3D, FSX, or whatever.  As a Yank flying over England, for example, I wonder if flying with TE GB installed compared to flying with EU England installed would make any difference  in that suspension of disbelief.  I sincerely doubt it--I'm a stranger to England and don't know the difference, on way or the other.  The same, generally, goes for TE Netherlands.  Flying in the sim, I pay less attention to the scenery than I do to actually flying the aircraft--comms with ATC (as sometimes unrealistic as that can be), avoiding bad weather, making altitude adjustments when necessary, and concentrating on landing procedures.  I can do all this without the addition of True Earth or any other photoreal scenery.  So, no TE "anywhere" for me--I don't need it.  Of course, other simmers will be looking for something else from their sims.  Good discussion so far on this thread and lots of opinions.

 

Stew

Hey Stew,

 

Great thoughts! I basically agree with you regarding TE regions vs. the combination of region + LC + vector (although scenery appearance is exceptionally important to me, and I do pay attention to it (swap to exterior views, panning, etc.). I guess that I stumble upon a way to manage flying the plane at the same time lol ;). I enjoy flying the landclass regions immensely;  I enjoy flying low and, and it seems that landclass regions better lend themselves to that end. At those lower altitudes then , I think it becomes more a matter of preference than one of suspension of disbelief- it becomes much more difficult to suspend disbelief in a TE environment at 1500' - 3000' agl. However, what works for me is the combination of the region, landclass & vector products with the individual and more contained CityScene products. To me, this represents a best of both/all worlds kind of thing: You get the beauty of the landclass-defined regions coupled with the complexity & intricacies of the individual urban regions. I guess, at the end of the day, it is all a matter of preference: 6 to some, and a half-dozen to others.

 

Blue skies,  Russ

[Buffy Foster]

10 hours ago, andy1252 said:

Looks like the rarely seen aborted early Apple product - the "iDontbelieveit". I understand Victor Meldrew was the quality control manager at the time and so it got canned. (that last reference may not travel well)

 

So you're saying that product already had one foot in the grave?

[Buffy Foster]

I ran across this interesting article on how hi-rez imagery is going to get lots cheaper and be able to be more current, too:

 

https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2019/01/04/New-nano-satellite-system-yields-high-res-imagery-at-lower-cost/3571546608826/?ts_sn=16

[Stewart Hobson]

"...it becomes much more difficult to suspend disbelief in a TE environment at 1500' - 3000' agl."

 

Hey, Russ.  Care to elaborate on this?  Is the TE scenery not realistically depicted at such a low altitude?  A few years back, flying MSE photoreal over California, flying at such low altitudes was what eventually turned me to land class-type scenery.

 

Stew

[flying_fish]

It's simple - if you want to fly VFR using familiar landmarks in a region you know you need photoreal and hand placed autogen using hand crafted POI's and VRP's.

FS scenery is about reality, and landclass was an inspirational way of matching reality with texture tiles.

Its because storage is becoming cheaper that photoreal is now possible on larger scales than before.

[Stewart Hobson]

1 hour ago, flying_fish said:

It's simple - if you want to fly VFR using familiar landmarks in a region you know you need photoreal and hand placed autogen using hand crafted POI's and VRP's.

FS scenery is about reality, and landclass was an inspirational way of matching reality with texture tiles.

Its because storage is becoming cheaper that photoreal is now possible on larger scales than before.

Well, you see, you prove my point.  I know absolutely nothing about landmarks and the like in England.  Nevertheless, I still manage to fly VFR without the need for photoscenery, no matter where I fly.  And I dare say, simmers who don't live in England have done quite well flying VFR in England up to now, as do simmers who don't live in Germany, to give another example.  I disagree that FS scenery is about reality, however.  FS scenery is, after all is said and done, the means by which suspension of disbelief is (partially, I guess) accomplished.  And my point is that photoscenery is not necessarily the only technique to achieve it.

[Rustyflyer]

1 hour ago, Stewart Hobson said:

"...it becomes much more difficult to suspend disbelief in a TE environment at 1500' - 3000' agl."

 

Hey, Russ.  Care to elaborate on this?  Is the TE scenery not realistically depicted at such a low altitude?  A few years back, flying MSE photoreal over California, flying at such low altitudes was what eventually turned me to land class-type scenery.

 

Stew

Hey Stew,

 

Sure! I am simply saying that I think TE & photoreal scenery becomes less 'believable' when flying at lower altitudes. To me anyway, when flying low (1500' - 3000'), regardless of how fine the resolution of the photo imagery is, it is less sharp and therefore less immersive than when flying the same altitudes over landclass regions such as PNW, AU, etc. It is sort of like sitting 2 feet away from a 4K set: Sure the image looks awesome from across the room, but from 2 feet away? Not so much ;). I had kind of thought that you and I were saying similar things and that we were in agreement. Perhaps I misunderstood and, if so, my apologies ;).

