NOTED just purchased FTX global and wondering it's purpose.

[trelloar]

I purchased FTX global last night. Have had my eye on it for about a week now and was blown away when I viewed some youtube videos supposedly featuring FTX global. I have never purchased any scenery or addons from orbx in the past but recently got back into FSX since not having played it in a few years (it's release date) so I have been kind of "out of the loop" for a while.

 

I need someone to shed some light on what I just spent $100 bucks on because I am not seeing what I thought I would see as far as terrain and buildings go. Very confused at this point. I do have another topic posted right now in this forum but it is in relation to a specific issue I have been experiencing which I consider separate to this concern based on what I have been seeing while running FSX after the FTX global install.

 

I'm not seeing photo realistic terrain. I'm not seeing much more detailed and perhaps more numerous buildings big and small. Those are the things that I have been seeing in FTX global videos and those are the expectations that led me to purchase this product. I was under the impression that Orbx has a history of making amazing addon scenery like airports and several miles of surrounding terrain. Then I see the newly released FTX global and from the description provided in the name and even upon reading further on the orbx website... it looks to me that it includes everything that Orbx has offered previously in separate addons but now on a collective and global level in one purchase. Ok maybe not the intricate detailed airports but at least the incredible terrain and city scenery I have seen. Just wouldn't make sense to have all airports previously sold for $20 or $30 a pop suddenly available all in one $100 purchase. But I at least expected the terrain and city improvements, otherwise what's the point of it?

 

So apparently I misunderstood. massively! So what exactly is the purpose of FTX global? how much did I actually waste my money. Will tell you right now.. i'm not about to start dropping $20 or $30 each on certain regions and airports. I'm pretty pissed to say the least. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help me figure out what to do and where to go from this point. Feeling ripped off right now and it makes it even worse that this so-called tech support method of "no e-mail or phone support" Forum only? are you effing kidding me?? Very difficult to get some straight information and answers. Took me 2 hours just to get registered and then validated.

 

[Alex Goff]

Hi trelloar,

FTX Global does not include all previous products, rather it is similar to other global texture replacement products such as GEX or FS Scene.

Here is a post by one of our testers describing FTX Global and what it does with visual aids:

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/61929-ftx-global-what-is-it-all-about/

To sum it up shortly, Global replaces the default texture palette with Orbx's textures including those used in previous regions and brand new textures. Additionally custom autogen is used along with a new 3D lighting system, land class fixes, and a demo of upcoming land class packages.

All of this has been described on the product page, purchase page at FSS, and in product announcements by John in the preview and announcement subforums.

If you have further questions about what Global does I will be glad to provide more information.

[trelloar]

Ok I am not seeing land textures that I saw on ftx g videos created by both users and ORBX themselves. My terrain looks exactly the same. Don't see the photo-realistic quality that I saw on videos... Not even in the same neighborhood of what I see on screen shots or videos. So why did I spend $100??? Or is there a problem with my install??? I doubt it, followed instructions, lengthy install process went smoothly, can't imagine what could've gone wrong. and getting extended help with this issue and troubleshooting... Don't see how that is possible considering orbx's un-orthodox approach to tech support or even the most essential customer support.

[trelloar]

FTX Global does not include all previous products, rather it is similar to other global texture replacement products such as GEX or FS Scene.

Here is a post by one of our testers describing FTX Global and what it does with visual aids:

http://www.orbxsyste...s-it-all-about/

To sum it up shortly, Global replaces the default texture palette with Orbx's textures including those used in previous regions and brand new textures. Additionally custom autogen is used along with a new 3D lighting system, land class fixes, and a demo of upcoming land class packages.

........ The very end of that quote almost contradicts the end...

You first state that "it does not include all previous products" But then say it replaces default textures with orbx's textures including "those used in previous regions including some new textures".

Bottom line.. I have installed FTX G and don't see a difference.

[rockliffe]

My terrain looks exactly the same.

 

Then I respectfully suggest, if that is the case, you have an issue with installation. Perhaps you could post a screenie to give support a clue as to what you are seeing.

[trelloar]

Will definitely post a screen shot a bit later tonight... Have just arrived home from picking up my 5 yr old from school and he is growing very impatient with me just making these post. Lol.

