answered GB Central - UK update compatibility & feedback

[BobbyFuzzy]

Hi,

 

I noticed there are some locations covered by the GB Central pack that have also been done by Asobo. Is there a way to disable these locations and just allow the Asobo ones? 

 

For example here at RAF Menwith Hill:

 

 

The Orbx models not only are extremely poor but also in the wrong place. 

 

I imagine this is probably not the only location.

 

As a side note - a bit of feedback I'd like to give to Orbx is that overall, having explored a small portion of the pack, I feel quite underwhelmed by the quality of modelling. This is only highlighted even further by the picture above. Appreciate the price of the pack is very reasonable for the quantity of content and for that reason it seems somewhat acceptable but considering Asobo are covering what looks like a similar number of landmarks in their world updates, which also include airports at a payware quality, for no cost, I feel Orbx somewhat need to up their game. Also compared even to other Orbx city packs I feel this falls down a bit in the quality department, to a degree.

 

I have also mentioned in another thread too, another thing I would have like to have seen is a landmark 'tag' added to some (or all) of the locations. Useful for finding not only in the world map but makes for great flybys, as the smart camera can easily lock on to locations tagged as a landmark and with this pack being touted for 'low and slow' flyers, I think this would make the experience even better.

 

It is nice however to see more added to the North as we are somewhat lacking in photogrammetry and other additions up here.

[Seanmo]

This was a day one purchase for me because I was sure that Orbx had learned from the London Pack fiasco that still haunts them with 1 and 2 star ratings in the Marketplace. How can Orbx release a brand-new scenery that actually contains inferior duplicate models that have been included in MSFS for free for months? How does that happen?

 

I am going to have to rethink this day one purchase strategy. I am, however, enjoying flying around Fall City and Siletz Bay.

Edited August 1, 2021 by Seanmo

[Cygnific]

The weird part is that they have a dome texture that matches Asobo's one. I do think that there is a fair amount of high detailed models though.

 

Edited August 1, 2021 by Cygnific

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I am seeing this:

 

and this in default MSFS with all world updates installed.

 

 

Quote

<Package name="microsoft-nordic-point-of-interest" active="true"/>
    <Package name="microsoft-france-benelux-point-of-interest" active="true"/>
    <Package name="microsoft-uk-point-of-interest" active="true"/>
    <Package name="microsoft-japan-point-of-interest" active="true"/>
    <Package name="microsoft-usa-point-of-interest" active="true"/>

 

Could the extra golf balls be a third party addon?

[BobbyFuzzy]

2 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

Could the extra golf balls be a third party addon?

 

Nick - please accept my apologies. It was another add-on. It was the We Love VFR add-on from flightsim.to. I did not realise it added in models like this. 

 

Please feel free to edit my original title/topic to amend to this effect if appropriate.  

 

Still, in the same vein, is there any way to remove things like this some landmarks so we don't this clash? Obviously the other add-on models are far greater in quality so I'd prefer to use those if possible. 

 

3 hours ago, Seanmo said:

How can Orbx release a brand-new scenery that actually contains inferior duplicate models that have been included in MSFS for free for months? How does that happen?

 

Please see my comment above @Seanmo. To be clear, I incorrectly pointed out the models were Asobo's. However, conversely this might even be a more laughable situation with the creator being a single person freeware developer, who's add-on has been out since even Oct 2020! 

[BobbyFuzzy]

3 hours ago, Cygnific said:

The weird part is that they have a dome texture that matches Asobo's one. I do think that there is a fair amount of high detailed models though.

 

That is rather strange! They don't appear that way at all in the sim. Hopefully they are just bugged then? 

 

I'm still feeling quite underwhelmed to be honest. Me and a friend just did a flight around most of the major cities in Yorkshire and him and me both were really not that impressed. 

 

At least it does add some life to world though where there's only autogen.

[Nick Cooper]

7 minutes ago, BobbyFuzzy said:

is there any way to remove things like this some landmarks so we don't this clash? Obviously the other add-on models are far greater in quality so I'd prefer to use those if possible.

 

Hello,

as far as I am aware, there is no easy way to add or take away various individual POIs.

 

[BobbyFuzzy]

1 minute ago, Nick Cooper said:

as far as I am aware, there is no easy way to add or take away various individual POIs.

