Orbx products and P3D 2.0 compatibility

[John Venema]

Hello everyone,

 

I've been reading various websites, forums, blogs and generally absorbing the "buzz" around the imminent release of Prepar3D 2.0 (P3D2), and I feel it is important for us as a company to set expectations for our customers about the level of compatibility of our very large library of products.

 

Regions

 

All our regions will be compatible, but they will require new installers to firstly get their patch level consolidated to current versions, and then to add P3D2 option to the installer to make them FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready. We will make these region installers a priority.

 

Concurrent to that we are now adding the FTX Global 3D lighting and improved performance to all our regions. For example, many customers are now able to experience YMML at 30FPS with autogen maxxed using this new tech, so we won't be making new consolidated installers until each region has the new lighting installed. So please bear that in mind - this is a process that will take some months, please don't expect all our regions to be instantly upgraded and P3D2 ready when Lockheed release the new sim. AU SP4 has been done, and NZ North/South is next, followed by PNW.

 

 

FTX Global

 

We will make a new FTX Global installer which is FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready. We have already got this working during P3D2 testing so we'll ensure that is a priority for the release so at least you have a base level of Orbx available for P3D2.

 

 

FTX Global VECTOR

 

This will be FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready from release. We expect release just before xmas.

 

 

FTX Global openLC EU

 

This will be delayed until January. The reason for this is the sheer amount of manual work we are investing in to ensure we produce the absolute definitive landclass for all of Europe, which is a big territory. That said, we will begin beta testing of openLC EU in the first week of December. Believe me, it will be worth waiting the extra 4-5 weeks because I know you guys want particular countries in Europe to look their best, and we're making unique textures for each climatic area to achieve this. openLC EU will be FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready out of the box.

 

 

Our 66+ airports

 

This is the big one; not a trivial project at all. Firstly, most of our airports will work fine in P3D2, but of course there are literally thousands of objects and iterations of how they are placed, across all these airports. There is also the issue of baked-in ground shadows at every one of them, something we need to consider as no longer being needed for P3D2 with its vastly improved shadow system that has little to no FPS impact. So one of the things I will be asking our developers to do as parallel project(s) is to create unique versions of the photoreal ground imagery that removes the "baked" ground shadows and then add an airport control panel item called "Disable baked-in ground shadows for P3D2".

 

In this way, we give the choice back to you to have the ground shadows active or disabled. At the same time this work will allow all developers to revisit Orbxlibs and perhaps update their use of PeopleFlow2/CreatureFlow and also vegetation. Once again, this is a process that will take many months, if not the bulk of 2014 for us to complete. But you have my promise that we will update all our airports (all 66+ of them) to take advantage of all the P3D2 features.

 

Then there are some problems with a few airports. We have a few instances of terminal buildings not displaying or vegetation not quite working correctly, and this comes down to our ObjectFlow DLL, which is still being ported to P3D2. We are facing a few technical issues with that code but I am committed to getting that resolved because a lot of what is unique about Orbx airports relies on ObjectFlow to be working correctly.

 

EDIT: I have posted an update to the ObjectFlow situation here: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/74910-why-orbx-airports-using-objectflow-are-not-yet-ported-or-coming-to-p3dv2/

 

So again, please bear with us as we make these changes, invest in new code, update our object libraries and do the work that is necessary. Whilst we are 100% committed to P3D2 as a strategic platform for our customers, you must appreciate there is quite an investment in time and resources to update such a vast library of products. 

 

NOTE: All new airports not yet released will be P3D2 tested and ready (if the developer chooses to not use ObjectFlow and use the CP instead).

 

 

Why was this work not done before now?

 

Simple: until P3D2 was in beta and we had a chance to examine it and its code etc, it would have been foolish of us to pre-empt any changes we should make. We also have been logging a lot of bug reports to Lockheed and worked with them on DX11 shader issues including fixing the FTX Global lights so that will work out of the box from day one.

 

 

 

I hope this puts things into perspective for you: we are 100% behind P3D2, are actively testing all our products and will roll out brand new, fully patched installers for FSX/P3D1/P3D2 for every single product over the coming 6-12 months.

