active True Earth North California is WAY TOO RED

[Howellerman]

True Earth North California is just way to "red". Landscapes that should be the color of straw (which in summer is most of NA CA) are either pink or deep red. While I LOVE the detail of True Earth, these abnormal color shifts are huge distractions. I submitted some information a while back in a separate thread, but thought I would try again using high lights (low lights?) screen shots.

 

First up, a shot from the Lake Tahoe area. In this shot we have Orbx NA California to the front of the aircraft, Orbx True Earth North California in the middle, and Misha's KTVL behind. The differences are pretty clear, no?

 

 

The next shot is from the same flight (straight up noon, by the way), just slightly north. This highlights the TE NC area that protrudes into Nevada. That is one clear delineation!

 

The third shot is same flight, continuing north from Lake Tahoe. It is pretty clear there is a red shift from right to left!

 

This shot is over Misha's KTVL and surrounding mountains. I just do not understand how Misha's work cannot be acknowledge as "color correct" for the rest of the region! You can also see the "seam" where TE NC extends into Nevada really clearly. 

 

The final shot is at the southern edge of TE NC and how it mates with Orbx SA California. That is a really grotesque difference in appearance!

 

Note that I do not use any shader programs, and my shader cache was cleared before these shots. I think we can agree that True Earth North California just a wee bit TOO RED?

 

Thanks. I look forward to any explanation why this is so. Like I said, the detail and sense of realism from the True Earth products (I own WA, OR, and NC) is great, but this red shift if really distracting!

 

I can provide other examples if required! Lots and lots of them! 

 

Thanks, 

John Howell

Licensed owner of 90-percent of all Orbx products!

 

 

[Gulfstreamtwo]

Others think so too...

 

[Howellerman]

Heya Gulfstream, 

 

Yeah, that was me - Round One. In Round Two I am trying to get someone to at least acknowledge the issue exists.

 

I tried to make this thread a bit more succinct and revealing, but so far I got nuttin'.

 

Maybe in a day or two, eh?

 

Thanks!

[Howellerman]

Look what I found in Orbx True Earth Oregon!

 

I thought I would take a break and fly the Lewiston -> southern Snake River challenge. You can only stay in the canyon so long before it tightens up and you have to aborr.

 

Look what I found when I came up!

 

That looks like a lot of RED on the border of Oregon and Idaho. Who did the color calibration for the True Earth NA products? Looking south now.

 

 

Looking west toward Oregon. Houston, I think we have a commie .... er... red problem.

[John Dow]

There's no surprise there, there was never any intent to try to match the True Earth region to the Global or NA landclass, as the products are totally different.  The contrast in XPlane is even greater.  It's just the way it is.  

 

 

[Howellerman]

But wait, there's more! 

 

Thought I would check out True Earth Washington. While not as blatant as Northern California, the red saturation still exists. This is the border of eastern Washington and Idaho.

 

Same, looking south.

 

In the mountains the effect is not so pervasive, but it's still there.

 

Lost it for a bit as I turned west to follow the Canadian border, but the red saturation is still there.

[Howellerman]

On 8/16/2020 at 1:28 AM, John Dow said:

There's no surprise there, there was never any intent to try to match the True Earth region to the Global or NA landclass, as the products are totally different.  The contrast in XPlane is even greater.  It's just the way it is.  

 

 

I'm sorry, but I do not buy into this.

 

Dozens of airport vendors have had no problem "blending" with Orbx products. I only own Orbx airports in Northern California, but even there if you look at my first post you can see that Orbx airports (e.g., KTVL) do not blend with their own True Earth products.

 

Going back to Northern California, this is a satellite image of the area marking the southern border of TE NC. Not a hint of red to be found anywhere. The True Earth products are just poorly color calibrated, period. 

 

[Howellerman]

I fixed the problem - I uninstalled True Earth Northern California. 

 

Really too bad, actually: this is the only Orbx product that I have uninstalled because I was dissatisfied with the result. Sad.

