The future

[Autolycos]

I can't find a better forum discussion title than this to express my wishes/grievances/opinion about what I wish the future to look like. I see we started with "why not Middle East/Asia" and ended up with a discourse on corporate ethics. After holding on to FSX for too long, I've jumped to P3D (now v4.4)  and X-Plane and I currently have the following products  purchased and installed:  ob P3D:  Global Base Pack; Global Vector; Global openLC Europe; Global openLC North America; Global openLC South America; Global Trees HD; TrueEarth Britain South; TrueEarth Netherlands; EU England; EU Germany North; EU Germany South; EU Ireland; EU Northern Ireland; EU Norway; EU Scotland; EU Wales; ESNQ Kiruna Airport; LOWI Innsbruck Airport; CitiScene Barcelona; NA Central Rockies; NA Northern California; NA Northern Rockies; NA Pacific Fjords; NA Pacific Northwest; NA Southern Alaska; NA Southern California; KSAN San Diego International Airport; KWYS West Yellowstone Airport; USMV Monument Valley; AU Australia; NZ North Island; NZ South Island; NZMF Milford Sound Airport; TAP Tapini Airport;  and on X-Plane I have so far TrueEarth Great Britain Central X; and TrueEarth Great Britain South X. I have trusted ORBX with it's experiments (what someone here called "ecolution") with CitiScenes and TrueEarth and invested my resources and time risking my money and my equipment each time I installed one and tried it. So I am confident that the risk is shared between investors and customers with each new endeavor so I maintain my right and entitlement to an opinion in regards to the future. I will keep it as short as possible. I was very disappointed with TrueEarth Britain South - I think considering the issues with bugs on P3D it was released prematurely - and so I uninstalled it and will wait until all issues are resolved. I am not going to install any new TrueEarth products. The reason I fly P3D and X-Plane is because it allows me to experience areas on the planet that I will most likely never visit in my life in person, or places I have already visited that I would like to visit again via a simulator. The immersive experience that Orbx has rendered to simulations is unquestionable and extraordinary. North America, Europe, South America, even Australia are now places one feels like you are there when flying.  Europe, South and North America are spectacular and I think none compared to New Zealand and Papua New Guinea sceneries. I was hoping the next natural steps would be to expand to Africa, the Middle East, Asia (Siberia included!) and even the arctic areas before digging further into scenery details; but instead... TrueEarth arrived... and just as in any other futuristic product it followed the familiar pattern of highly demanding hardware and software to run it, long times to load etc etc. I've been a very loyal customer but the line is drawn on TrueEarth. I will never buy another TrueEarth product unless I see another global area covered and a commitment by Orbx to covering more global territory than more detailed existent scenery. I am not flying a simulator to land and walk in the streets of London for crying out loud!! EU England is just enough for a flight. I look forward to seeing a more detailed Australia and then  most definitely Africa and Asia; so many of us are flying through the Himalayas just as much, and for the same reasons as we fly through the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Andes; it is dangerous and it is fun. This discussion here, if anything else, revealed to me that there is resistance by Orbx members to take that path or to even listen to their customers. So from my part, no more $45 dollars spent on Orbx "evolution." I will wait for global expansion instead. As for the TrueEarth Britain South product, I am glad it occured because I was developing a blind loyalty to Orbx which from this discussion here it appears some did not deserve. Many thanks for those who care to listen. 

 

[John Dow]

2 minutes ago, Autolycos said:

 I will never buy another TrueEarth product unless I see another global area covered and a commitment by Orbx to covering more global territory than more detailed existent scenery. I am not flying a simulator to land and walk in the streets of London for crying out loud!! EU England is just enough for a flight. I look forward to seeing a more detailed Australia and then  most definitely Africa and Asia; so many of us are flying through the Himalayas just as much, and for the same reasons as we fly through the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Andes; it is dangerous and it is fun. This discussion here, if anything else, revealed to me that there is resistance by Orbx members to take that path or to even listen to their customers. So from my part, no more $45 dollars spent on Orbx "evolution." I will wait for global expansion instead. As for the TrueEarth Britain South product, I am glad it occured because I was developing a blind loyalty to Orbx which from this discussion here it appears some did not deserve. Many thanks for those who care to listen. 