 

Meantime for those of you who are desperate to "port" P3D1 versions of Orbx products to P3D2, I am sure we can provide interim information to assist in the community finding solutions until our official installers arrive down the track.

 

Yours in updates

[Derek McAllan]

Nice update mate, thanks for keeping us informed 

 

Cheers,

Derek

[cabnz]

Thanks John

[kaboki]

Thanks for the heads up, looking forward to gradually move over to Prepar3dv2 with Orbx  Take your time, no rush.

[Ken Terry]

John, thanks heaps, very informative, will possibly delay my "rush" into P3D2 until I am sure much of the adjustments and software corrections have been completed and tested.

Regards

Ken

[paddler]

Good to know the plan, thanks.

[Neil]

Thank you very much for the update, a lot of work ahead. I think that we should all see this as a huge endorsement of P3DV2. It should take about a year, the same time it will take to save up for a 4 Gig video card!

[newyork_oz]

Thanks John,

                     Can`t wait for YMML V2 on P3D 2...

 

Thanks

Paul

[Iain_Mc]

Sounds great, thanks. Was not expecting such a time-consuming level of rework as a baked/rebaked airport option - way to go, sure they'll look terrific with dynamic shadowing.

 

Very much looking forward to simming in 2014. 

 

Cheers, Iain

[Sniper31]

Great update on the way forward JV, thank you.

[FILOU]

Thanks John !

[Andrew 737]

Thanks John

[marith]

That's great news that the Orbx team are taking the time and effort to make all of your products P3D 2.0 compatible.  I can imagine the huge amount of work required and not every company would bother to do so with all of their products so a big thank you!

[pipeorgan]

Excellent announcement. Lockheed Martin/Orbx, the dream team, thank you for what you are doing for the flight sim community:-)

[pmb]

Agreed, add the fact that all this hard work is done for free. My respect as a highly satisfied customer.

 

Regards, Michael

[Arismac]

Internet Download Manger is going to be doing some overtime this coming year. Thanks mate

[tuisong]

Thank you for setting out the time line John.

It is great news, and the fact that NZ will be one of the first regions might just encourage those who have not yet experienced the wonderful job you did with it, and the great variety of flying environments there are, to buy them and find out what they are missing.

Guys and gals fly New Zealand north and south while you wait. You will not regret it.

[Culley44]

i am looking forward to this, i hope my expensive hardware pays off with the new release of p3d. i am sure this is gonna be a pain for orbx along with all users that change over to p3d v2, i am just really crossing my fingers for a migration tool for certain planes to put into the new sim. i do have a quick question though, will we be able to just login to the sim market and get the new ftx global installer or receive emails with links to the updated installers as they are put into effect?

[simmerhead2]

Thanks for the update. It is very much appreciated.

 

Also I would like to offer a big thank you for being commited to the future of this hobby unlike so many other developers who seem to be comfortably stuck in the past. I can tell you that P3D2 is bringing back people to the hobby that has been away from it for many years, and these people are just now discovering ORBX for the first time.

 

I can't wait to get going, and am adding another SSD to my setup so I can enjoy ORBX in FSX, P3D and P3D2!

[pmb]

Also much excited about NZ. NZNI + NZSI are my all-time favorites.

 

Regards, Michael

 

(PS: Can some kind soul, please, repair the IE 11 broken functions like "Quote", "Copy/Paste" etc. The latter does neither work via keystrokes nor via the icons, thanks.)

[JohnR]

Thanks for the update John

[Taph]

Thanks John, much appreciated, it is really nice to know what is going to happen

[NoLonger]

Thanks for the update! One question:

 

There is also the issue of baked-in ground shadows at every one of them, something we need to consider as no longer being needed for P3D2 with its vastly improved shadow system that has little to no FPS impact. So one of the things I will be asking our developers to do as parallel project(s) is to create unique versions of the photoreal ground imagery that removes the "baked" ground shadows and then add an airport control panel item called "Disable baked-in ground shadows for P3D2".

 

In this way, we give the choice back to you to have the ground shadows active or disabled.

 

Will the FTX Global textures (although of course not being photo real as in those airports add ons) get the same treatment? Seems like a huge and almost impossible task, but I'm just curious.

