XP11 TEGB uncompressed?

[martinlest]

I bought all the TEGB scenery for X-Plane 11 some while back, but seem to recall that there was a discussion about ORBX releasing an uncompressed version, for the many users who have plenty of disc space! (I am not saying that ORBX ever agreed to this - just that it has been talked about). The scenery looks good from on high, but for VFR flying, as has been commented many times, it looks rather blurred. From what I remember that is mostly due to the compression that was used?

 

I had the whole of the UK covered with Ortho4XP terrain before I decided that I'd give TEGB a go. By ditching the Ortho4XP scenery for TEGB I have made gains, and losses: gains in that colour matching of one area with its neighbours is no longer an issue with TEGB (and some nice autogen of course); also, no clouds (though I had managed to edit most of them out of Ortho4XP using Photoshop). Losses in that, as has been said, the terrain now looks far less sharp than it did. There's also an fps hit, I find.

 

Is making an uncompressed version of TEGB available even a possibility? Wouldn't that help with the rather blurred effect of the terrain? I see some people in their frustration are even replacing the ORBX image files with their own Ortho4XP dds files, and getting much sharper terrain as a result ('before' and 'after' videos/screenshots). I don't want to go down that road for now and am still hoping ORBX might present some kind of solution to the rather unfocussed scenery we currently get. In other respects it all looks great - it seems such a shame not to have the same sharpness we get with Ortho4XP (I used zl17, and zl18/19 in some areas: TEGB at the moment looks a bit like Ortho zl15 has been used, especially when you are flying near the ground). Would it be impossible to have a set of uncompressed files available for download for those who have bought the packages? (Would that make an even greater impact on the frame rates though? Currently, I already lose 10-20% fps compared to Ortho4XP, and have pulled sliders down as far as I am willing to go).

 

Is ORBX XP11 Ireland also going to be released in this compressed state, BTW?

 

Thanks.  

[martinlest]

OK, fine. Not sure why ORBX choose (apparently) to ignore this question (especially as I have bought all of TEGB so far, so am a 'paying customer'). 8 days is surely long enough to wait for a response? It's not a specific 'support request', so I am guessing this is the right forum....Even if the points have been answered elsewhere, a link to relevant comments would have been useful.

 

A number of people asking about this on XP11 forums at the moment (and voicing their disappointment with blurry textures), so not as if it's only me who is (was?) interested.... Oh well, so be it.

 

 

[Matt McGee]

martinlest,

I'm just a beta tester and don't know about any Orbx plans.  I just saw your post and am replying as a fellow Orbx user.   I also don't know the specifics of how staff responds to posts, but as you noted, this is the "General Discussion" forum and I assume the staff prioritize the Support forums over general ones.

 

There is a thread about TrueEarth Washington (pinned to the top of this forum) where the Orbx CEO is asking for feedback about resolution vs download size for future products.

So it appears Orbx is trying to gauge what customers are looking for.

 

I see lots of people posting about how great they think their custom ZL18/19 orthos are.  However, I rarely see any consideration for the logistics and economics of the significantly larger file sizes of increasing resolutions.  Orbx has to pay to store and deliver all that data.  It also has to legally acquire the imagery to start with, so that availability and cost is a factor too.  I'm guessing the acquisition, storage, and delivery of everything is more expensive than most people might think, even it they appreciate how much bigger the file sizes go up with each resolution tier.

 

I also get the impression that some people forget to consider the quality and accuracy of Orbx's custom autogen and 3D Points Of Interest.  Those 3D elements have a big affect on the look of scenery, especially at lower altitudes.  Generating those extra elements also puts more demand on PCs than just the ortho data, so fps may drop.  3D vegetation and buildings also cover up what is below them, which just complicates the cost versus benefit balance when considering higher resolutions.

 

Sorry I don't know the answer to your main question about uncompressed data.

[Doug Sawatzky]

 

[Jon Clarke]

4 hours ago, Matt McGee said:

martinlest,

I'm just a beta tester and don't know about any Orbx plans.  I just saw your post and am replying as a fellow Orbx user.   I also don't know the specifics of how staff responds to posts, but as you noted, this is the "General Discussion" forum and I assume the staff prioritize the Support forums over general ones.

