TrueEarth US Washington - Official Announcement!

[Aimee Sanjari]

 

The most anticipated X-Plane announcement of 2019 is here! Following on from last week's sneak peek video, here are the details.

 

 

 

TrueEarth US Washington (TEUSWA) covers a huge 91,875 square miles (237,956 km²) which is most of the state of Washington, USA and also parts of British Columbia, Canada and Oregon, USA. Please refer to the coverage map below for the specific boundary. The place markers shown are where we have added cityscape 3D models for Seattle/Bellevue, Everett, Victoria, Spokane, Tacoma, Olympia and Yakima. There are many hundreds of POI models also throughout the entire state.

 

We have continued to develop PBR autogen technology especially for X-Plane which allows for region-specific houses to be placed accurately to ensure maximum immersion.

 

What really makes TrueEarth Washington unique are the Points of Interest. We have over 1,000 iconic landmarks - from Victoria and its beautiful harbour to the Seattle city skyline, its stadiums and vibrant waterfront – all based on 2018 and 2019 data. You won’t find a more comprehensive and up-to-date Washington flying experience anywhere!

 

Features:

• 91,875 square miles (237,956 km²) of hand-corrected, crisp, color-matched aerial imagery
• New PBR autogen technology developed especially for X-Plane 11, allowing thousands of realistic looking PNW-themed houses and buildings to be placed at a realistic height with minimal impact on performance
• 1,174 custom-modeled PBR 3D POIs!
• Over 500 million trees placed correctly based on detailed land use and high-resolution height data
• 42.6 million buildings at their correct height and location where data is available
• Major Cityscapes for Seattle, Bellevue, Victoria, Tacoma and significant buildings added to Everett, Olympia, Spokane, Kennewick and Yakima
• VFR landmarks such as masts, wind farms, churches, power-lines, and lighthouses are all accurately placed.
• Hand-placed and custom modelled 3D landmarks placed throughout the scenery such as bridges, skyscrapers, stadiums, cranes, tanks, piers farms, and monuments – this is especially noticeable in city areas
• Sharp and detailed 10-meter mesh brings out stunning detail in natural features such as mountains, coastlines and valleys
• Superb watermasking along the entire coastline and most rivers and lakes
• Accurate road and rail network blended into the aerial imagery with moving traffic
• Summer season only with full night-lighting supported

 

 

In addition to these features, users will get free service packs for life as well as more POI models in future updates.

 

Coverage Map:

 

 

TrueEarth US Washington will be available mid-June from OrbxDirect for AUD $69.95 (approx. USD $49.70/ €44.25 / £38.20). Please note this does not include the optional HD pack which will need to be purchased separately - see below for more details.

 

Here are some screenshots of TrueEarth US Washington taken by JV - enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* Please note that due to the inclusion of a full and comprehensive Seattle Cityscape, TrueEarth US Washington is not compatible with the DD Seattle City addon for XP11. We will endeavour to make it compatible with DD Seattle Airports for XP11 and more information will be posted closer to release.

 

 

Optional Enhancement Pack

 

TrueEarth USA Washington uses efficient and optimised autogen, tree, 3D model and building facade textures for great performance on almost all mid-spec PCs, however for more powerful PCs with GPUs with at least 11GB of VRAM, we recommend purchasing the optional Enhancement Pack for better fidelity and clarity.

 

This pack includes:

• 1024 and 2048 texture options for all 3D models and autogen
• 2048 textures for the Terraflora trees
• BONUS WA56 Israel's Farm Private Strip included
• Enhanced replacement and additional 3D buildings for the Seattle urban airports, designed to enhance the XP11 Gateway airports
• A control panel so you can toggle between SD, HD and UHD textures

 

We recommend a PC with an i5/i7/i9 class CPU clocked to at least 4.6GHz or higher and a Nvidia 1080 class GPU with at least 11GB OF VRAM to use the HD Pack. We will be previewing more detailed screenshots from the HD Pack as development continues.

