answered London Pack Night Lights Problem

[Destyre]

Hi, I have been recently using the London City pack from Orbx and noticed that Tower Bridge and the Millennium Dome (O2) are completely unlit and dark at night, while the lights on The Shard, 20 Fenchurch Street and 30 St Mary Axe are using standard, procedurally generated lights from flight simulator, which looks horrible. I know this because I have watched my friend (who has an inferior pc to me) stream his flight around London and in his game, everything looks fine - the buildings are lit properly. We're using the graphics settings. The only different between us is that I bought the game directly from the website and installed it via Orbx central, while my friend bought it from the in game store.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

welcome to the forums.

There was a loud clamour at the quality of the textures of the Orbx replacements

for five items and an equally loud clamour for the removal of the Orbx replacements.

This was done within four days, along with numerous other improvements and a couple of

added POIs.

Unfortunately, the default Tower Bridge is perfectly dark at night, but of course those who

demanded its return are not now making any comments.

It does look very nice and brand new in the daylight.

The difference between yours and your friend's will be because until the last MSFS update,

he will have had the original version, whereas you have the most up to date version.

[Destyre]

So the quality of the pack goes down with each patch? 

 

Why is the O2 pitch black at night? Why does the Shard have generic lights on it? It looks like a Christmas tree. I find it hard to believe that people wanted London to look like crap at night.

 

Am I to infer that this pack is going to look like this from now on? If so, I'll be asking for a refund. I paid for a realistic London skyline with realistic lighting, not this.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

you appear to have not understood my reply.

Tower Bridge, the Shard and the O2 Arena are three of the five replacements

that were the subject of the criticism.

Orbx responded to the critique and demand for the return of the default buildings

by removing the Orbx models from the pack.

You are therefore seeing the default Microsoft Flight Simulator buildings in those

three cases.

Here is the long topic that demanded what you now do not like.

[Destyre]

I understood just fine. "Am I to infer that this pack is going to look like this from now on?" So it's a yes, then?

 

I think what people were complaining about was the low res garbage that Orbx produced - admittedly I haven't seen them in game myself but have seen the videos critiquing.

 

Yeah not going to pay for a half assed and now half complete model pack.

[Raller]

@Nick Cooper

So Orbx sees no technical possibility to illuminate the original MSFS Tower Bridge at night? Is that what you are trying to tell us? It's the first time in History that I am upset about Orbx and your statements.

After dozens of sceneries I bought for P3D and X-Plane, Orbx itself has set the bar very high. You knew that the area with Orbx looked ten times better than the original of the fligtsim.

 

Now it happened with the London Pack that after the Orbx installation, some objects looked worse than the original. As a customer I have no idea about the effort or the technical difficulties in the background. I can only tell what I see.

 

I think it's great that Orbx responded to the criticism with an update within a few days. But instead of saying that we are now working on a solution to satisfy customers and defend our good reputation, we are offended by criticism from buyers.

 

Does the MSFS London Pack really have to cause such a bad mood? Are there only two possibilities? Ugly but illuminated or good looking but dark.
 

We all simply expected more from Orbx. In terms of the landscape and in terms of dealing with criticism. I am pretty shure that someone brings out a freeware-patch to illuminate the original objects. Then it only says "and it works after all".

 

I almost never write statements of this length, but this time I felt the need as a long-time flightsim fan and a long-time customer.

 

Best regards
Raller

[Gulfstreamtwo]

In the announcement for the first update, there's this text:

"Our Landmarks London pack has received quite a lot of attention and we are going to explore how we can improve on aspects such as higher definition models, particularly for the more prominent POIs, while maintaining high performance in the sim. 

Please note that there are still items in the pack such as bridge placements and areas where the Thames is not flat and we are working with Asobo to rectify that."

 

Being open minded, this sounds to me like at least one update is in the works. Assuming Orbx is done with this add-on seems a bit harsh.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I am sure that the developers will read these comments, just as they read the

demands for these five replacement buildings to be removed from the pack.

I have sent them an e mail.

 

 

 

 

[Seanmo]

When you have the Orbx London Scenery, you are seeing a mix of new buildings that Orbx has modeled as well as those that are either autogened from AI or handcrafted by Bing/Asobo. When the first release of Orbx London Scenery came out, there was backlash because some of the buildings were of much lessor detail than what was already in the game. Orbx responded by removing some of their buildings, including Tower Bridge and The Dome (they also added a few things, including a stadium). The alternative would have been to try to make those buildings as high quality as Asobo's. But why do that? Asobo made Tower Bridge about as perfectly as it can be done in the simulation. So I completely agree with their decision to simply remove their objects where Asobo has gone to the effort to make a high-quality building. London Scenery still adds hundreds (400?) of buildings including bridges.

 

However there is a downside to that. Orbx's original Tower Bridge was lit up at night (as it would be in real life) whereas Asobo's isn't. It is Asobo that needs to address this, not Orbx. Otherwise we are back to having Orbx spending lots of hours redoing a structure that is just about perfect in the sim already. It would be incredibly easy for Asobo to fix this. They can add lights to any object at will, but especially to their handcrafted buildings. Not sure if anyone has reported this issue to them, but they welcome feedback and will spend literally years improving all aspects of this sim for us. They just need to know there is a problem (via their forums) and then they need to prioritize the fix.

 

I'm happy with my London Scenery purchase (direct from Orbx, so updated a while back). I'm not happy with Tower Bridge at night, but I know that's an Asobo issue and I don't want the old Orbx Tower Bridge to return just to fix the lighting nor having Orbx waste resources remaking Tower Bridge to Asobo's standards just to add lights to it. (If I knew how to add lights to exisiting Asobo scenery using the SDK, I'd make a free mod.) In short: Asobo needs to add lights to their Tower Bridge and Dome models.

[Nick Cooper]

Thanks.

I think we have answered the question that Destyre asked.