announcement What we're working on - Orbx 2021 Roadmap

[olderndirt]

1 hour ago, Torbin said:

 

Actually, the roadmap sux if you're not into MSFS

A very 'suxcint' reply.  Joe Biden want's me to stimulate the economy so Orbx needs to stimulate me if the want any of it.

[Torbin]

1 hour ago, wolfko said:

 

The roadmap includes 9 products for P3d and 3 for XP.

 

Yep, 23 for MSFS, 9 for P3D, and 3 for XP.  Like I said... sux unless your into MSFS.

[TigerTigerM]

42 minutes ago, Torbin said:

 

Yep, 23 for MSFS, 9 for P3D, and 3 for XP.  Like I said... sux unless your into MSFS.

The ratios may reflect Orbx's current & projected sales by Sim.

TTM

[rsmith6621a]

11 hours ago, merlinux said:

I myself have been waiting for  KRDD v5. I assume it is not a straight forward port and I have no idea if it will ever comes...

Probably would have been converted by now if it wasnt the case.

 

What would be a professional thing to do would be for Orbx to just come out and announce what scenerys are going to be upgraded to P3dv5.1 and converted to MSFS 2020. All they need to do is ask the developers of each product.

 

We could put this issue to rest.

[uvf_flyer]

Did the Xplane global textures product get cancelled? Was looking forward to it

[I2icho84]

18 hours ago, samie11 said:

 

Funny there was no mention of YBBNv2 for msfs since it's in the aircraft screenshot

Maybe holding off on releasing Australian airports for the announcement and release of World update 5 oceania? Fingers crossed, at least hopefull of this announcment 

[sammy]

Orbx was making lots of sceneries for Xplane till MSFS came along. i really liked the True Earth series. Not much happening for Xplane

 

[GuiFarias]

 

Quote

• Auckland, New Zealand

• SBSP São Paulo for MSFS (Matteo)

 

Excited to finally see a brazilian airport, and a much needed and important one as SBSP Congonhas, and also very excited for some New Zealand content for MSFS. Any plans on converting NZQN, NZMF, NZWR or NZGS as well?

Edited April 8, 2021 by GuiFarias
Quote

[Mawson]

1 hour ago, I2icho84 said:

Maybe holding off on releasing Australian airports for the announcement and release of World update 5 oceania? Fingers crossed, at least hopefull of this announcment 

Yes that would be great as MSFS looks in Australia is not a lot better than X plane with phtotoreal scenery except for the few paid upgrades. 

[John Heaton]

8 hours ago, AnthonyS said:

Any plans for Matteo to port YBCG to MSFS? 

Matteo did it for FSX and P3D which I loved as Gold Coast is my local airport and the default YBCG in MSFS ain’t that great.

 

 

Might as well put in my 2 cents worth - and I totally agree with Anthony - except that I would add the 

Cityscape to my request because that's my home town and airport

Since UK was upgraded - I have actually started to try out MSFS and since I spent some 35 years of my 

life there - I am Familiar with the country and find that MSFS isn't all that bad for a GA /VFR bloke

However - Asobo's view of Australia is atrocious - and the Gold coast area is at least 7 years old

 

My house is a building site - and I've lived in it for 7 years - It's 4 years since we had the Commonwealth Games on the GC - and MSFS shows the athletes village - and Swimming complex - in in early construction  - the old hospital still standing - where a new block of units is being built - and the new Hospital - still under construction although opened 5 years ago. We have marinas all over the place - but they are all sunk.

 

Strangely though - the Bing Satellite shows us a right up to date 

 

Please Orbx - give us an MSFS Cityscape and airport - and I will even move over to MSFS for my VFR

[musterpilot]

And good old Western Australia dips out again for P3Dv5

[wolfko]

44 minutes ago, musterpilot said:

And good old Western Australia dips out again for P3Dv5

 

You haven't read the whole thread  have you?

[Julio Garcia]

My little wish for Orbx....BACK TO THE ROOTS: Airfields & little Airports like Skagit Regional, Sedona, Sonoma County, Monroe Firstair, Israel Farm, Yakutat & many more....
 