 

The TrueEarth US Washington optional Enhancement Pack will be an additional $14.95 AUD (approx. USD $10 / €9.45 / £8.15)

 

 

The following screenshots have been taken using the Enhancement Pack:

 

 

[Nosferatu]

Bought!!!!!

[TigerTigerM]

Superb!

TTM

[NoLonger]

Wow, that looks totally awesome...! But I can't imagine this will run well on my PC (which has the minimum specs  of i7 4790K@4.5 and a 1080). Maybe in the future whenever I can afford a new PC. But nonetheless, I can't remember seeing more detailed flightsim pics...!

[Jack Sawyer]

I can’t believe what I’m seeing.  The bar has been raised yet again.  Day one buy no doubt about it and this opens a whole new world of comic ideas!  Thanks Orbx.

[Caluma65]

Oh wow!!!  I rarely fly in the United States, having seen this....i'm not sure why!!  Cheers,

 

Calum

[Morlun]

Any comment on the size per tile compared to TEGB (especially HD)? 

Already searching for a bigger SSD to be able to download on day 1.

[John Venema]

The HD Pack does not affect the ortho tiles at all, only autogen, facade and 3D model textures.

 

HDD footprint should be ~210GB but we will publish exact figures closer to release.

[Traveller]

New Age.

Now it's time to move on to a more current RIG, for those who can make that passage.

[palple]

That's a wonderful news!!!

 

Glad to see that Spokane is covered, I hope that the two Spokane airports will come too as a separate product!

 

Only a couple of questions:

 

1) Is there the possibility of future expansions with Vancouver area in the north and Mt Hood in the South?

 

2) Will there be a way to make it compatible with DD Seattle airports?

[John Venema]

1a. No, not unless the Canadian government begins to sell data at a reasonable cost. The tiny area we used in this region cost over $20,000 for 1.5m/pixel resolution.

 

1b. Mt Hood will be in the TE US Oregon region.

 

2. Read the above announcement more carefully 

[Caluma65]

1 hour ago, J van E said:

Wow, that looks totally awesome...! But I can't imagine this will run well on my PC (which has the minimum specs  of i7 4790K@4.5 and a 1080). Maybe in the future whenever I can afford a new PC. But nonetheless, I can't remember seeing more detailed flightsim pics...!

 

Hi J van E,

 

Firstly apologies for seeking you out but your comment has resulted in alarm bells ringing in my ears.

 

I also have an i7 4790K @ 4.0 and was planning on replacing my current graphics card in the coming weeks (specs below) with a 1080ti, as well as throwing some additional RAM on to my motherboard, before setting off on my first ever X-Plane adventure.  I had thought that this would be sufficient to run XPlane with Orbx sceneries very well, with sliders set mostly to the right?  However, your reservations are making me question whether I would actually be better off upgrading the whole shooting match.

 

I'm loathed to spend £700 on a new graphics card and RAM if my system will still struggle to produce good results in X-Plane with Orbx sceneries installed.  Sounds like it may be back to the drawing-board for me.  I'm not overly technical so any advice would be much appreciated as the Orbx TE sceneries would be a must-have for me.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

Calum 

[Ewout van Linge]

This looks fantastic. Will there be a Prepar3d v4 later on?

[John Venema]

Yes in 2020

[Cowboy10uk1]

Oh dammit, Aimee and John, you’re costing me money yet again.........

 

Honestly this looks fantastic, and it’s fair to say the sneak peak last week was instrumental in my decision to move fully to the Xplane 11 simulator from P3D, despite the huge expense if had in purchasing ALL the European scenery from ORBX in P3D

 

True Earth really is that much of a game changer.

[FILOU]

3 hours ago, J van E said:

Wow, that looks totally awesome...! But I can't imagine this will run well on my PC (which has the minimum specs  of i7 4790K@4.5 and a 1080). Maybe in the future whenever I can afford a new PC. But nonetheless, I can't remember seeing more detailed flightsim pics...!

Hello, 

You will not have any problems...