 

 

You know... here in Australia we have a mob of freeware developers who develop under the banner of Ozx.  Orbx itself grew out of an altruistic team who developed freeware scenery, replacing and refining the Microsoft textures for Australia and to which I'm proud to say i contributed a little.  Eventually it became obvious that to continue the development of the highest quality products there had to be an incentive, which in a free economy means selling scenery products.  And having gone down the path of making scenery a commercial proposition, Orbx is not in a position to continue 'charity scenery development' at the expense of commercially viable products.  Which is what the remaining areas of the world will be, there's almost no chance that the returns from developing Africa Asia etc will ever become positive.  Orbx will will continue to develop them, but they need to be accommodated into the overall commercial picture.

 

If the rest of the world had an equivalent number of keen amateurs ready to contribute to freeware scenery as Australia, on a per capita basis, you would have all the scenery you're demanding many times over.  Think about that.

[John Venema]

3 hours ago, Autolycos said:

I can't find a better forum discussion title than this to express my wishes/grievances/opinion about what I wish the future to look like. I see we started with "why not Middle East/Asia" and ended up with a discourse on corporate ethics. After holding on to FSX for too long, I've jumped to P3D (now v4.4)  and X-Plane and I currently have the following products  purchased and installed:  ob P3D:  Global Base Pack; Global Vector; Global openLC Europe; Global openLC North America; Global openLC South America; Global Trees HD; TrueEarth Britain South; TrueEarth Netherlands; EU England; EU Germany North; EU Germany South; EU Ireland; EU Northern Ireland; EU Norway; EU Scotland; EU Wales; ESNQ Kiruna Airport; LOWI Innsbruck Airport; CitiScene Barcelona; NA Central Rockies; NA Northern California; NA Northern Rockies; NA Pacific Fjords; NA Pacific Northwest; NA Southern Alaska; NA Southern California; KSAN San Diego International Airport; KWYS West Yellowstone Airport; USMV Monument Valley; AU Australia; NZ North Island; NZ South Island; NZMF Milford Sound Airport; TAP Tapini Airport;  and on X-Plane I have so far TrueEarth Great Britain Central X; and TrueEarth Great Britain South X. I have trusted ORBX with it's experiments (what someone here called "ecolution") with CitiScenes and TrueEarth and invested my resources and time risking my money and my equipment each time I installed one and tried it. So I am confident that the risk is shared between investors and customers with each new endeavor so I maintain my right and entitlement to an opinion in regards to the future. I will keep it as short as possible. I was very disappointed with TrueEarth Britain South - I think considering the issues with bugs on P3D it was released prematurely - and so I uninstalled it and will wait until all issues are resolved. I am not going to install any new TrueEarth products. The reason I fly P3D and X-Plane is because it allows me to experience areas on the planet that I will most likely never visit in my life in person, or places I have already visited that I would like to visit again via a simulator. The immersive experience that Orbx has rendered to simulations is unquestionable and extraordinary. North America, Europe, South America, even Australia are now places one feels like you are there when flying.  Europe, South and North America are spectacular and I think none compared to New Zealand and Papua New Guinea sceneries. I was hoping the next natural steps would be to expand to Africa, the Middle East, Asia (Siberia included!) and even the arctic areas before digging further into scenery details; but instead... TrueEarth arrived... and just as in any other futuristic product it followed the familiar pattern of highly demanding hardware and software to run it, long times to load etc etc. I've been a very loyal customer but the line is drawn on TrueEarth. I will never buy another TrueEarth product unless I see another global area covered and a commitment by Orbx to covering more global territory than more detailed existent scenery. I am not flying a simulator to land and walk in the streets of London for crying out loud!! EU England is just enough for a flight. I look forward to seeing a more detailed Australia and then  most definitely Africa and Asia; so many of us are flying through the Himalayas just as much, and for the same reasons as we fly through the Alps, the Pyrenees and the Andes; it is dangerous and it is fun. This discussion here, if anything else, revealed to me that there is resistance by Orbx members to take that path or to even listen to their customers. So from my part, no more $45 dollars spent on Orbx "evolution." I will wait for global expansion instead. As for the TrueEarth Britain South product, I am glad it occured because I was developing a blind loyalty to Orbx which from this discussion here it appears some did not deserve. Many thanks for those who care to listen. 

 

 

Welcome to the forums!

 

Your opinion is both welcome and valid. As a loyal customer you have the right to voice it.

 

However the TrueEarth series have been an outstanding commercial success for Orbx and we will continue to invest R&D into them because we feel it is edging us closer to the vision I had for immersive VFR experiences back in 2007. I think once you see what we have in store for TE USA Washington you may actually be tempted.

 

You seem to be under the impression we are abandoning our traditional landclass based series of products;  but this is not the case. OpenLC Africa whilst being delayed is still under development, we have AustraliaV2 incoming and we also plan further LC regions in many parts of the world. We would be foolish to assume every customer has the PC specs to or desire to run the TE regions so we will continue to offer a diverse series product lines.

