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FTX Global - What is it all about?

Rob Newman

By Rob Newman
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freddy Senior Member

freddy

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Rob Newman,


 


I second all the comments made above thanking you for your excellent post about the Scenery Library and the order of things.


 


As someone who works in the IT industry, I know the effort and time it takes to explain things carefully and correctly.


 


I also thought I already had a good grasp of how the Scenery Library works ... but I did learn some stuff after reading your post.  I've taken a copy of your post to store away in a file for later reference.


 


Great stuff.  Well done.  Thanks.


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shermank Life Member

shermank

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FTXGlobal and any other orbx sceneries will be listed in FTX Central. If you want to fly in one of the dedicated sceneries, you would set your scenery to that region. If you want to fly elsewhere in the world, you would set Central to Hybrid. I have set it that way as my default even though I have several of the North American scenery sets. It works fine. As for layering, when you set up and install FTX Global, it will set its own scenery priorities. The one thing you want to keep in mind is that if you have any UTX sceneries, FTXG will be listed above them. You can also set individual landclass files as you choose. All that info is in the manual and elsewhere on line here. 


 


Sherm


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NoLonger Life Member

NoLonger

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If you want to fly elsewhere in the world, you would set Central to Hybrid.

 

Well, no, actually... If you want to fly elsewhere you should set FTX Global WITHOUT hybrid. You should only use hybrid if you want want to fly in AND out of an FTX region during one flight or if you want to fly from one FTX region to another (long flight...! ;) ). If you plan to stay inside a region, enable that region, if you plan to fly only over FTX Global, enable FTXG without hybrid.

 

Anyway, no matter what, hybrid mode is a compromise mode (or, more positive: a best of both worlds mode ;) ). To get ALL out of an FTX region, enable that specific region, and to get ALL out of FTX Global, enable FTX Global without hybrid.

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northernskymusic Newbie

northernskymusic

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Hi Rob, I'm new fairly new to this and have just bought Global and came across your explanation thanks.. would you mind just clarifying that i still would need to buy and install individual Regions such as EU Northern Ireland and also airports to get the best visuals? And do they all work together?!


 


Any help win understanding would be appreciated!


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Rob Newman Life Member

Rob Newman

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Hi Rob, I'm new fairly new to this and have just bought Global and came across your explanation thanks.. would you mind just clarifying that i still would need to buy and install individual Regions such as EU Northern Ireland and also airports to get the best visuals? And do they all work together?!

 

Any help win understanding would be appreciated!

 

No problem...

 

Please refer to the diagram on page one of this thread for what I'm talking about...

 

FTX Global = Textures only (and special night lighting). 

 

FTX Region Packs = Textures, landclass, mesh, vector data, additional custom textures, some photo-real areas, POI's (points of interest - famous places, buildings etc), updated airports, custom lighting and the ability to install and use the FTX high definition airports. 

 

In other words, region packs give you everything you need to transform an entire section of the world to what is as close as you can get in FSX to reality (And folks, yes I know it's not photo real, but personally, I prefer having trees, buildings and 3D objects to flat textures - Horses for courses...)

 

FTX Global gives FSX a huge face-lift, but it does not fix any FSX issues with landclass, vector or mesh.

 

As for how well FTX Global works with the FTX region packs, well they were designed to work together from the start... There is a special "hybrid mode" that you can activate if you want to fly from a full region to FTX Global, or the other way round... It makes everything work together. 

 

If you don't have any region packs yet, go ahead and download the free demo for PNW... it comes with a large section of PNW and a great updated airport (Bowerman) to give you an idea just what to expect ;) I'm sure you'll see the difference!

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Simul8 Newbie

Simul8

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Just swinging past to say hello, as i've just purchased FTX Global. It's installing now and really looking forward to exploring it.


 


I'm UK based so considering adding to the Global package with UK, Wales, Scotland, Ireland so was wondering if, given my system specs in the signature, i would expect a drop in (and i hate using this term but you know where i'm coming from) FPS?


 


Many thanks too Rob for your very detailed explanation


 


Cheers


 


Smiffy

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BeesAndButterflies Senior Member

BeesAndButterflies

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Hi Rob,


 


FTX Global = Textures only (and special night lighting).

It may be raised that not only textures are modified with Global : there is also an autogen part, which explains that Global is not compatible with all other vendors products :)


 


Thank you however for your very clarifying post.