[rockliffe]

Have just arrived home from picking up my 5 yr old from school and he is growing very impatient with me just making these post. Lol.

 

I am feeling very jealous! Don't worry re FTXG, if there is a problem it WILL be sorted, I promise. Orbx has the best support system of any product. When you post the screenie, be so kind as to mention the area so myself or someone can post a similar screenie so you can make a comparison.

[Alex Goff]

FTX Global does not provide photoreal terrain nor has it been advertised as such. I just went through and scanned the product page and could not locate any pictures that featured photoreal scenery. 

 

On the note of contradictions, there is a vast difference between FTX Global using textures that were created for other regions and including the region wholesale. To clarify, Global does not and has never been advertised to include previous regions and airports. It draws textures from past projects as they are well suited for other areas but nothing else. Regions include custom mesh, roads, railways, rivers, coasts, lake, accurate landclass, enhanced airports, and custom points of interest in addition to textures. Global simply makes use of the existing library along with a large number of new custom textures to replace FSX's default palette on a global scale much like other similar products on the market.

 

Here is a quote from back in June on what FTX Global provides:

 

 

Scope of FTX Global

 

Despite the many announcement topics and further explanatory posts there is still some confusion about what FTXG is. First and foremost it is a TEXTURE replacement and not much more. Sure, we include custom autogen textures, trees, some minor landclass mods and of course 3D lighting, but those are just a bit of icing on the cake. It is mainly designed to take a pristine virgin FSX installation and turn it into Orbx-land in a single installer.

 

So it won't make cities look like they appear in Google Earth, or add custom building models in key cities or add accurate road networks, coastlines, railways, mesh, etc. That is what our full-fat FTX regions do, and as you all know those take many months each to produce, typically 3-9 months depending on a region's size.

 

You also won't find building textures that match what you expect in Athens, Cairo, Tehran, Hong Kong, Sydney, Boston, Johannesburg, Rio etc - that is way beyond the scope of what FSX did out of the box and FTXG is not any different - it is still bound by the rules of the original FSX architecture to a large extent.

 

You can answer most questions about what FTXG does now - how? By simply loading a flight at any location in the world and observing what the landclass does, how the cities appears and where the roads go. FTXG will improve the textures of the ground and buildings but they can't possibly match the unique look and feel of each city.

 

Will we get there eventually? You bet! The beauty of FTXG is how we plan to continually enhance it, partially through free patches and SPs (as we do for all our products) and partially through openLC, airports, POI packs, cityscapes etc which we intend to develop from sales of FTXG and sold for between $5-$20. 

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/59802-ftx-global-update-june-2013/

 

Judging by your support query it looks as though global installed properly, although certainly not displaying correctly. I can see our autogen and what looks like Orbx textures. 

[trelloar]

FTX Global does not provide photoreal terrain nor has it been advertised as such. I just went through and scanned the product page and could not locate any pictures that featured photoreal scenery. 

 

On the note of contradictions, there is a vast difference between FTX Global using textures that were created for other regions and including the region wholesale. To clarify, Global does not and has never been advertised to include previous regions and airports. It draws textures from past projects as they are well suited for other areas but nothing else. Regions include custom mesh, roads, railways, rivers, coasts, lake, accurate landclass, enhanced airports, and custom points of interest in addition to textures. Global simply makes use of the existing library along with a large number of new custom textures to replace FSX's default palette on a global scale much like other similar products on the market.

 

Here is a quote from back in June on what FTX Global provides:

 

 

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/59802-ftx-global-update-june-2013/

 

Judging by your support query it looks as though global installed properly, although certainly not displaying correctly. I can see our autogen and what looks like Orbx textures. 

that's interesting that you don't claim photo-real quality terrain because one of orbx's videos featuring FTX G is showing me what I would call photo-quality. what ever you want to call it... when I saw screen shots and videos my jaw fell off. when I started running it... I was looking for the improvement. 2nd guessing... "was it like that before?" so yeah.. it seems that it was a bit mis-represented. but what do I know.