[Todd Harrell]

Great road map, Jon. You guys really don't sleep much, do you?

Todd

[rockliffe]

Thanks for keeping us in the loop JV, appreciated.

[shortspecialbus]

Hi John,

 

Since this particular post didn't outright state if there would be a cost or not, can you confirm that the patches will be free?  Or has that yet to be determined?

 

Thanks,

 

-stefan

[ilya1502]

this work will allow all developers to revisit Orbxlibs and perhaps update their use of PeopleFlow2/CreatureFlow and also vegetation. 

Dear John,

 

Is it possible that developers, while revisiting the libraries, substitute static Cessna C177 Cardinal model by the Cessna 172 Skyhawk? There are not so many Cardinals in the reality

 

Otherwise, what you say is brilliant! Thank you very much for this look inside!

[Mike62]

Thanks for the update and makes things look a lot more clear.

 

Mike

[Mickey]

Thanks John for the information. Im sure you orbx guys will do your best to get everything P3D2 going. Keep the good work up.

[CathyH]

Thanks, John. I will DOWNLOAD P3D 2 but not install untill all regions are done

[CrownCityMisfit]

Glad to know I can move my investments over to P3D2 in the future. Thank you.

[Bushmonkey]

thanks for the update JV!

[Düsselwings]

Thanks for the News!

Short question : What about DVD products (via Aerosoft) which have just an FSX installer right now (t. ex) AU and some other "older" airports. Is it then possible to install them, if there is a new installer out? Or will that work only with DL products?

Greetings from Germany, Stephan

[jrrbolkin]

Very helpful news,simply means no mad rush to port over to p3d2 but we can wait a while and see how it performs before jumping in,yet still keep an excellent FSX with Orbx until then.

Gary

[kaboki]

Thanks for the News!

Short question : What about DVD products (via Aerosoft) which have just an FSX installer right now (t. ex) AU and some other "older" airports. Is it then possible to install them, if there is a new installer out? Or will that work only with DL products?

Greetings from Germany, Stephan

 

I think I read in a post where an Orbx dev said he would make some kind of tool for porting scenery from the FSX install to P3Dv2 for people that only had the DVD editions of scenery. But you would have to install it in FSX first then port it over or something...

[Niner1]

Hello everyone,

 

I've been reading various websites, forums, blogs and generally absorbing the "buzz" around the imminent release of Prepar3D 2.0 (P3D2), and I feel it is important for us as a company to set expectations for our customers about the level of compatibility of our very large library of products.

 

Regions

 

All our regions will be compatible, but they will require new installers to firstly get their patch level consolidated to current versions, and then to add P3D2 option to the installer to make them FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready. We will make these region installers a priority.

 

Concurrent to that we are now adding the FTX Global 3D lighting and improved performance to all our regions. For example, many customers are now able to experience YMML at 30FPS with autogen maxxed using this new tech, so we won't be making new consolidated installers until each region has the new lighting installed. So please bear that in mind - this is a process that will take some months, please don't expect all our regions to be instantly upgraded and P3D2 ready when Lockheed release the new sim. AU SP4 has been done, and NZ North/South is next, followed by PNW.

 

 

FTX Global

 

We will make a new FTX Global installer which is FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready. We have already got this working during P3D2 testing so we'll ensure that is a priority for the release so at least you have a base level of Orbx available for P3D2.

 

 

FTX Global VECTOR

 

This will be FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready from release. We expect release just before xmas.

 

 

FTX Global openLC EU

 

This will be delayed until January. The reason for this is the sheer amount of manual work we are investing in to ensure we produce the absolute definitive landclass for all of Europe, which is a big territory. That said, we will begin beta testing of openLC EU in the first week of December. Believe me, it will be worth waiting the extra 4-5 weeks because I know you guys want particular countries in Europe to look their best, and we're making unique textures for each climatic area to achieve this. openLC EU will be FSX/P3D1/P3D2 ready out of the box.