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John Venema Orbx VIP

John Venema

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Just swinging past to say hello, as i've just purchased FTX Global. It's installing now and really looking forward to exploring it.

 

I'm UK based so considering adding to the Global package with UK, Wales, Scotland, Ireland so was wondering if, given my system specs in the signature, i would expect a drop in (and i hate using this term but you know where i'm coming from) FPS?

 

Many thanks too Rob for your very detailed explanation

 

Cheers

 

Smiffy

If you can run FTX Global fine then the UK FTX series will also run perfectly fine as long as you set your sliders based on the user guide. Certain cities like London or Manchester may give you a 2-4 FPS hit depending on your autogen density slider.

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Simul8 Newbie

Simul8

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Excellent. Many thanks John. I've had a mooch around the scenery in the Trike today and no appreciable FPS Hit in Dawn / Day / Dusk / Night conditions so very impressed. I'll hit the NGX with it tomorrow and see how we fare, but I'm not expecting any issues after todays trip.


 


Many thanks and well done to all, very impressive.


 


Cheers


 


Smiffy


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  • 3 weeks later...
Gatwick Flyer Advanced Member

Gatwick Flyer

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Hi All , Totally new to this, although I have been using Microsoft flight software since the beginning. I have two questions if I may,


 


1; Will FTX Global be released on dvd, as I have just bought a new pc, and lost a lot of downloaded software, my fault I know as I did not make back up copies..


 


2; Never having had a pc with two drives, I now have a SSD and a HDD, my FSX is on the SSD, could I install FTX packages onto the 2TB drive and link them to FSX installation to save space..


 


Thanking you in anticipation..


 


Dave


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BeesAndButterflies Senior Member

BeesAndButterflies

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Hi All , Totally new to this, although I have been using Microsoft flight software since the beginning. I have two questions if I may,

 

1; Will FTX Global be released on dvd, as I have just bought a new pc, and lost a lot of downloaded software, my fault I know as I did not make back up copies..

 

2; Never having had a pc with two drives, I now have a SSD and a HDD, my FSX is on the SSD, could I install FTX packages onto the 2TB drive and link them to FSX installation to save space..

 

Thanking you in anticipation..

 

Dave

1 - ORBX will not release DVD anymore, but still you can order your burn DVD on flightsimstore.com (as mentioned very often on this forum) for a little extra fee.

2 - Not for Global. I mean, yes if you know very specifically what you are doing, but beside that, ORBX products are intended to be installed in the FSX root folder. The installer does not provide any choice for installation path. Check out the "Tips, Tricks & Techniques" section of this forum for further information.

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Rob Newman Life Member

Rob Newman

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I have paid good money for FTX Global, keep trying to download had 6 attempts and get to 40seconds from the end and it gets interrupted. I have used the 1st link, the German link , the UK link , and the cloud link.. NOT impressed!!!

 

Newbie,

 

Are you using a download manager as recommended? If not please try one. I had similar problems until I finally started to use a download manager. I now avoid the frustration you identified.

 

Rick

 

Seconded...

 

I use a program called "Free Download Manager"... It does exactly what it says and it's free ;)

 

I've never had any issues with downloads since I started using it, indeed it actually speeds things up a little for me. If it loses connection, it just keeps trying till it reconnects then resumes from the last position... 

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Gatwick Flyer Advanced Member

Gatwick Flyer

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Seconded...

 

I use a program called "Free Download Manager"... It does exactly what it says and it's free ;)

 

I've never had any issues with downloads since I started using it, indeed it actually speeds things up a little for me. If it loses connection, it just keeps trying till it reconnects then resumes from the last position... 

Yes Rob, I have got there now, I actually downloaded the update first and had no trouble with that, but when it came to the 'big one' that's when I had trouble.. I used the same download manager as you and no problem.. The unwrapping and installation went like a dream, just sat back and let it do its thing.. A great product, and a great forum...

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Rob Newman Life Member

Rob Newman

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GEX is basically the same principle as FTX Global... It is replacement textures with denser autogen. However, it does not have night lighting and is only for a single geographic region... Not the whole world.

It's not compatible with FTX Global, because it just replaces the textures in the same way... You can only have one or the other.

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Dieter Life Member

Dieter

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I successfully deleted my GEX installation.

I successfully installed FTX Global 1.0 and the update 1.10. (what the installer reported)

I also created a backup folder for the default textures.
I did not delete the default textures in \scenery\word\textures before installing FTX Global.
 