 

Your TE GB experience under P3Dv4.4 may have been tainted by some serious bugs in that platform, which of course we have liaised with LM on and we hope that this is resolved. I do concede the product was rushed to market - we should have provided a comprehensive control panel to allow customers to tune it to their systems, and this is still being worked on and incoming soon. I am somewhat surprised to hear that you did not enjoy TE GB under X-Plane - is there a reason for that,  given it performs very smoothly on that platform?

[Taph]

Interesting discussions, just to put my personal thoughts on line, I have used Flight Simulator software by Microsoft since its first inception, because it gave me pleasure.

I have been a customer of Orbx since their early days, and they have  always treated me well, their customer service has always been excellent.

At present I am still flying on FSX through my own choice and circumstances, at some point if I am lucky I will upgrade to another platform.

 

I will still use Orbx software when I do as their products still give me pleasure and great value for money

 

Carry on the great work Orbx, you have changed my Sim world out of all recognition to the wire frame we all started with, as the saying goes you spend your money and makes your choice

 

[pmb]

4 hours ago, Autolycos said:

I was very disappointed with TrueEarth Britain South - I think considering the issues with bugs on P3D it was released prematurely - and so I uninstalled it and will wait until all issues are resolved.

 

I will never buy another TrueEarth product unless I see another global area covered and a commitment by Orbx to covering more global territory than more detailed existent scenery. I am not flying a simulator to land and walk in the streets of London for crying out loud!!  

 

There are certainly different ways of enjoying flight simulation, and I agree not everyone will need or like the TE series. However, for serious VFR flying or even sightseeing and discovering countries, I can hardly imagine a better way than via True Earth. While the Prepar3d flavor would require a boost on my system, too, which I am sure ORBX will remedy, I find the XP variant pure fun to fly and it performs excellently even over London and other major cities. This is on a more than 2 years old machine, which I would call just "normal" those days. 

 

I for one am looking forward to more TE regions and notably PNW which I am sure I'll be excited about.

 

Having said this, I understand there is still demand for LC-based products, and I am looking forward to OpenLC Africa and - in all honesty - even more impatiently OpenLC Asia as well. These are regions having been neglected in the flightsim world for a long time, even more, given they include fascinating landscapes and places and notably Asia offering quite a number of famous sim hubs those days.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[Benny]

4 hours ago, John Venema said:

I do concede the product was rushed to market

 

I don't think so, you always upgrade your product, refine them with time. So if TE GB South is optimize for P3D V4 it's only a bonus.

I ratter have it now then later with optimization.

 

And like I said before, it's way more then the city of London.

When I bought Aerofly FS2 (because of YOU by the way) I was not ready to see such big file (TB), I didn't know that photoreal was so big in size.
So I bought a dedicated 3TB HD for it.

 

That being said, I never thought I would need a bigger SSD for P3D, If I had known better the "future" of ORBX I would have bought a bigger one.
It's not the price now of buying another one, it's the re-installing everything that I don't want to.

 

Ben

[Nick Cooper]

The unrelated discussion of disk size has, as requested, been moved here

 

[Captain Lars]

On 2/25/2019 at 12:00 PM, John Venema said:

OpenLC Africa whilst being delayed is still under development, we have AustraliaV2 incoming and we also plan further LC regions in many parts of the world.

OK, we've been waiting a long time.

 

 

On 2/25/2019 at 8:32 AM, John Dow said:

Which is what the remaining areas of the world will be, there's almost no chance that the returns from developing Africa Asia etc will ever become positive.  Orbx will will continue to develop them, but they need to be accommodated into the overall commercial picture.

It's a mixed calculation.

 

On 2/25/2019 at 12:00 PM, John Venema said:

You seem to be under the impression we are abandoning our traditional landclass based series of products;  but this is not the case. [...] We would be foolish to assume every customer has the PC specs to or desire to run the TE regions so we will continue to offer a diverse series product lines.

 

I hope this is not the only reason not to abandon your LC products, because, as you said:

 

On 2/20/2019 at 2:24 PM, John Venema said:

Whilst it may seem that our early customers back in the FSX days have helped the company's success, the reality is that Orbx created the demand for those products through its marketing and quality of product and service. We made products that people wanted to buy. Had we not done so, we would not have grown as a company nor would we have attracted those customers.