 

That's fair enough, thanks for helping anyway! Sorry for any confusion!

Edited August 1, 2021 by BobbyFuzzy

[daan_vb]

7 hours ago, BobbyFuzzy said:

 

Nick - please accept my apologies. It was another add-on. It was the We Love VFR add-on from flightsim.to. I did not realise it added in models like this. 

 

Please feel free to edit my original title/topic to amend to this effect if appropriate.  

 

Still, in the same vein, is there any way to remove things like this some landmarks so we don't this clash? Obviously the other add-on models are far greater in quality so I'd prefer to use those if possible. 

 

 

Please see my comment above @Seanmo. To be clear, I incorrectly pointed out the models were Asobo's. However, conversely this might even be a more laughable situation with the creator being a single person freeware developer, who's add-on has been out since even Oct 2020! 

 

The creator of We Love VFR has a discord, perhaps you could mention the duplicates there and see if he can exclude them for people who have the Orbx Pack.

 

https://discord.gg/s3WRJfrf

[BobbyFuzzy]

4 hours ago, daan_vb said:

The creator of We Love VFR has a discord, perhaps you could mention the duplicates there and see if he can exclude them for people who have the Orbx Pack.

 

I'm no developer but I'd imagine if We Love VFR are able to do it, Orbx should be able to also. Nevertheless I'd rather keep the We Love VFR models as they are far higher quality than the Orbx pack. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

[Cygnific]

12 hours ago, BobbyFuzzy said:

 

That is rather strange! They don't appear that way at all in the sim. Hopefully they are just bugged then? 

 

I'm still feeling quite underwhelmed to be honest. Me and a friend just did a flight around most of the major cities in Yorkshire and him and me both were really not that impressed. 

 

At least it does add some life to world though where there's only autogen.

 

It's a different texture from a dome model in the package (radome I think its called)

It is a bit hard to find all the POI's in the wild, but the higher detail models i've seen are nicely done so far, there are obviously also a good number of lowres models.

 

[Cygnific]

16 hours ago, Cygnific said:

My earlier post said Asobo's one but as Nick pointed out it's not Asobo. But the model texture i've posted matches the real ones and is in the GB package.

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Cygnific

[Danni]

Etihad stadium LOD is broken somehow.

It only pops in when right on top of the first time I load a flight.

Once it has popped in it seems okay as flying away and back again doesn't cause the same issue.

However reloading the sim and flight for the first time repeats the issue.

[Seanmo]

7 hours ago, BobbyFuzzy said:

 

I'm no developer but I'd imagine if We Love VFR are able to do it, Orbx should be able to also. Nevertheless I'd rather keep the We Love VFR models as they are far higher quality than the Orbx pack. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

 

Here is a post from the creator of We Love VFR, who was asked "I would like to know if it compatible with the recent Orbx EU Great Britain Central release?"

 

PuffinFlight 2 hour(s) ago
Not likely. Sadly Orbx didn't include exclusion rectangles with their object to remove any lower-level objects. I treat my addon like autogen on steroids (it's not a real autogen but it works in a similar way). This means my objects should have the lowest priority. This also means I don't remove anything as I believe that custom local scenery addons should be better than my half-automated approach.

I don't know about other objects, but their radomes are sadly very bad. I added this case to the backlog, I mean adding exclusion rectangles to my mod, to be able to move my mod higher than, for example, GB central, to remove their objects. I can't promise anything, as adding 5, 50 even 250 exclusion rectangles might not be a problem. But adding 200000 of them might be.

[Cygnific]

Best option is for GB dev to use the almost perfect texture already available in the package (radome) instead of the grey/black one. Since access to the model is needed because the texture is wrapped in a 'weird' way and not easy to do a quick texture replacement.

[johnwillimas]

On the Etihad STadium LOD problem I had exactly the same thing happen to me with Caernarvon Castle. I had to be very close to it before it suddenly appeared.

[RiddlesdenLad]

1 hour ago, johnwillimas said:

On the Etihad STadium LOD problem I had exactly the same thing happen to me with Caernarvon Castle. I had to be very close to it before it suddenly appeared.

  ... same with the swing bridge in Newcastle, only appears at the last moment.

[pan7285]

Lincoln Cathedral is clashing with the default MSFS version as you can see both versions overlapping each other.

