TrueEarth US Washington - Official Announcement!

[Mike707]

I am totally looking forward to getting this product. This is a great start for U.S. scenery and I am looking forward to Oregon, Northern California, and Southern California later this year. 

[Woogey]

 I’ve been waiting so long for this and it is absolutely gorgeous! However I can’t help but notice there seems to be some random default X plane skyscrapers popping up in all of the city sceneries. As a local it definitely detracts from the reality of these skylines. In fact the skyscrapers that are the tallest in each of the Sceneries do not exist in real life. I am hoping that you guys will find a way to exclude the default auto-gen popping through.

 

-Preston

[John Dow]

51 minutes ago, Woogey said:

 I’ve been waiting so long for this and it is absolutely gorgeous! However I can’t help but notice there seems to be some random default X plane skyscrapers popping up in all of the city sceneries. As a local it definitely detracts from the reality of these skylines. In fact the skyscrapers that are the tallest in each of the Sceneries do not exist in real life. I am hoping that you guys will find a way to exclude the default auto-gen popping through.

 

-Preston

 

Hi Preston

 

JV is in talks with all PNW cities affected by this X-Plane feature to ensure their cities are compliant with the X-Plane scenery by the release date. 

[TymK]

BTW, there's one question I've been meaning to ask: do the POIs for the region include visual objects for the major navaids, such as VOR stations?

 

Tym

 

[aero-3fsx]

13 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

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

Considering the location I would have winter and summer if all 4 seasons are not technically possible (HDD & DL data volume) or priced through the roof.

The mountains themselves must have snow in the winter or P3D will look as limited as X-Plane which I have avoided for this very reason.

With a 2020 release date the P3D version then has 6-18 month later release than X-Plane.

This alone suggests maybe, just maybe seasons will be included.

The HD textures would be a must for me and I would not even bother with the 4 season low res version idea that was tossed around some months ago on these forums.

The addon option for extra seasons is the fairest idea. If you want it, you pay extra for it.

Another idea is to offer the extra seasons at cost some time in the future when it is deemed financially viable for OrbX

 

[kevinfirth]

2 minutes ago, aero-3fsx said:

Considering the location I would have winter and summer if all 4 seasons are not technically possible (HDD & DL data volume) or priced through the roof.

The mountains themselves must have snow in the winter or P3D will look as limited as X-Plane which I have avoided for this very reason.

With a 2020 release date the P3D version then has 6-18 month later release than X-Plane.

This alone suggests maybe, just maybe seasons will be included.

The HD textures would be a must for me and I would not even bother with the 4 season low res version idea that was tossed around some months ago on these forums.

The addon option for extra seasons is the fairest idea. If you want it, you pay extra for it.

Id have to agree the HD textures would be a must.  As for addon seasons, ive made my preference clear, I guess it may happen at some point in the future, if there's sufficient demand and it becomes profitable? Que sera sera on that one....

[kevinfirth]

6 minutes ago, TymK said:

 

Anyone else left wondering what John meant by that?

 

BTW, there's one question I've been meaning to ask: do the POIs for the region include visual objects for the major navaids, such as VOR stations?

 

Tym

 

I assumed he meant aircraft for XP that were equivalent to some P3D addons?

[Woogey]

Another great aspect of the X-plane version of this scenery is ironically an Airport that ORBX did not do.  Airfoil Labs did an amazing rendition of Arlington Regional airport, home of Glasair Aviation and the NW EAA fly-in.  I really can't wait to see how it blends in with the greater ORBX TE.  I also hope that the many ORBX payware airports for this region get the conversion in quick succession.  Hoping for Skagit KBVS, Felts Field KSFF, and Anacortes 74S, Oh who am I kidding I am going to buy them ALL over again   ........and another $500 goes to ORBX, You Bastards!  LOL  I love you guys, thanks for spoiling us NorWesters.  

 

-Preston

[forostar]

 Holy mother of...!!!!!!! Day 1 Purchase!!!!!!

[tatankamani]

+1; Day one purchase, of course !

[EricM]

When and where can I purchase?

[wain71]

just saw this today...wow.....can't wait for it....I think the downloads are going to busy on day 1....

[Woogey]

Attached below are some shots I took to highlight a couple discrepant buildings that should be removed.  I hope the team can be successful at this.........alternatively provide a file structure that allows us to turn off the Downtown buildings for compatibility with the DD Skyline.  As I have already invested in that superb product, this would be the preferred route.  I know that compatibility is not planned, but it would be commendable.  Complimentary should be the rule, not competitive.  Just my 2 cents.