 

There are a lot of simmers who like to fly big jets, across continents and even intercontinental. These customers want to buy your continental LC products. Not all simmers like VFR flying in prop planes - the screenshot forum gives a false impression in that regard. I think that OLC Africa will sell better than South America. OLC Asia will sell even better than Africa. Strategically, it would be an error to give up on the continental LC products, because you would become "invisible" for a considerable part of the simming community.

 

Thank you for doing this business and for providing us with these awesome scenery products, and for running this awesome place here.

[Benny]

26 minutes ago, Captain Lars said:

There are a lot of simmers who like to fly big jets, across continents and even intercontinental.

 

ORBX is mostly about VFR,  I always fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules) with my bigger plane. If you only or mostly fly IFR you don't need any fancy Simulator addon scenery.

[hal9000]

1 hour ago, Benny said:

If you only or mostly fly IFR you don't need any fancy Simulator addon scenery.

 

Who said this ? I like to fly IFR in the big ORBX-Areas, and I got them all. What looks good in VFR, looks fantastic in 20000 feet

 

Little Airports, thats what I don´t need of course.

 

So I also look foreward for the landclasses

 

VISA is ready

[boris4356]

I continue to use FSX, and I don't have any plans to change to a new platform.

 

I understand the need for ORBX to follow the current trends and develop projects where they see the best potential to make money.

 

I do not expect ORBX to develop any new projects for FSX, but in my opinion the OLC series is not a new project since it was introduced quite a while ago, and was supposed to be finished a while ago. 

 

I would just like to see them finish this project in a timely manner. After that I have no further expectations from ORBX.

 

Bill

 

 

[John Venema]

New OLC regions will continue to work with FSX.

 

Let me be very clear - we are currently working on, and will continue to work on LC based region products for FSX and P3D.

 

We understand our customers are a mix of VFR GA and IFR Airliners, and we do our best to cater for both groups.

 

Whilst our traditional airport focus has been smaller and regional GA/Commuter airports, this trend has been changing for a while with releases like LOWI, KSAN, ESSA and the implementation of SODE jetways. In 2019 you will see quite a few larger airports being release, much better suited to IFR/Airliners.

[Jack Sawyer]

16 minutes ago, John Venema said:

New OLC regions will continue to work with FSX.

 

Let me be very clear - we are currently working on, and will continue to work on LC based region products for FSX and P3D.

 

We understand our customers are a mix of VFR GA and IFR Airliners, and we do our best to cater for both groups.

 

Whilst our traditional airport focus has been smaller and regional GA/Commuter airports, this trend has been changing for a while with releases like LOWI, KSAN, ESSA and the implementation of SODE jetways. In 2019 you will see quite a few larger airports being release, much better suited to IFR/Airliners.

YES!!!!  Thanks John!

[Stewart Hobson]

1 hour ago, John Venema said:

We understand our customers are a mix of VFR GA and IFR Airliners, and we do our best to cater for both groups.

Thank you, John.  It should be clear to all Orbx customers that this has been the trend for quite some time, and we should be confident that this will continue.  If your "thing" is VFR GA, then there will be products for you.  If your "thing" is IFR airliners or TE products, there will be ample products to choose for you.  There should be no reason for anyone to feel they are being left out.

[david broome]

On 2/25/2019 at 3:29 PM, Benny said:

 

I don't think so, you always upgrade your product, refine them with time. So if TE GB South is optimize for P3D V4 it's only a bonus.

I ratter have it now then later with optimization.

 

And like I said before, it's way more then the city of London.

When I bought Aerofly FS2 (because of YOU by the way) I was not ready to see such big file (TB), I didn't know that photoreal was so big in size.
So I bought a dedicated 3TB HD for it.

 

That being said, I never thought I would need a bigger SSD for P3D, If I had known better the "future" of ORBX I would have bought a bigger one.
It's not the price now of buying another one, it's the re-installing everything that I don't want to.

 

Ben

 

Hi Ben, you don't need to reinstall anything. You can just point to the appropriate directory in your custom scenery folder via shortcut for any new scenery installed on a new drive.

My Xplane draws scenery from 3 different drives for example.

EDIT

Sorry I see you said P3D not Xplane, not sure how it works with P3D

[Captain Lars]

3 hours ago, John Venema said:

Let me be very clear - we are currently working on, and will continue to work on LC based region products for FSX and P3D.

 

We understand our customers are a mix of VFR GA and IFR Airliners, and we do our best to cater for both groups.

 

Whilst our traditional airport focus has been smaller and regional GA/Commuter airports, this trend has been changing for a while with releases like LOWI, KSAN, ESSA and the implementation of SODE jetways. In 2019 you will see quite a few larger airports being release, much better suited to IFR/Airliners.