 

Regards,  Russ

[Christopher Low]

Quote

To me anyway, when flying low (1500' - 3000'), regardless of how fine the resolution of the photo imagery is, it is less sharp and therefore less immersive than when flying the same altitudes over landclass regions such as PNW, AU, etc.

 

I thought someone stated that the texture resolution of the landclass textures is 1.2m per pixel, which is exactly the same as the TrueEarth photoscenery textures...

[Stewart Hobson]

23 minutes ago, Russ in NE said:

Hey Stew,

 

Sure! I am simply saying that I think TE & photoreal scenery becomes less 'believable' when flying at lower altitudes. To me anyway, when flying low (1500' - 3000'), regardless of how fine the resolution of the photo imagery is, it is less sharp and therefore less immersive than when flying the same altitudes over landclass regions such as PNW, AU, etc. It is sort of like sitting 2 feet away from a 4K set: Sure the image looks awesome from across the room, but from 2 feet away? Not so much ;). I had kind of thought that you and I were saying similar things and that we were in agreement. Perhaps I misunderstood and, if so, my apologies ;).

 

Regards,  Russ

Russ,  No, not at all.  I just wanted your perspective on flying that low over PR scenery.  I have had the same experience and was the reason I gave up on that type of scenery.

 

Stew

[Buffy Foster]

I think even an OpenLC (and a good mesh) is nice for VFR flying if you also use the aeronautical charts.  I do that lots.  Even if some artificial landmarks are missing, the roads and landscape are good to use.  Well, I also use VORs.  But even over the "flat and boring" Midwest, VFR is still easy without photoreal.

[Stewart Hobson]

To illustrate

2 minutes ago, Buffy Foster said:

I think even an OpenLC (and a good mesh) is nice for VFR flying if you also use the aeronautical charts.  I do that lots.  Even if some artificial landmarks are missing, the roads and landscape are good to use.  Well, I also use VORs.  But even over the "flat and boring" Midwest, VFR is still easy without photoreal.

To partially illustrate your point, I once flew VFR from Seattle, WA, to Redding, CA, following highway I5 all the way down, using FTX PNW and FTX NCA, and noting several outstanding landmarks along the way--and no PR scenery.

[MZee1960]

Hi @bradley27 ,

I asked a very similar question here back in December, when I found out of plans to release TE PNW,  as I already had the PNW full region.

I received a satisfactory response from Tim here :

It seems that Orbx is aware of potential duplication where traditional scenery will be replaced by photoreal scenery and are working on having the two coexist in a good way.  For example, perhaps those who like to fly in seasons other than summer would still be able to use the full fat PNW region, in my example above.

[patful]

I don't really think easier VFR navigation is the reason why many folks want the True Earth. It just looks better, period. No roads running through fields or over flat buildings, no odd-shaped forests/neighborhoods, etc.. Yeah, I fly more than I stare at the ground, but who doesn't want to keep improving the looks of their scenery? Otherwise, we'd still be happy with FS98. While I'm happy with the landclass regions I have, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want TE at some point in the future. More storage really isn't the issue for me, it's not that expensive. I don't want the whole world. But I don't think my i5 7600k at 4.8 and my wimpy GTX 1060 can handle it at the settings I like, and I can't afford to upgrade. Someday I'll get it. By then, Ultra Really, Really True Earth will be out, and I'll be behind the pack as usual.

[flying_fish]

8 hours ago, patful said:

Yeah, I fly more than I stare at the ground,

VFR flying is done by staring at the ground... (whist scanning inside as well!) and comparing it to a regional map. The closer the scenery is to the map the more realistic is the exercise.

I do agree that many want TE products to sight-see and explore....which is fine, but google earth does that better imho. Each to their own, I guess.

For others, it's primarily about flying, and navigating accurately.

As I've already said, landclass was great, but this is next generation.

 

[Longranger241]

8 hours ago, patful said:

 But I don't think my i5 7600k at 4.8 and my wimpy GTX 1060 can handle it at the settings I like, and I can't afford to upgrade.

And I don't see why your PC shouldn't be able to handle True Earth. I just replaced my really ancient i7 950 (originally build with FSX in mind, but later upgraded to 18 GB RAM and a GTX 770) with an i7 6700K and a GTX 1070 and 32 GB RAM. The processing speeds of the CPU and GPU play a less significant role compared to the amount of RAM and VRAM. The flight simulators simply have to handle more objects with their textures. So compared to normal games our flight simulators simply need a bit more memory. But an upgrade to 16 GB of RAM shouldn't be too expensive although the RAM prices are currently crazy, compared to the time when I build my 6700K.