I use I7 4790K Stock / 24GB Ram DDR3 / GTX 1080 / 4K Monitor

[palple]

2 hours ago, John Venema said:

1a. No, not unless the Canadian government begins to sell data at a reasonable cost. The tiny area we used in this region cost over $20,000 for 1.5m/pixel resolution.

 

1b. Mt Hood will be in the TE US Oregon region.

 

2. Read the above announcement more carefully 

 

Thank you! Well, I really hope that the Canadian government will give you access to that data at a reasonable cost, it would be wonderful to have a TE BC!

[Caluma65]

7 minutes ago, FILOU said:

Hello, 

You will not have any problems...

I use I7 4790K Stock / 24GB Ram DDR3 / GTX 1080 / 4K Monitor

Thank you sir - this answers my question also!!  Cheers,

 

Calum

[FILOU]

1 minute ago, Caluma65 said:

Thank you sir - this answers my question also!!  Cheers,

 

Calum

Hello,

You were faster than me, I also wanted to answer you...

In your case a new graphics card and ram

[Caluma65]

2 minutes ago, FILOU said:

Hello,

You were faster than me, I also wanted to answer you...

In your case a new graphics card and ram

Gentleman, thanks.

 

Nick kindly suggested the same but the comment above made me panic that I was about to waste a lot of money.  Panic over.  Thanks, again.

 

Calum

[Sebbe]

Amazing. But the minimum specs are really crazy, there are only 2 graphic cards capable of that with the 1080ti and 2080ti? 

[Nick Cooper]

 

The higher spec recommendation is only for the HD pack, the "normal" product

does not require abnormally high powered hardware.

Apparently Filou has access to the product and has offered his advice.

[FILOU]

8 minutes ago, Sebbe said:

Amazing. But the minimum specs are really crazy, there are only 2 graphic cards capable of that with the 1080ti and 2080ti? 

Even with 25 fps... XP is very smooth...

[david broome]

Stunning and a day 1 purchase for certain.

OrbX have massively raised the bar with these Xplane sceneries.

My only reservation is the night lighting which is the only aspect of OrbX scenery I have seen done better by other devs, especially the cityscapes.

 

Couple of Questions.

Will the HD pack be made available separately as an upgrade to the stock pack?

Will we get some examples of the difference in models and also performance?

 

On TE Britain

John, will TE Central SP1 be out before April end?

[John Venema]

Performance data and minimum specs...

 

Base pack - i3/i5/i7 class CPU at 3.0Ghz or higher, GTX980 Class GPU with 6GB VRAM or higher, 16GB system ram, Windows, Mac or Linux

 

HD Pack -  i5/i7/i9 class CPU clocked to at least 4.6GHz or higher and a Nvidia 1080 class GPU with at least 11GB OF VRAM. Windows, Mac or Linux.

 

Performance (my PC specs below)

XP11 settings: world objects to max, reflections zero, 2xAA FXAA,  Visual Quality HDR, Texture Quality High (Compressed), 4K resolution

Scenery LOD set to either 82% or 100% using the “VMI-Twick VR” FlywithLUA script (other scripts are available).

Assume therefore the LOD 100% figures are if you run XP11 default with the above slider settings and with no scripts.

Addons used: xVision, UWXP 2.4, XPRealistic Pro, Laminar default aircraft (all types)

 

Base Pack - GPU Memory usage in XP11 ~8GB

Seattle city, scenery LOD 82% - 50fps (LOD 82% has almost zero impact on visual quality but +15fps)

Seattle city, scenery LOD 100% - 35-40fps

Rural areas, scenery LOD 82-100% - 50-60fps

 

HD Pack - GPU Memory usage in XP11 ~ 10.8GB

Seattle 1024 textures LOD 82% - 35-45fps

Seattle 1024 textures LOD 100% - 25-35fps

Rural areas 1024 textures LOD 82-100% - 45-55fps

 

Seattle area 2048 textures LOD 82% - 20-25fps, stutters as GPU memory is cycled (SLI would avoid this)

Seattle area 2048 textures LOD 100% - 15-20fps, stutters as GPU memory is cycled (SLI would avoid this)

 

Whilst we provide 2048 textures, this is mainly for future-proofing for newer GPUs coming in a year or so. Visual quality at 1024 is superb

 

 

Will you need to upgrade your PC? Only if you have less than 6GB GPU memory, slower than 3GHz CPU and less than 16GB system memory.