 

Would it also be possible to add Howden Dam (Same model as Derwent Dam), and also move both Derwent and Ladybower dam to a lower position... they sit too high

 

Great job with the add in though.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

thanks, you are quite right, I'll pass this on to the developers.

[Danni]

We can also add Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Goodison Park stadium tot he list of objects with broken LOD's (pop in only when over them)

There are probably more as I have found some in each location of GB central I have visited so far.

If people don't fly over these objects they will never know they are there and so a large amount of assets will currently not be seen because of these faulty LOD's.

This also means many will go unreported so the Devs should do a filtered search of all LOD's and hopefully apply what is an easy fix.

 

Edited August 6, 2021 by Danni

[Danni]

Can we get an acknowledgement that these LOD issues have been noted and are being patched?

[John Dow]

10 hours ago, Danni said:

Can we get an acknowledgement that these LOD issues have been noted and are being patched?

I think Nick has already answered the question above. 

 

Orbx devs don't ignore problems in scenery projects, but until they have all the necessary information and a solution, they don't release a fix, which makes sense if you think about it. 

[Danni]

19 hours ago, John Dow said:

I think Nick has already answered the question above. 

 

Orbx devs don't ignore problems in scenery projects, but until they have all the necessary information and a solution, they don't release a fix, which makes sense if you think about it. 

Seems to me Nick was responding to a different issue.

They have all the information, I was just asking if the bug had been acknowledged.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I have collated all the customer feedback into one internal topic.

As you add things, they are accessible to the developer who is noting them all.

[yorkshireborn]

yeah im having the same problem, its a shame that the models aren't put into the community folder for each area, that we can remove, for the places we dont want. I do a lot of flying over my home area in real life, Blackpool, southport, liverpool, and to be honest, while the individual models in the Mod are exquisite in detail, they arent really accurate and complete, just one example would be, those cranes at the mouth of the Mersey, Liverpool, are bright red in real life, not in the Orbx one tho, and the freeware i have for those areas are much better, and i dont want to lose them. so it would be nice if we could remove stuff we dont want, or if its a copyright protection thing, maybe give us a menu, or a checkbox that we can unclick for the parts of the mod we dont want. Dunno, you lot are the experts

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

as someone who is not a developer, I can see that all the objects are contained in one file.

I suspect that the logistics of adding switches for any files, let alone over 600 are presently beyond the scope of the simulator.

[dabba]

2 hours ago, yorkshireborn said:

yeah im having the same problem, its a shame that the models aren't put into the community folder for each area, that we can remove, for the places we dont want. I do a lot of flying over my home area in real life, Blackpool, southport, liverpool, and to be honest, while the individual models in the Mod are exquisite in detail, they arent really accurate and complete, just one example would be, those cranes at the mouth of the Mersey, Liverpool, are bright red in real life, not in the Orbx one tho, and the freeware i have for those areas are much better, and i dont want to lose them. so it would be nice if we could remove stuff we dont want, or if its a copyright protection thing, maybe give us a menu, or a checkbox that we can unclick for the parts of the mod we dont want. Dunno, you lot are the experts

Check out the freeware again, there has been an update to the Liverpool freeware scenery to work with Orbx

including the red cranes amongst other objects.

[philstoke]

I recently bought the Central pack and straight away found faults, as a few others here seem to have done I visited Blackpool, the Pleasure Beach popped up when I flew near it, but I cannot get Blackpool Tower to show even though others on here seem to see it, I have flow around the area for a while but it is still missing. The Central Pier seems to be high up in the air as well.

Going to Liverpool the Liver Building does not have the Birds on top even though they are shown in the promotional pictures.

The road beside Conwy Castle goes under the water as does the road crossing the Tyne Bridge.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the pack a few times as the only one so no other add on is clashing with it.

I am showing online and have deleted and reset the cache a few times, the graphics and data are all maxed out

Any Ideas Thanks

 

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

Blackpool Tower is not an Orbx object and if it is missing, you very likely have not installed World Update 3.

That might account for some of the other missing objects.

[philstoke]

Thanks for that suggestion Nick, I only got the sim recently and with all the installing it offered me World Updates but on looking at the Marketplace 3 of them were hidden from me for some reason and never got downloaded, which I am doing now so hopefully everywhere will look better soon

Rgds Phil