[trelloar]

^{Here are some screen shots. I should mention.. while these screen shots show an obvious seemingly separate problem that I have with the terrain not showing until my plane is right up over it.... The terrain that I can see is of course what fell short of my expectations. Needless to say I have some issues here and have been trying to solve one while trying to gain answers about the overall expectations of the product.  I previously made a separate topic thread concerning the missing terrain that magically appears as I approach it but maybe we can kill 2 birds with one stone. This picture will of course show both the missing terrain and of course from what I can see on the terrain visible I am not too impressed compared to how it was before FTX G install.} 

^{the 1st picture shows what i'm getting without DX10 preview. the 2nd picture shows what I have with dx10 preview enabled.  system specs are as follows.}

^{intel  i7 quad-core 2.2ghz HT to 8 logical processors}

^{8 gigs system ram}

^{Nvidia gforce gt 540m 1gig ram}

^{anything else?}

[Ripcord]

What else have you got installed?  UTX?  Anything else?

[trelloar]

nothing else installed

and to update the pictures with some location info that another person asked for...

New York  
 

[Ripcord]

Nothing else at all?  This is FSX right?

[Alex Goff]

that's interesting that you don't claim photo-real quality terrain because one of orbx's videos featuring FTX G is showing me what I would call photo-quality. what ever you want to call it... when I saw screen shots and videos my jaw fell off. when I started running it... I was looking for the improvement. 2nd guessing... "was it like that before?" so yeah.. it seems that it was a bit mis-represented. but what do I know.

Regardless of what may have been assumed, FTXG does not and has not ever advertised photoreal terrain. It is a land class product through and through. This is what FTX Global provides and what it has always been advertised to provide. If you can find somewhere on the website where it has been advertised to do something else please let us know. There is no shortage of information of Global and what it does and I don't believe any of it has referred to it as a collection of our past products, photoreal, etc.

Please keep support requests to your separate thread.

[trelloar]

so I guess we can say that Alex Geoff has put the terrain and texture quality issue to rest. As of right now.. I just want to get rid of this "sea of blue" you can see where there should be terrain. (terrain appears as you get closer) As the 2nd picture shows.. enabling dx10 solves the sea of blue problem but then puts black boxes everywhere. enabling dx10 also causes another issue that was present BEFORE the installation of FTXG. So obviously I would like to stay away from DX10. Just to clarify, the sea of blue and the black boxes did not show up until I installed FTXG.

Regardless of what may have been assumed, FTXG does not and has not ever advertised photoreal terrain. It is a land class product through and through. This is what FTX Global provides and what it has always been advertised to provide. If you can find somewhere on the website where it has been advertised to do something else please let us know. There is no shortage of information of Global and what it does and I don't believe any of it has referred to it as a collection of our past products, photoreal, etc.

Please keep support requests to your separate thread.

so we can't just take things from here and treat this as my support request? we like things complicated don't we?

[Benny]

Hi, I feel for you when I see those black box. Some will chip in and tell you what need to be done, it's a thing about highmem = 1.

 

You should also put the spec of your machine.

 

That said, let me explain one thing to you, Pacific North West region  is 4.25 gig, Global is 4 gig.

 

Imagine that if Global was like an FSX terrain - area it would be like 1000 gig and would take 30-50 years to make and you would need a mortgage on it

 

I don't think Global is for everyone. I know it's not for me. Not now

 

As for being helped here you will! You may also get kick off  and get your thread close if your like me

 

Also, put your proof of purchase in your signature or post.

 

I personally prefer region and good ORBX airport (good at 98%) and trust me they are extremely realistic and constantly updated.

 

Don't worry about your screen shot problem, look at mine not so long ago.

 

 

[Alex Goff]

so I guess we can say that Alex Geoff has put the terrain and texture quality issue to rest. As of right now.. I just want to get rid of this "sea of blue" you can see where there should be terrain. (terrain appears as you get closer) As the 2nd picture shows.. enabling dx10 solves the sea of blue problem but then puts black boxes everywhere. enabling dx10 also causes another issue that was present BEFORE the installation of FTXG. So obviously I would like to stay away from DX10. Just to clarify, the sea of blue and the black boxes did not show up until I installed FTXG.

so we can't just take things from here and treat this as my support request? we like things complicated don't we?

For the purpose of keeping things organized please keep the support thread contained in one place. I don't think that organization is too complicated.

Since the function of FTX Global has been explained and the thread is now straying from the topic it will be locked. Please continue the support request in its support thread.