Now when checking the new textures I wonder:
1. There are a lot of files dated back from 2006/2007/2008/2009/2010/2011/2012. Is that correct?

2.  Does this mean there are still a lot of default textures left after this new FTX Global installation?

3. Can somebody please tell me the total number of textures that sould be in this folder

(\scenery\word\textures)

after installation of FTX Global.

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csharpe Advanced Member

csharpe

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Hi Dieter,

 

don't sweat the difference in .bmp files as there are other add-ons, like UTX etc., that place their custom files (with unique names) into \Scenery\World\texture, meaning most people will have different file counts in that folder.

 

Cheers, Holger

 

Hello, Holger!

Many years ago I contacted you for assistance as I started into scenery design, and you were incredibly helpful and patient. I have been directed to you again to tackle an FTXG landclass issue.  I haven't been able to make much headway on the forums, so here is the issue:

FTXG appears to be reassigning the Grass LC function to a texture that contains grass and trees. To test the issue further, I put a little LC "test" on the AVSIM site for users to let me know what they were seeing on their systems. It is here: http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=grass-tree_test_for_ftxglobal.zip&CatID=root&Go=Search  So far, every user that has contacted me is also seeing a mix of grass+trees instead of solid grass.

 

This issue was initially brought to my attention when it was discovered that a number of airports, that were working fine before an FTXG install, now had trees within the perimeter of the airport. In some of the cases, this was due to a Grass LC being used for the airport background instead of the standard airport "mask".  (That was easily fixed by replacing the grass LC with the "mask".)  However, in my further research of this (and with input from other users) it was discovered that other sceneries that needed to be showing nothing but solid grass in large areas were now showing a mix of grass and trees.  The Faroe Islands v5 scenery is a good example of this http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=faroeislands5.zip&CatID=root&Go=Search

 

If you could look into this, a number of us would be REALLY grateful!  I know I've actually used the Grass LC for some out-of-the-way "sloped" runways (one is for the Pitt Island airstrip in the Chatham Islands), and if it is now going to have trees in FTXG, that could be a little messy on the landing...  ;)

 

Best,

Carlyle Sharpe

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Holger Sandmann Orbx VIP

Holger Sandmann

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Hi Carlyle,


 


good to hear from you.


 


FTXG isn't my department but I've pointed the developer to your post. It's possible that FTXG uses a texture for the grass landclass (#128) that contains meadows with tree patches. There may have been good reasons for doing so but if it's feasible to change it in a service pack I'm sure Eugene will consider it.


 


In the meantime you could look for a file named 128b2an1.agn in \Scenery\World\texture; renaming it to .off might be a temporary fix though its effect would be global meaning all locations that use that particular landclass will no longer show autogen.


 


Cheers, Holger 


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csharpe Advanced Member

csharpe

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Hi Carlyle,

 

good to hear from you.

 

FTXG isn't my department but I've pointed the developer to your post. It's possible that FTXG uses a texture for the grass landclass (#128) that contains meadows with tree patches. There may have been good reasons for doing so but if it's feasible to change it in a service pack I'm sure Eugene will consider it.

 

In the meantime you could look for a file named 128b2an1.agn in \Scenery\World\texture; renaming it to .off might be a temporary fix though its effect would be global meaning all locations that use that particular landclass will no longer show autogen.

 

Cheers, Holger 

 

Holger,

 

Thank you for forwarding this along.  A "meadows with tree patches" is exactly what appears to be showing up!  It's certainly pleasing to the eye (when it doesn't create a conflict), but it is also resulting in the dreaded "trees in unwanted places" issue.  If there is an easy way they can switch it back in a future update, that would be fantastic!

 

Best,

Carlyle

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Jean-Paul Mes Senior Member

Jean-Paul Mes

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In the meantime you could look for a file named 128b2an1.agn in \Scenery\World\texture; renaming it to .off might be a temporary fix though its effect would be global meaning all locations that use that particular landclass will no longer show autogen.

 

Thanks Holger, that fixes the issue I had with the Faroes addon (see this post)  :)

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csharpe Advanced Member

csharpe

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Thanks Holger, that fixes the issue I had with the Faroes addon (see this post)  :)

 

Jean-Paul,

 

By any chance, did you try the Grass LC test I put on AVSIM?  The reason I ask is that the Faroe scenery appeared to be showing the correct, underlying "solid" texture of the grass, but the trees still "popped" through.  In the Grass LC "test", it actually reveals two issues: 1) the appearance of trees, and 2) a background texture that is not solid grass, but that of a "meadow with trees".