 

 

Our 66+ airports

 

This is the big one; not a trivial project at all. Firstly, most of our airports will work fine in P3D2, but of course there are literally thousands of objects and iterations of how they are placed, across all these airports. There is also the issue of baked-in ground shadows at every one of them, something we need to consider as no longer being needed for P3D2 with its vastly improved shadow system that has little to no FPS impact. So one of the things I will be asking our developers to do as parallel project(s) is to create unique versions of the photoreal ground imagery that removes the "baked" ground shadows and then add an airport control panel item called "Disable baked-in ground shadows for P3D2".

 

In this way, we give the choice back to you to have the ground shadows active or disabled. At the same time this work will allow all developers to revisit Orbxlibs and perhaps update their use of PeopleFlow2/CreatureFlow and also vegetation. Once again, this is a process that will take many months, if not the bulk of 2014 for us to complete. But you have my promise that we will update all our airports (all 66+ of them) to take advantage of all the P3D2 features.

 

Then there are some problems with a few airports. We have a few instances of terminal buildings not displaying or vegetation not quite working correctly, and this comes down to our ObjectFlow DLL, which is still being ported to P3D2. We are facing a few technical issues with that code but I am committed to getting that resolved because a lot of what is unique about Orbx airports relies on ObjectFlow to be working correctly.

 

So again, please bear with us as we make these changes, invest in new code, update our object libraries and do the work that is necessary. Whilst we are 100% committed to P3D2 as a strategic platform for our customers, you must appreciate there is quite an investment in time and resources to update such a vast library of products. 

 

NOTE: All new airports not yet released will be P3D2 tested and ready.

 

 

Why was this work not done before now?

 

Simple: until P3D2 was in beta and we had a chance to examine it and its code etc, it would have been foolish of us to pre-empt any changes we should make. We also have been logging a lot of bug reports to Lockheed and worked with them on DX11 shader issues including fixing the FTX Global lights so that will work out of the box from day one.

 

 

 

I hope this puts things into perspective for you: we are 100% behind P3D2, are actively testing all our products and will roll out brand new, fully patched installers for FSX/P3D1/P3D2 for every single product over the coming 6-12 months.

 

Meantime for those of you who are desperate to "port" P3D1 versions of Orbx products to P3D2, I am sure we can provide interim information to assist in the community finding solutions until our official installers arrive down the track.

 

Yours in updates

 

What can we expect aesthetically different when comparing DX11,DX9 and ORBX products ? Besides the shadows and lighting ?

[Holi]

Thanks for the News!

Short question : What about DVD products (via Aerosoft) which have just an FSX installer right now (t. ex) AU and some other "older" airports. Is it then possible to install them, if there is a new installer out? Or will that work only with DL products?

Greetings from Germany, Stephan

 

Yes Ed mentioned something about importing tool, but how would it work from P3D 1.4 as I have no FSX installed to my machine...

 

John or Ed could you please make a statement how DVD products will be handled?? Because the majority of my OBRX products are DVD`s from different resellers here in Germany and I do not want to bin them...

 

Thank you

[Graham Eccleston]

Dear John,

 

Is it possible that developers, while revisiting the libraries, substitute static Cessna C177 Cardinal model by the Cessna 172 Skyhawk? There are not so many Cardinals in the reality

 

Otherwise, what you say is brilliant! Thank you very much for this look inside!

 

There are no C177s amongst the statics, they are all C152's, 172's etc as per the real aircraft. I think you may be referring to the AI aircraft in the FTX AI traffic packs where we are not allowed to use the only C152, C172 and C182 AI models available. The developer has only allowed us to use the C177 model so we have to use that one to depict the single engine Cessnas everywhere I'm afraid.

 

I am constantly on the lookout for some single engine Cessna AI aircraft and as soon as any are developed I'll do my best to obtain permission to use them.

[John Venema]

There may be some small upgrade fees applicable if a developer decides to embark on a "Version 2.0" upgrade. To be clear, Orbx does not charge for 1.x upgrades, only 2.x upgrades. Depending on the number of hours required to update an airport, there may be a small upgrade fee. That really is up to each developer and the number of hours they devote to the upgrade. Also be aware that the photoreal ground imagery will double in size inside the airport fence if a "non-shadow" version is added.

[Holi]

Sorry John,

I need to ask again, what about the DVD products??