Thank you very much for the info on that matter! Fantastic new indeed.

[wolfko]

4 hours ago, hal9000 said:

 

Who said this ? I like to fly IFR in the big ORBX-Areas, and I got them all. What looks good in VFR, looks fantastic in 20000 feet

 

 

 

 

Spot-on

 

 

[macca22au]

My head is reeling. This passionate discussion leaves me unsure of my moral compass. I am now 80yo and I have been simming since the very beginning, can’t even remember the first sim I bought.  I have moved with every upgrade and now have P3Dv4.4, a host of Orbx stuff and  lot of great aircraft.  Nothing like the Majestic Q400 existed back then, one of  many now great add-ons...Aus v2 and GB North for P3D v4.. are my next in line and maybe the  Milviz ATR and an A350 when something comes available.  My point:  like TC and others I can understand that cost is an issue, so please enjoy whatever version of the sim you use.  But we exist in a commercial environment and a commercial reality and publishers have to judge the market. We cannot ask Orbx, Aerosoft and others to support FSX out of sentimentality

 

 But also note, AVSIM and other freeware libraries are still getting loads of stuff for FSX and earlier.

[Christopher Low]

I am probably one of the few exceptions to the rule, but I prefer to fly VFR in the big jets!

[Flukey]

On 2/27/2019 at 3:49 AM, John Venema said:

 

 

 In 2019 you will see quite a few larger airports being release, much better suited to IFR/Airliners.

 

I like the sound of this statement!

 

While I understand that the airports designed need to bring in a profit and unique places are not always the best sellers I just hope that some of these choices are not airports already done/released 40 times over by other developers, as an example Barcelona Airport (I think it has 4 renditions out there from 4 different developers)...

 

But in saying that if unique Airport choices for IFR/Airlines are Perth, Nadi, Noumea, Vanuatu, Karratha, townsville, Mackay or a "cough" relevant/up to date Terminal Canberra "cough cough" then you'll have my money

 

 

[chumley]

Airports for IFR/Airliners - I'll believe it when I see it. As far as I can see they are just words.

[hal9000]

2 hours ago, chumley said:

Airports for IFR/Airliners

 

I got 25 of them in my FTX3 list

[chumley]

1 minute ago, hal9000 said:

 

I got 25 of them in my FTX3 list

I'm talking about the future.

[macca22au]

Chumley:  I am not sure where you are coming from, or which wicket you're playing on.  I have as many add-on airports as I can afford, and there are 10x as many still out there.  Sure I would love to see a NZAA and I understand a NZWN is in the works.  I have more than enough to keep me happy on a world wide basis as well, so I can fly Europe, the UK, North America between add-on airports.  The biggest gap is LC for Asia, and Orbx or others may be wise to contract Asian firms, but of course China is reluctant to release the necessary data. It is not for us simmers to correct world tensions, we do have to accept some continuing gaps, although some excellent China airports are being released.

Meanwhile landing the Q400 on the centreline is still a major challenge for me.  The rest of the airport hardly matters.

[chumley]

I was simply making the point that I will believe it when new IFR/Airliner airports when I see it. The statement was in relation to his lordships comment that more are in the works for 2019. 

Frankly I really don't care what is released or when or for that matter if. 

I am happy on the very limited occasions I bother to fire up the FS to plod around Australia/New Zealand and have no burning desire to fly in Europe hence the lack of sceneries/airports in my FTX3 list for that part of the world and even less to fly in North America or Asia.

As for NZAA - that has dropped by ORBX long ago in favour of the anticipated Flightbeam offering which in turn was back burnered while NZAA was redeveloped. Don't expect too much from them anytime soon and don't bother to ask because they will shut you down quickly.

They are flagging March for Wellington but they didn't indicate a year so don't hold your breath.

A comment on China - they can build a full real world international airport quicker than many flightsim developers manage to churn out a scenery file. They started the new Beijing airport in December 2014 and it opens later this year - 4 runways and a terminal to cater for millions of passengers and the infrastructure to support it whereas in this country we a flat out building an additional runway at YBBN in more than 8 years and Western Sydney will have one runway and a couple of portacabins for a terminal by around 2026 if they ever get around to it.

[Nick Cooper]

Thanks for such a clear indication of which wicket you're playing on.

It seems that the topic has nothing left to offer.

Thanks to those who contributed.

[John Venema]

His lordship has just given you a once month posting ban Chumley. 

 

Show some respect.