[John Dow]

6 hours ago, Howellerman said:

I fixed the problem - I uninstalled True Earth Northern California. 

 

Really too bad, actually: this is the only Orbx product that I have uninstalled because I was dissatisfied with the result. Sad.

 

I went into my Nvidia Control Panel and reduced the saturation or digital vibrance as it is known, a value of 40% seemed to give a reasonable result.

 

I might add here that not every one sees reds in the same way, a lot of males in particular are red colour blind to a degree, and the imagery as supplied to Orbx appears to have been quite red to start with.  I found some Google Earth dates where the colours were very similar to what we see in Nor Cal.

 

I still enjoy flying around looking at the amazing landscapes.

[newtie2]

If you own Envtex/Envshade there is a saturation slider in there that makes the red very manageable. 

[Howellerman]

Replying to both John Dow and Newtie2, isn't a whole-sale manipulation of the color spectrum a bit of overkill?

 

What would it do to aircraft/cockpit/airport/terrain-correct installations?

[John Heaton]

There is a very simple answer here - "Chalk and Cheese"

 

Orbx TE is designed for P3D V4 - and does not port very well to V5

Fly  - Low and Slow - this is what you get ------- at 30000 feet - it's not that bad

 

Remember - V5 came out of the blue - little warning to everyone - and give us a NEW  sim 

It is an Impossibility to Expect Orbx TE to work in a different environment

i.e  DX 11 ----- DX 12 without a hell of a lot of work by Orbx - and with MSFS now around

can Anyone expect that they will - even if a TE series - upgrade - was Payware ??

[Howellerman]

On 9/9/2020 at 12:57 AM, John Heaton said:

Orbx TE is designed for P3D V4 - and does not port very well to V5

 

That is as likely as good an explanation as any. I only have a stock installation of V4.5, but I might try TE to see what happens.

I uninstalled Oregon and Washington as well. Low and slow, it looks a LOT better than TE. I do miss the accuracy, but that is about it.

We are getting our asses kicked by all the wild fires here in California, John - good luck with your coming summer!

[John Dow]

On 9/11/2020 at 1:00 AM, Howellerman said:

That is as likely as good an explanation as any. I only have a stock installation of V4.5, but I might try TE to see what happens.

I uninstalled Oregon and Washington as well. Low and slow, it looks a LOT better than TE. I do miss the accuracy, but that is about it.

We are getting our asses kicked by all the wild fires here in California, John - good luck with your coming summer!

 

 

Hi

 

I just flew up the western boundary of the No Cal scenery and I realised something... the areas that are way too red are on the eastern boundary of the scenery and a good percentage are outside California!  There's a few areas where the overly red tiles protrude into California territory but within a few miles the colour reverts to a nice neutral grey with a shade of pink that presumably was embedded in the source imagery.

 

My guess is that the colour correction work that was done was on a map reference basis up to the boundary and tiles outside the coded area missed out on part or all of the colour correction.  Given that different devs work on different aspects of the product, this is somewhat understandable.  From what I can see it looks like up to 98 or 99% of the state is actually quite a good colour even in P3DV5, I would venture to suggest it's not as bad as an initial inspection along the eastern boundary might suggest.

[DModjo]

Agreed, the imagery is far too red.

 

Could be fixed quite easy by the devs - batch colour correcting the source imagery and then recompiling the photo scenery BGLs.

 

Hopefully this can be done for a future update. 

[Howellerman]

Well, against my better judgement I purchased and installed True Earth Southern California. Flew from KMRY south to the "line of demarcation" and was rewarded with burnt toast. Burnt toast to the left of me, burnt toast to the right. 

 

Sigh. I have given up on Orbx True Earth products. Ain't anything true about them at all. If you want an example of what it really looks like, go to Google Maps and select King City, California. Then find San Bernabe Vineyards. The street view gives you a good look at what is NOT "burnt toast". "burnt toast"...  

 

[waynelp]

Like the OP for this thread, The scenery for TE NC and TE SC is too red/pink.  In P3dV5 I have reduced the nvidia settings as suggested. shut off HDR.  It is just awful to look at.  It is not in the "eye of the beholder"  The scenery color doesn't match any other parts of my Orbx world.