 

-Preston  

 

 

[John Venema]

Rainer Square Tower is under construction and planned for completion next year, so it’s staying.

 

 

I’ll check why the other tall tower is included and report back.

 

As far as making our cityscape ‘compatible’ with DD Seattle, that’s not going to happen for a number of reasons. Firstly our cityscape is much superior in terms of performance, and secondly our models and surrounding autogen buildings and facades are more efficient and feature PBR texturing with three optional levels of texture detail. We are not going to ‘dumb down’ our downtown Seattle so you can use another company’s older and less FPS-friendly version. We don’t want reports of slide shows from customers so therefore we are being open and upfront about not using DD’s version.

[Woogey]

Thanks for the Reply JV.  With this "Future Proofing" plan with the new building, will you be removing the Alaskan Way Viaduct from the waterfront then?  It is the Double Decker bridge that runs along the entire waterfront.  It has been replaced with a tunnel, and is currently 3/4 of the way demolished.  It would look very strange to have it in existence along with the new building.

 

-Preston

[John Venema]

No we’re not removing the Alaskan Way Viaduct because we don’t know what is going to replace it and we’ll need to wait for an NAIP imagery refresh to get the new ground terrain.

 

We can add its replacement in a future service pack.

[John Venema]

Ok the other tall skyscraper is actually in an early construction phase so we will replace it as a work site with a crane.

[onlyforbrian]

On 4/24/2019 at 7:11 AM, 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...!

I have all the GB TrueEarth and I have an I7-3770 and 1060, and it runs fine

[onlyforbrian]

On 4/24/2019 at 8:15 AM, 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 

C'mon John...what's a few more thousand? lol... kidding haha

[Richard Lincoln]

As excited as you may get, Do Not promote Non Orbx Products on an Orbx Official Announcement. 

[Raymar]

Any chance for creating a version for Aerofly FS2 someday?

 

Regards,

Ray

[Lhoya]

Hello,

 

Can you tell me how many helipads in the entire scenery ?

[olderndirt]

Love the HD package/addon thing.  Will it be a plugin to be enabled or disabled or will it run 100% with the main scenery?

[alex330]

All that looks more than stunning, more than gorgeous. Finally we are where many of us have been yearning to be for long. I will have to wait for the P3D version, but I really love what I see here. Just beautiful!

[fabs79]

Any chance to see this in Aerofly someday? 

[John Venema]

We won’t commit to an AFS2 version until we see how the TE GB conversion is received.

[BradB]

On 4/25/2019 at 12:34 PM, John Venema said:

No we’re not removing the Alaskan Way Viaduct because we don’t know what is going to replace it and we’ll need to wait for an NAIP imagery refresh to get the new ground terrain.

 

We can add its replacement in a future service pack.

Here is a image of a proposed future use of the former Alaskan Way Viaduct property :

 

 

Cheers

 

John

[fabs79]

11 hours ago, John Venema said:

We won’t commit to an AFS2 version until we see how the TE GB conversion is received.

That's understandable. Guess I'll have to advertise True Earth GB for Aerofly wherever I can then. 

[Explorer]

18 hours ago, Lhoya said:

Hello,

 

Can you tell me how many helipads in the entire scenery ?

 

I'm afraid that there are too few helicopter pilots among the developers and customers.  1,174 custom-modeled PBR 3D POIs, 42.6 million buildings ... It would be nice to find at least the major hospitals with heliports.  I'm really looking forward to the scenery, but I do not think we'll get more than a handful of heliports. I think after the purchase, helicopter pilots have to build a lot themselves again. Thanks anyway for the nice product.

 

Heliports ->  https://www.airnav.com/airports/us/WA?type=H&use=R

 

 

 

[jasonr71]

I have a PC running an i7@4ghz with a 970 GTX 4GB graphics card, and I can run the True Earth UK version at a minimum 25fps.
Will I have to upgrade my PC, if I wish to add this True Earth Washington State scenery?

[Paul K]

A minor point but could you replace the oil tankers at the container terminals with container ships ? Spectacular scenery, though I'm just starting out with X-Plane, and T.E. GB is my first priority.

[NoLonger]

19 hours ago, John Venema said:

We won’t commit to an AFS2 version until we see how the TE GB conversion is received.