[Southampton Pilot]

Hi guys. Lots of comments re scenery, but what has excited me is the Optica as your first payware aircraft. Am I surprised, no, not really, it fits right in with your scenery philosophy, lets do something different. 

Nothing normal about the OA7, it was right out there. Conceived as a ground obs/survey concept, it certainly did that. 

I have a lot of history with the Optica, airframe 16 to be precise, G-BMPL.

Hampshire Police in the UK had two, the other one being G-KATY. Sadly that one crashed, and I walked away from the second after the fan disintegrated on take off. The company then folded.

I have hundreds of hours flying as a two crew, me being the Observer.

A quirky aircraft, you must have access to one of at least two that went to Australia, good on you.

The sound is like no other! Good luck with that

I look forward to flying the lightbulb powered by a hairdryer in the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ryan1990]

Melb city looks almost finished from the shots- anyone got an idea of a release date?

[ftwd]

Would just love to see cityscape Dubai for XP 

 

Cheers,

Nathan

[andy1252]

Looked at that first picture and the thought that struck me first was "that looks like a copter but it's not the H135" so was well pleased to see the Optica announced here. I have a converted version but this looks great.

 

As for the scenery/citypacks etc, I'm sure I will continue to buy everything that comes out for MSFS, but I would just add a suggestion/comment/plea re the citypacks stuff. For me, it feels like the quality of the surfaces/modelling of some of these big city buildings is not what it could be. It tends to feel a bit lego-like in some cases. That may be a limitation of the sim/sdk etc, I wouldn't know. But a lot of it feels way too shiny and lacks realism. I feel a bit of weathering to the surfaces would improve things big time.

 

This is not meant to be a bitch. Like I said, I can pretty much guarantee I'll buy anything you put out for MSFS (I have so far), but the truth is that MSFS has raised the bar so much now that whereas Orbx used to be pretty much the scenery supremos, nowadays the products are simply just amongst the good stuff out there. I have plenty of other addons, in some cases even freeware, that are (in my opinion, granted) better looking than some of the Orbx stuff. Which is not what I would have expected to be saying a year ago.

 

But this announcement is certainly very welcome, and I look forward to getting my hands on this lot. Nice to see some non-standard places as well, Mumbai, Panama etc.

[John Dow]

1 hour ago, andy1252 said:

Looked at that first picture and the thought that struck me first was "that looks like a copter but it's not the H135" so was well pleased to see the Optica announced here. I have a converted version but this looks great.

 

As for the scenery/citypacks etc, I'm sure I will continue to buy everything that comes out for MSFS, but I would just add a suggestion/comment/plea re the citypacks stuff. For me, it feels like the quality of the surfaces/modelling of some of these big city buildings is not what it could be. It tends to feel a bit lego-like in some cases. That may be a limitation of the sim/sdk etc, I wouldn't know. But a lot of it feels way too shiny and lacks realism. I feel a bit of weathering to the surfaces would improve things big time.

 

This is not meant to be a bitch. Like I said, I can pretty much guarantee I'll buy anything you put out for MSFS (I have so far), but the truth is that MSFS has raised the bar so much now that whereas Orbx used to be pretty much the scenery supremos, nowadays the products are simply just amongst the good stuff out there. I have plenty of other addons, in some cases even freeware, that are (in my opinion, granted) better looking than some of the Orbx stuff. Which is not what I would have expected to be saying a year ago.

 

But this announcement is certainly very welcome, and I look forward to getting my hands on this lot. Nice to see some non-standard places as well, Mumbai, Panama etc.

 

From what I've been able to glean from the testing process for MSFS stuff is that there's an ultra fine line between texture quality and performance.  Put a bit too much detail into the textures, you get a slideshow.  Put all the effort into smooth performance, you get textures that don't cut the mustard.  So you can rest assured the textures you get have been worked over many times looking for the sweet spot, and unfortunately the sweet spot is often at a point where a careful look at the textures finds many faults.  For me the secret is to remember it's a flight sim, not an architectural sim, and although building detail is important it shouldn't be the be all and end all of the flying experience.