So I have "fixed it" also and just shut off the TE NC/SC.  Oregon, Washington look good.

Thanks

[W2DR]

On 8/31/2020 at 6:25 AM, John Dow said:

I went into my Nvidia Control Panel and reduced the saturation or digital vibrance as it is known, a value of 40% seemed to give a reasonable result.

I think John has this right. I have several hundred hours of RL flying around NoCal all the way from KMRY to the Oregon border. I agree that the scenery coloring is just plain wrong but, like John, I've been able to get a color rendering close to the real thing by adjusting the color values..........Doug

[Howellerman]

2 hours ago, W2DR said:

I think John has this right. I have several hundred hours of RL flying around NoCal all the way from KMRY to the Oregon border. I agree that the scenery coloring is just plain wrong but, like John, I've been able to get a color rendering close to the real thing by adjusting the color values..........Doug

I will give this a try this evening. If it doesn't screw up everything else (I am thinking cockpit, where we all spend a lot of time) it could be a keeper. 

 

Thanks, guys!

[waynelp]

I reduced the color values, rendering, vibrance, brightness, contrast... Hey, It looks good in black and white.  If this is done then it messed up the other scenery and made it washed out. It is just wrong.

[Howellerman]

Well, I think I am done with True Earth. 

 

Tried different things and like Wayne said, it just does not work correctly. On top of that, I noticed that object textures were "softer", shadows had less definition, and that frame rates wildly oscillate. I did a test loop from KTTD (Portland Troutdale), up the Columbia Gorge, turn right at Hood RIver, and climb from 4,500 to 10,500 to go around Mt Hood. All well and good until I started to head back into the Portland area where my system became really unstable and oscillated between locked up and 30 fps. I uninstalled TE (both WA and OR, since they overlap in the area) and repeated. Land class textures were sharp, and frame rates were consistent. And truth be told, Orbx did a really good job with land class in the area, to the point I actually prefer the appearance of the cliff faces along the the sides of the Gorge, and the Hood River valley looked just fine if you did not obsess with Route 35 running through "neigborhoods". I took some A/B screenshots and will post them later.

 

On a "more humorous" note, we may have been dealing with inconsistent scenery colors in V5 for quite some time. The other night, tired of fighting with TE, I flew from KJAC (Jackson Hole) to KSLC (Salt Lake). Nothing special, except that KJAC is located in Orbx NA CRM and SLC is located in Global openLC NA. I was tooting along just enjoying the flight when I noticed the seam where CRM abutted openLC NA. CRM was very green, while openLC was a truer (in my opinion) shade of desert tan. This may be due to where the regions were crafted for 4.5 running Directx 11 and did not translate well into Directx 12. 

[hdonner]

I realize this is an old thread so, sorry about that…

I was excited to try Orbx for X-Plane. I have been reading great things.

I Purchased Northern California True Earth

Wow, it’s cartoonishly red. 
I’m comparing it to every other ortho product I’ve ever used, many. And the fact that I fly every day professionally as a flight instructor over Northern California. Not sure what they were thinking, but definitely sub-optimal and super disappointing.

 

[W2DR]

Welcome to the forum(s). As you can see, we're not the only ones who think there is a problem. Hopefully a fix will be found. -  Doug

[Bullfox]

I have all the west coast TE.  The colors need adjustment in P 5.2  and don't match well once you go eastward out of TE but I don't think it is as bad as it is in X Plane.  In general its too dark but can be adjusted out.  I don't have problems with frame rates of resolution.  Eastern Washington, Oregon and California seem too brown but generally there is not much out there anyway.  They did a better job with Washington and California than with Oregon which is to bad since I live in Oregon.  With many cities in Oregon the streets are blue.  Medford Oregon is particularly bad but Klamath falls is actually very nicely done and doesn't have the blue streets.  The parts of the three states that are west are much greener in nature and look much better in TE.