 

Best,

Carlyle

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csharpe Advanced Member

csharpe

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Hi Carlyle,

 

Yes I did :

 

With 128b2an1.agn enabled

 

With 128b2an1.agn disabled

 

Thanks, Jean-Paul.

 

That is very helpful and confirms that this is a useful workaround, but only for the removal of the trees.  Changing the texture assignment back to "grass" will, undoubtedly, be a little more involved, but hopefully it will be addressed in a future release.

 

As to the Faroe Islands, the v4 vs. v5 differences are intriguing.  The fact that we see the trees in v5 (but they are on top of solid grass), makes me wonder if Ryan Andersen actually placed 2 landclass layers on top of one another.  If the airport "mask" was placed on top of the Grass LC, the solid texture of the mask could be overriding the texture of the "grass meadow", but the presence of the "grass meadow" would be generating the trees (from underneath).  If this is the case, removing the Grass LC, but leaving the airport "mask" should fix this, as the airport mask is essentially what the grass texture (prior to FTXG) used to be.

 

Best,

Carlyle

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Holger Sandmann Orbx VIP

Holger Sandmann

Posted
Posted

Hi guys,


 


Eugene, the FTXG lead developer, has told me that he'll prepare a fix for the "grass" landclass with the next service pack.


 


As for the Faroe Islands add-on the screenshots I've seen actually show the default grass ground texture with the FTXG autogen on top. That means that the add-on actually includes copies of the default grass landclass textures because otherwise the "meadows-plus-grass" version of FTXG would show instead.


 


Cheers, Holger


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Jean-Paul Mes Senior Member

Jean-Paul Mes

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As to the Faroe Islands, the v4 vs. v5 differences are intriguing.  

 

To avoid any confusion, the screenshots I posted were actually V.1 vs V.5. I tried V.1, V.3, V.4 & V.5 (I couldn't find V.2) and the problems started after V.1.

 

Eugene, the FTXG lead developer, has told me that he'll prepare a fix for the "grass" landclass with the next service pack.

 

That is great news Holger  :smile:

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csharpe Advanced Member

csharpe

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Hi guys,

 

Eugene, the FTXG lead developer, has told me that he'll prepare a fix for the "grass" landclass with the next service pack.

 

As for the Faroe Islands add-on the screenshots I've seen actually show the default grass ground texture with the FTXG autogen on top. That means that the add-on actually includes copies of the default grass landclass textures because otherwise the "meadows-plus-grass" version of FTXG would show instead.

 

Cheers, Holger

 

Awesome news, Holger!

 

Many thanks (from MANY people),

Carlyle

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csharpe Advanced Member

csharpe

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To avoid any confusion, the screenshots I posted were actually V.1 vs V.5. I tried V.1, V.3, V.4 & V.5 (I couldn't find V.2) and the problems started after V.1.

 

Ah, OK.  I was remembering the discussion where you and Friedi brought this up, and there was uncertainty about the versions.  Either way, the mix of trees on top of the mismatched texture could be due to the presence of multiple textures within the scenery competing with each other.

 

So glad Holger could be our spokesperson to the development team in finding a solution!  Thanks again for your help, Jean-Paul.

 

Best,

Carlyle

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  • 2 weeks later...
Kosta Advanced Member

Kosta

Posted
Posted

 

In the meantime you could look for a file named 128b2an1.agn in \Scenery\World\texture; renaming it to .off might be a temporary fix though its effect would be global meaning all locations that use that particular landclass will no longer show autogen.

 

 

I wanted also to update this here, and I would look forward to seeing this fixed in the SP. My problem, after renaming the .agn file, is also gone (the LDDU problem I had since the FTXG release!).

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Marius Lungan Senior Member

Marius Lungan

Posted
Posted

Hello everyone.


 


I have buyt and instaled FTX Global and I really want to know something before I install Patch 1.1 and ORBXLIBS.


I have instaled ORBX FTXGlobal V100 and I want to know the order to instal for ORBX LIBS and FTX Global V1.1 (Patch) ? The second questione is about ORBXLIBS, do I have to install all LIBS that exists or its enough to instal the last one ORBXLIBS 13.10.27 ?


 


Thanks 


 


Best Regards


 


Marius L.


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