And your 1060 should be fine if you have the 6GB VRAM model.

If you only look at performance benchmarks you see totally unrealistic results. In reality all our flight simulators are currently bound by a single core, so 6 or 8 core machines don't help if you don't want to stream at the same time. Even normal video recordings can be done on the GPU alone without significant losses.

In reality everything from the old Sandy Bridge 2600K on can work decently even nowadays with some tweaks. And everything from a Skylake on is more or less in the same ball park since it works on the same architecture. A more expensive CPU can bring a few fps, but in reality the differences aren't huge. That's the real problem of the CPUs. From generation to generation we are now down to 5%, a difference that you won't see if you watch something different than the fps count. Everything else is either clock speed or you run in a RAM or VRAM limit.

In fact even mechanical HDDs do their job quite decently with TrueEarth or other photo textures. Once the scenery is loaded, you normally won't see a difference to a SSD in a flight simulator , if you don't run out of RAM.

Sometimes people get the impression that they would have to replace their complete system but this is wrong. The 64 bit simulators don't need so much more power they just have to be configured slightly differently. The big advantage of Landmarks was really that they needed less address space and so they didn't need RAM. But 64 Bit systems were constructed to use more RAM, since it is rather cheap. In the same manner the modern GPUs want to work with compression since it lowers the amount of VRAM that they need and the transfer speeds are much higher.      

[patful]

1 hour ago, Longranger241 said:

And I don't see why your PC shouldn't be able to handle True Earth.

 

I'm sure it could handle TE at Orbx's recommended settings. Unfortunately, I don't use their recommended settings. I like to keep terrain and scenery objects sliders full right, plus 4xSSAA. When TE Netherlands came out, folks with more powerful systems than mine had performance complaints. Everyone told them to turn down their settings. I won't do that. I do have the 6GB 1060. I'd love to have 8xSSAA and more shadows enabled (just clouds/terrain right now), but the 1060 can't handle it.

[Tony Wroblewski]

For me it's a no brainer, I'd much rather fly over a real depiction than a generic depiction, especially in areas I know well. However, given the choice between just flat orthos with no 3D objects and landclass, I'd choose landclass any day. Now it's the best of both worlds

[dtrjones]

1 hour ago, patful said:

 

I'm sure it could handle TE at Orbx's recommended settings. Unfortunately, I don't use their recommended settings. I like to keep terrain and scenery objects sliders full right, plus 4xSSAA. When TE Netherlands came out, folks with more powerful systems than mine had performance complaints. Everyone told them to turn down their settings. I won't do that. I do have the 6GB 1060. I'd love to have 8xSSAA and more shadows enabled (just clouds/terrain right now), but the 1060 can't handle it.

 

For performance try the FlyAgi tweak utility with the default settings (not the X-Plane defaults but the Utility defaults). I was plesantly suprised at the performance levels if you're willing to sacrifice road traffic and the like. I've also got better visibility and colours too.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/47301-flyagi-tweak-utility/

[Juanvito]

I think Orbx gives you the choice between coverage area and level of detail. For my flying style, Global+Vector+OpenLC+TreesHD+BuildingsHD is enough. Eagerly awaiting the moment when the whole world gets the OpenLC treatment.

[patful]

56 minutes ago, dtrjones said:

 

For performance try the FlyAgi tweak utility with the default settings (not the X-Plane defaults but the Utility defaults). I was plesantly suprised at the performance levels if you're willing to sacrifice road traffic and the like. I've also got better visibility and colours too.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/47301-flyagi-tweak-utility/

 

Thanks, but I'm still on P3D, with no plans to move. I love my A2A aircraft too much.

[Benny]

I would like to buy TE UK south (P3D)... but my SSD as 100gig left out of 500

[Engwerda 31300]

I have Global, Vector, OpenLC Europe and Australia SP4 and I must say that the Australia scenery pack is brilliant so i do all of my flying there. I wish I could say the same about OpenLC Europe as I would really love to fly there but we can't have everything. What I am waiting for is OpenLC Asia hoping that it will be as a good as Australia SP4 -

TE products I will have to give a miss. Like Benny my SSD is running out of space and I cannot justify buying another just to accommodate them.

Is OpenLC Asia  really coming out in 2019 or was that just a rumour?

[Juanvito]

54 minutes ago, Engwerda 31300 said:

Is OpenLC Asia  really coming out in 2019 or was that just a rumour?

 

Right now, I'd say it's a wish.