[DeeJay]

I've decided that my VFR time in P3d is over, at least concerning any further purchases. But you force me to make a few exeptions ... at least for Van Nuys and TE Eastern Alps!!

 

Regards, Dominik

[jfri]

17 hours ago, Torbin said:

 

Yep, 23 for MSFS, 9 for P3D, and 3 for XP.  Like I said... sux unless your into MSFS.

 

One thing that I think about here is this. In P3D 5 and XP11 addon scenery is really needed since default is bad. But in MSFS default is already good and I don't see any need for getting payware scenery for it. So I would like to see focus on P3D

[Torbin]

13 hours ago, sammy said:

Orbx was making lots of sceneries for X-Plane till MSFS came along. i really liked the True Earth series. Not much happening for X-Plane

 

Me too. I'd love to see them work their way up the eastern US since they already did the west coast and Florida. The publicly available imagery for New York ortho is not so good, it would be great to see TE continue to hit these areas. I also know a lot of people would buy a TE Alaska day 1!

[EasternT3]

40 minutes ago, jfri said:

But in MSFS default is already good

 

The base scenery is good away from airports, but the default airports are not good, better than they were in FSX but still dreadful, maybe I am wanting my sim to be ultra realistic but I can only fly to and from payware airports.

 

As for the 23 for MSFS, 9 for P3D, and 3 for XP, Orbx as a company are smart and like someone else has said, they are focusing there resources where the sales will be, and at the minute MSFS leads the sales charts.

[kaboki]

I became an Orbx customer because of the small charming airports they made that no one else seemed to take intrest in developing. But now the focus seems to have shifted towards bigger airports and im kinda dissapointed by this roadmap. Now I might aswell just go too aerosoft or any other company to buy, because they all do big ones... See no reason to stick around anymore, sorry to say... 

[Justin Snapp]

Quote

November 22, 2018

Yes, you read that correctly. One-hundred-and-seventy airports. And they're all coming to X-Plane 11!

During today's livestream by Orbx, where Dirka and Aimee gave a sneak peek of TrueEarth GB Central, John Venema, CEO of Orbx made a comment in the chat at 1:08:02, stating the following:

"We will be porting ALL 170 Orbx airports to XP over the next year, it just takes time peeps, we’re hiring new developers to speed it up"

 

Then MSFS was announced....

 

I'm not expecting parity, I'm not expecting everything, but I am definitely disappointed on the lack of follow-through of bringing airports to X-Plane.    The most glaring one that is missing is KSJC, but its nice to see KBUR coming as well.   But there is a decent KBUR within X-Plane already, so KSJC would be a major hit and great addition to X-Plane.

[porsche]

When they make it to the list:

 

Bozeman

Jackson Hole

West Yellowstone

Sun Valley

Kalispell

 

For any of XP11, P3dV5, MSFS.

 

Thanks for any consideration. This too is a beautiful part of the world to fly.

Dave

[glj]

4 hours ago, John Dow said:

 

From what I've been able to glean from the testing process for MSFS stuff is that there's an ultra fine line between texture quality and performance.  Put a bit too much detail into the textures, you get a slideshow.  Put all the effort into smooth performance, you get textures that don't cut the mustard.  So you can rest assured the textures you get have been worked over many times looking for the sweet spot, and unfortunately the sweet spot is often at a point where a careful look at the textures finds many faults.  For me the secret is to remember it's a flight sim, not an architectural sim, and although building detail is important it shouldn't be the be all and end all of the flying experience.

@John Dow Totally agree, with two exceptions. Do you own True Earth Northern California?  There is no excuse for leaving Alcatraz the prison island, the way it is in TE.  The island itself is colored white. Also, the Bay Bridge which is fine in FTX Northern California is now just a 'bridge' which is totally wrong. 