 

There is a thread about TrueEarth Washington (pinned to the top of this forum) where the Orbx CEO is asking for feedback about resolution vs download size for future products.

So it appears Orbx is trying to gauge what customers are looking for.

 

I see lots of people posting about how great they think their custom ZL18/19 orthos are.  However, I rarely see any consideration for the logistics and economics of the significantly larger file sizes of increasing resolutions.  Orbx has to pay to store and deliver all that data.  It also has to legally acquire the imagery to start with, so that availability and cost is a factor too.  I'm guessing the acquisition, storage, and delivery of everything is more expensive than most people might think, even it they appreciate how much bigger the file sizes go up with each resolution tier.

 

I also get the impression that some people forget to consider the quality and accuracy of Orbx's custom autogen and 3D Points Of Interest.  Those 3D elements have a big affect on the look of scenery, especially at lower altitudes.  Generating those extra elements also puts more demand on PCs than just the ortho data, so fps may drop.  3D vegetation and buildings also cover up what is below them, which just complicates the cost versus benefit balance when considering higher resolutions.

 

Sorry I don't know the answer to your main question about uncompressed data.

Very well put Matt. The imagery rework is only a part of the product, the vast majority of work is in those areas of autogen/Objects/POI etc , that you mention, and each of those elements will  potentially affect fps, versus the much lesser detailed Orth4xp versions and their "diminished" overlays.

[Morlun]

There was a topic stating that source material better than ZL 17 would be too expensive to acquire. The blurriness is not due to it "only" beeing ZL17 which i think is more than enough for VFR but the image compression to keep distributing costs low and i would love to see a (paid?) option to get the images uncompressed before conversion. I can understand that ORBX has to have a look on their traffic consumption, but uncompressed pictures could make it look so more realistic (there are some parts in TE GB and WA where you don't notice the compression and they look even better).

I would always prefer TE over Ortho4XP mostly because of the great overlay.

 

The FPS hit you get is due to the autogen which is vastly improved from anything O4XP could give you, more buildings cost more fps if they get too low you have to reduce the density.

[John Venema]

You cannot have uncompressed ortho textures in both XP11 or P3D. Both sims use compressed DDS and BGL/BMP formats.

 

If you are referring to us creating installers that don’t compress the ortho before delivery to the customer PC, that is a whole other issue and we’re looking long term at a re-release of TEGB using better 2018 source imagery which will provide much clearer results flying below 1000ft. We may release that as an upgrade pack with as little compression in the lifecycle as possible, but the cost of the download will definitely be passed onto the customers.

[Fizzelle]

2 hours ago, John Venema said:

You cannot have uncompressed ortho textures in both XP11 or P3D. Both sims use compressed DDS and BGL/BMP formats.

 

If you are referring to us creating installers that don’t compress the ortho before delivery to the customer PC, that is a whole other issue and we’re looking long term at a re-release of TEGB using better 2018 source imagery which will provide much clearer results flying below 1000ft. We may release that as an upgrade pack with as little compression in the lifecycle as possible, but the cost of the download will definitely be passed onto the customers.

 

That's fine John, I'd be very willing to pay that cost.

[Morlun]

On 7/24/2019 at 12:06 PM, John Venema said:

We may release that as an upgrade pack with as little compression in the lifecycle as possible, but the cost of the download will definitely be passed onto the customers.

 

This is awesome! At leas i am more than willing to pay a higher cost for an even better TE experience.

[martinlest]

Quote

we’re looking long term at a re-release of TEGB using better 2018 source imagery which will provide much clearer results flying below 1000ft. We may release that as an upgrade pack with as little compression in the lifecycle as possible

 

John, that is fantastic news - it's certainly going to please an awful lot of people!  Just hope it's not too far down the line: I am not getting any younger!

 

Thanks to others who replied too... I am not about to swap out my TEGB image files for Ortho4XP either, but screenshots using Ortho4XP (zl17) compared with ORBX do show a distinctly less blurry terrain.