[kevinfirth]

"Whilst we provide 2048 textures, this is mainly for future-proofing for newer GPUs coming in a year or so."

 

This is good thinking

 

[onlyforbrian]

I'm glad to hear you'll try and make DD Seattle airports compatible. Do you have a list of airports you've worked into the scenery? For instance KAWO. Also, looking at the map, it would be so nice if you were to do an addon update in the future to stretch the map in the north a bit to include Vancouver City, and the valley from Vancouver to Hope BC.  Also, into the south a bit, to include the city of Portland. Fingers crossed. Thanks.

[Boss1]

I am also glad that you will try to make DD Seattle Airports compatible!

[onlyforbrian]

By the way John, I was surprised to see this announced. I thought you guys were working on TrueEarth Netherlands for X-Plane...what's the timeline for that? Thanks

 

[onlyforbrian]

4 hours ago, John Venema said:

1a. No, not unless the Canadian government begins to sell data at a reasonable cost. The tiny area we used in this region cost over $20,000 for 1.5m/pixel resolution.

 

1b. Mt Hood will be in the TE US Oregon region.

 

2. Read the above announcement more carefully 

You can't get enough detail from google maps to do Vancouver city and area?

[Daan]

My god Orbx...... STUNNING!

 

This will definitely be a day-one purchase... The only thing left now is for me to upgrade to 16 (or even 32) GB's of RAM.

 

[Traveller]

PNW has always been a sales champion. I think that this version, even if it is little more limited, for the reasons already exposed, it will be very well sold.

The great attraction of simulated regional aviation are the valleys, mountains ... mainly the bush flights.

So, in my understanding, after the GB project, of course US Central-Nor-Northwest is commercially the order of all.

[Stian Rolandsen]

Mind blowing stuff! 

[Dmitriy Kozyrev]

3 hours ago, John Venema said:

Yes in 2020

 

Will there be seasons in P3D version?

[FireRx]

I asked that, and got mum. 

[NoLonger]

5 hours ago, Caluma65 said:

However, your reservations are making me question whether I would actually be better off upgrading the whole shooting match.

 

3 hours ago, FILOU said:

Even with 25 fps... XP is very smooth...

 

I don't say this to start the same old discussion all over again but: smoothness is in the eye of the beholder. Some can live with an fps of 20 to 25, others can't. I've been spoiled by Aerofly FS 2 and for me 20-25 doesn't cut it. However, this is very personal! We all know there are a lot of flight simmers who are utterly happy with 25 fps and they should be! Who am I to say they can't enjoy it. But my preferred kind of smooth needs a lot more than 25. (Take note: smooth has nothing to do with fps: even an fps of 1 can be called smooth as long as the fps is absolutely steady. )

 

Anyway, maybe TE US will have me reinstall XP 11 and check its performance once more... If the scenery looks THAT good I might be able to live with <30 fps. In the meantime I will check out John's used "XP11.30 Addons:  xVision Beta4, ‘Impressive’ preset | Ultra Weather XP | XPRealistic Pro | ASXP". Because I am sure XP 11 didn't look this good out of the box last time I checked it.

 

 

[kevinfirth]

41 minutes ago, Dmitriy Kozyrev said:

 

Will there be seasons in P3D version?

I suspect alnost certainly not, but try and enjoy what we do get...if seasons come consider it a bonus..

[Graffix75]

*picks jaw from floor .....

[Chuckers]

Wow! I am looking forward to this release. It will be great for GA and Bush flying for sure. Great job ORBX! It is because your products that  I now utilize X-Plane in addition to Prepar3D.

 

Chuck Rogers

[Sir Ash]

@John Venema - How much system RAM do you have? 32GB? I've got 16GB and manage to just get 20fps in London using the same graphics settings. X-Plane seems to need a lot of RAM for heavy addon scenery.