I have over a 100(?) Orbx sceneries. Maybe it's human nature, but when I think of Orbx I think of that white island and the white cliffs of Dover. A couple of years ago, in Dover our tour guide said the mayor of Dover has the locals paint the cliffs white in Dover on Sunday evenings for tourists. Now, I live in very liberal and progressive San Francisco which is where Alcatraz is located. It's a very colorful city (it is where the hippies thrived and the gay capital of the US, if not the world). However, I can tell you that I know for a fact that it would and will continue to be illegal to pay prisoners to paint the island white on Sunday evenings to drum up the tourists trade.

There is no fine line between quality and performance in TE Northern California. And that's probably true also for pride of ownership under @John Venemaversus a strictly for-profit business enterprise. You can almost compare it to what happened to Apple under Steve Jobs and Apple after Steve Jobs.

Edited April 8, 2021 by glj

[riverreveal]

10 hours ago, Julio Garcia said:

My little wish for Orbx....BACK TO THE ROOTS: Airfields & little Airports like Skagit Regional, Sedona, Sonoma County, Monroe Firstair, Israel Farm, Yakutat & many more....
 

 

Totally agree. There seemed to be far more character to these airfields and smaller airports. Miss these kind of releases.  

[Torbin]

5 hours ago, porsche said:

When they make it to the list:

 

Bozeman

Jackson Hole

West Yellowstone

Sun Valley

Kalispell

 

For any of XP11, P3dV5, MSFS.

 

Thanks for any consideration. This too is a beautiful part of the world to fly.

Dave

 

I'd LOVE to see KSUN for X-Plane! The surrounding ortho in that area is beautiful.

[flying_fish]

Having spent a great deal on Orbx products in the past, I have not bought any pay ware since the announcement of MSFS. 

I have spent hours exploring the Earth VFR in MSFS, and still so much to discover. For example, Flight yesterday over Bristol was just extraordinary. It's enough for me.

I cannot for the life of me see why anyone still uses older platforms.

Just saying, and respect all other views.

[John Dow]

4 hours ago, glj said:

@John Dow Totally agree, with two exceptions. Do you own True Earth Northern California?  There is no excuse for leaving Alcatraz the prison island, the way it is in TE.  The island itself is colored white. Also, the Bay Bridge which is fine in FTX Northern California is now just a 'bridge' which is totally wrong. 

I have over a 100(?) Orbx sceneries. Maybe it's human nature, but when I think of Orbx I think of that white island and the white cliffs of Dover. A couple of years ago, in Dover our tour guide said the mayor of Dover has the locals paint the cliffs white in Dover on Sunday evenings for tourists. Now, I live in very liberal and progressive San Francisco which is where Alcatraz is located. It's a very colorful city (it is where the hippies thrived and the gay capital of the US, if not the world). However, I can tell you that I know for a fact that it would and will continue to be illegal to pay prisoners to paint the island white on Sunday evenings to drum up the tourists trade.

There is no fine line between quality and performance in TE Northern California. And that's probably true also for pride of ownership under @John Venemaversus a strictly for-profit business enterprise. You can almost compare it to what happened to Apple under Steve Jobs and Apple after Steve Jobs.

Yes but my post was about MSFS. And as for Alcatraz, it's possible that under the licensing terms for the scenery imagery, that is all that was available to the developers. Freeware developers can just grab whatever imagery they want but Orbx cannot do this. And I know the bridge is not perfect but you're talking about an area hundreds of thousands of square kilometres and no doubt some compromises that to be made and it's possible that the other baybridge model was not available to the developers of True Earth scenery, even though it's within the same umbrella organisation. These aspects of the scenery are not, in my experience, thr result of a don't care attitude, it's more likely to be issues in the commercial environment that we know nothing about. 

[adambar]

How about some Caribbean Islands like St Maarten and more US small to regional sized airports for MSFS.

[greybeard]

Well I think that the Orbx team should be working 8 days a week with no

time off for good behaviour . I am just fed up with the slow output of MSFS

As a protest I have only purchased 40 sceneries for MSFS via Orbx.

Please address this situation as soon as you have finished hitting your heads

against the brick wall. 

