ANSWERED Any plans to make the American Southwest red again?

[B77X]

I am really tired of flying in America and coming to the Southwest only to see brown and gray landscape where there should be more red. Please tell me you are working on an Open Landclass or FTX Global fix for this soon? It has been so long since Global was first released and the entire desert area of America looks so bad! Thanks.

[Ian Routley]

The choice of texture displayed is a landclass function.  I anticipate these things will be addressed in the appropriate OpenLC product, when available.

 

For further information, take a look at the FTX guide here:

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/74347-the-definitive-guide-to-ftx-products-the-go-to-source-of-ftx-information/

[B77X]

I know what all the different products are, I am just wondering what is the time frame to fix an obvious problem with FTX Global that makes flying in the American desert unflyable? Looks like I will be deleting Global and installing GEX again. Completely disappointed in the lack of attention to detail. I realize Global is a global product, but no other region suffers from this problem.

[Ian Routley]

Since you know what the products are, you will know that FTXGlobal is a Texture (with autogen) replacement only.

 

Due to the lack of variability in some areas of default FSX landclass data, as textures become less generic some textures will not be a 'best-fit' for any given region.  It's quite possible or even likely that simply making those textures 'more red' would fix the area in question, but ruin large swathes of something else.    As landclass is further defined, it may be that a texture set does not represent any of the areas it is applied properly, in which case the texture itself would need to be altered.

 

The better solution, whilst retaining variability, is to improve the landclass data, therefore the 'attention to detail' you refer to is in the Landclass (which will be the OpenLC product), not the FTXGlobal Base product which you are using.  Unless you have another landclass product installed, what you will be seeing is the FSX default landclass, which calls (appropriately or inappropriately) the corresponding FTXGlobal texture.

 

Unfortunately, we don't have a time-frame (except in the broadest sense). From previous experience doing this, the policy has evolved not to publicly announce timeframes for products in advance.  It seems to create a great deal of angst, and software development doesn't work that way.

 

Of course, whether you choose to go back to GEX in the intervening time is entirely up to you.