 

Fully understood. So I hope TE GB for AFS2 will be a huge success. ;) I had another look at P3D and XP today but those two don't come close to AFS2's performance... AFS2 with extremely dense scenery (TE NL) runs a ton better than XP with medium density (TE GB). And after flying over TE NL in AFS2 for quite some time there is no going back for me to anything less but extremely dense scenery. ;) So I'll keep my fingers crossed! TE GB for AFS2 will keep me entertained for quite some time, I am sure, and I'm happy already it's being worked on, but thinking about the future of AFS2 I really hope we'll see more TE regions for it!

[skydvdan]

On 4/24/2019 at 7:15 AM, 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 

 

I understand why DD Seattle City XP won't be compatible, however will DD Seattle Airports XP(KSEA SeaTac, KPAE Paine, KBFI Boeing, KRNT Renton and S50 Auburn) be compatible?

[DocBird]

10 hours ago, Explorer said:

 

I'm afraid that there are too few helicopter pilots among the developers and customers.  1,174 custom-modeled PBR 3D POIs, 42.6 million buildings ... It would be nice to find at least the major hospitals with heliports.  I'm really looking forward to the scenery, but I do not think we'll get more than a handful of heliports. I think after the purchase, helicopter pilots have to build a lot themselves again. Thanks anyway for the nice product.

 

Heliports ->  https://www.airnav.com/airports/us/WA?type=H&use=R

 

 

 

Hi Explorer, 

 

Why don't you start to build them yourself? Download WED (the X-Plane world editor) and create the hospitals yourself and share them with the whole community. But be careful: This is addictin!!!

Many happy landings,

DocBird 

[rsmith6621a]

John,

 

Will this project see P3dv4 anytime soon.

 

Randy

[John Venema]

Not anytime soon. We have to catch up with the TE GB series first and that will take up the second half of 2019 due to key staff not coming on board until September. I'd expect it for P3Dv4 early in 2020 and from there we will do our best to catch up with all TE regions until they are in sync.

 

In the meantime, there is an excellent landclass-based PNW region for P3Dv4 which does a pretty good job of depicting the area.

[Mikael Cedergren]

I assume you will start converting old P3D PNW Airports to X-plane much like with Airports in the UK. Will there be any sort of discount for us who purchased the P3D Airports or do we have to purchase them again for X-plane? I have purchased them all for P3D. The reason I ask is that I would be perfectly happy to continue to use P3D and True Earth PNW and all my PNW Airports but 2020 is a very long time to wait for the P3D version! The option of course is to switch to X-plane but purchasing all those Airports again at full price…. hmm I dont know.     

[skydvdan]

1 hour ago, Flygsidan said:

I assume you will start converting old P3D PNW Airports to X-plane much like with Airports in the UK. Will there be any sort of discount for us who purchased the P3D Airports or do we have to purchase them again for X-plane? I have purchased them all for P3D. The reason I ask is that I would be perfectly happy to continue to use P3D and True Earth PNW and all my PNW Airports but 2020 is a very long time to wait for the P3D version! The option of course is to switch to X-plane but purchasing all those Airports again at full price…. hmm I dont know.     

They are giving a 40% discount on previously purchased airports.

[JimmiG]

Will existing airports be adjusted to fit the photographic textures?

 

I've been messing around with photo scenery and OSM data in X-Plane but it's so messy and never looks 100% perfect everywhere - trees growing on runways and in cities, runways misaligned, just the same boxy autogen buildings everywhere etc. This will completely revolutionize how I experience X-Plane. A shame they still haven't implemented proper VFR ATC and AI traffic, but I guess you can't have it all.

[Steve Li]

I think TE Washington in P3D version has a way higher demand than TE GB Central & North. You guys should make TE Washington in higher priority and release it before making the TE GB Central&North.

 

By the way I had a PC with CPU 7700HQ (2.8GHz/3.6GHz in turbo booth), Nvidia 1070, 32Gb memory, 1TB Samsung SSD. We I fly in TE GB south in P3D v4.3 around London area, the FPS is very low ( < 5 FPS). In other rural areas, it runs OK with FPS of 10 ~ 15. All the scenery settings are in MAX. Is this normal with such low FPS? What kind of PC can run smoothly (FPS ~ 25) in the center of London with MAX scenery setting? Thanks!

 

Steve