 

Kevin

[glj]

6 hours ago, John Dow said:

....These aspects of the scenery are not, in my experience, thr result of a don't care attitude, it's more likely to be issues in the commercial environment that we know nothing about. 

Hmmm... I don't want to argue here but in my opinion, painting the *island* of Alcatraz white is like painting the Eiffel Tower white and that would be okay because of the availability of the landclass for Europe anyway and because there might be issues in the commercial environment that we know nothing about. 

[John Dow]

11 minutes ago, glj said:

Hmmm... I don't want to argue here but in my opinion, painting the *island* of Alcatraz white is like painting the Eiffel Tower white and that would be okay because of the availability of the landclass for Europe anyway and because there might be issues in the commercial environment that we know nothing about. 

No one painted the island white. The imagery that was supplied for the San Fran area would have contained a poor quality overexposed image of the island. Possibly whatever camera was being used compensated for the darker water around it, I do not know. But I do know that when P3D processes its graphics any overexposure in the imagery is amplified.  That is probably also a factor as well. 

[Guest Ells]

On 4/8/2021 at 9:52 AM, Southampton Pilot said:

Hi guys. Lots of comments re scenery, but what has excited me is the Optica as your first payware aircraft. Am I surprised, no, not really, it fits right in with your scenery philosophy, lets do something different. 

Nothing normal about the OA7, it was right out there. Conceived as a ground obs/survey concept, it certainly did that. 

I have a lot of history with the Optica, airframe 16 to be precise, G-BMPL.

Hampshire Police in the UK had two, the other one being G-KATY. Sadly that one crashed, and I walked away from the second after the fan disintegrated on take off. The company then folded.

I have hundreds of hours flying as a two crew, me being the Observer.

A quirky aircraft, you must have access to one of at least two that went to Australia, good on you.

The sound is like no other! Good luck with that

I look forward to flying the lightbulb powered by a hairdryer in the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm glad you managed to walk away from that incident!! I've read a few incident reports during research (my past being in Health and Safety) and some scary incidents indeed.

[Ed Correia]

On 4/8/2021 at 6:52 PM, Southampton Pilot said:

Hi guys. Lots of comments re scenery, but what has excited me is the Optica as your first payware aircraft. Am I surprised, no, not really, it fits right in with your scenery philosophy, lets do something different. 

Nothing normal about the OA7, it was right out there. Conceived as a ground obs/survey concept, it certainly did that. 

I have a lot of history with the Optica, airframe 16 to be precise, G-BMPL.

Hampshire Police in the UK had two, the other one being G-KATY. Sadly that one crashed, and I walked away from the second after the fan disintegrated on take off. The company then folded.

I have hundreds of hours flying as a two crew, me being the Observer.

A quirky aircraft, you must have access to one of at least two that went to Australia, good on you.

The sound is like no other! Good luck with that

I look forward to flying the lightbulb powered by a hairdryer in the near future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi, please look out for an email from us.

[TigerTigerM]

1 hour ago, Ed Correia said:

 

Hi, please look out for an email from us.

Your going to be doing some Beta testing.

TTM

[fahdriyami]

Happy to see some middle eastern regions covered. Hopefully Muscat, Oman will be added at some point. Muscat International Airport needs some love in MSFS.

[Ripcord]

On 4/6/2021 at 6:06 AM, Marcus Nyberg said:

I am working on porting them. But first finish Stockholm-Bromma

Im hoping to be able to port all my airports. With focus on the bigger ones in Sweden and Spain first.

 

That's great news.  Looking forward to ESSB as well.  Thanks for continuing to support P3D... many of us prefer simulators that are actually done.

[jfri]

21 hours ago, EasternT3 said:

 

The base scenery is good away from airports, but the default airports are not good, better than they were in FSX but still dreadful, maybe I am wanting my sim to be ultra realistic but I can only fly to and from payware airports.

 

I would not say dreadful. I have just made some flights from same airports in MSFS and P3DV5 and at and close to a Orbx payware airport (3W5 Israels farm) the scenery is better than default MSFS, But for example ESGP where I have been in real life default MSFS is pretty good. Just a blue clubhouse is missing