Decision time!

[tonyc1946]

I have thought about buying the FTX products for a long time as a replacement for the GEX / UTX products I have owned for some years. Now an FSX crash and need for reinstall has made me think hard about this decision as it would be a great time to introduce it cleanly.

 

I should explain that I dont do VFR flights but I do fly a lot in VAs covering all the UK and Europe.

 

Some of my main bases are around London and until now I had the Aerosft London VFR which unfortunately renders London a totally different colour to everything else around it!

 

So you see on the face of it FTX would be my dream ideal.

 

However I am told all the time on various VA and other forums of the problems that will come from using FTX in respect of OOMs and compatibility with the dozens of well known payware and freeware airport sceneries I have already bought over the years.

 

So the advice I would like is the following:

 

I have a reasonably good pc with a GForce GTX 660ti card and between 2.8 and 3.2 ghz speed. I get the very occasional OOM but is rare. If I install FTX Global and say FTX England to get a good rendition of London then use say a decent quality aircraft such as the Majestic Q400 to land at the UK2000 London City will I get plagued by OOMs?

 

Secondly I hear much about compatibility problems with other scenery. I have all the UK2000 airports and many of the Aerosoft ones plus a lot of other airports. How do I know if they will be compatible? Plus what exactly does that mean? Is it just that they are a bit blurred around the edges or simply won't work?

 

Many thanks in advance for any help you can give me in making what is clearly an important decision before spending what is a reasonable amount of money and not wanting to go up the wrong path!

[Ripcord]

I run FTX everything and almost all the UK2000 airports and they fit great, London City included. Probably you will have to reduce AI traffic a bit to allow for your card but it will still work fine. Like you I had GTX/UTX and then one day, I just dumped it all and never looked back. Get FTX England to replace VFR whatever.

[norfolk mike]

As Ripcord says, the UK2000 series of airports work just fine in both FTX Global and FTX England.

 

The 'blending' is more a colouration issue, in that the UK2000 photoreal backgrounds aren't as saturated as the FTX default textures and therefore can look a little insipid. Some people cannot live with that, others hardly notice it, but then much depends on your lighting and weather set-up. Personally, I find that many of the airports look better within FTX (the region) than they do in FTX Global, but all of that is about to change with the release of the European landclass.

 

There is another consideration. My own system is 'mid range' and increasingly looking 'low end' as technology advances. The FPS hit with FTX Global is less than it is with FTX England, and the extra headroom Global offers when combined with a payware airport might be worth bearing in mind if you wish to use ai or intensive weather themes etc.

 

As a non VFR flyer, I'd say you'd be better off buying FTX Global together with the EU LandClass when its released. The VAS impact of FTX Global is less than that of an FTX region, and according to Kosta, pretty negligible anyway. The VAS impact of EU LandClass (we've been told) is zero.

 

Personally, I'm opting to keep UTX Europe and North America. It works well with FTX Global, isn't applicable to the regions anyway but it remains to be seen how it works with Europe Open Land-Class. Its likely that some options will have to be deselected in the UTX configurator but I'm not really anticipating any glaring issues (fingers crossed) . You may decide to buy FTX Vector of course, in which case it should all work harmoniously from the word go.

 

Just as a reference: I haven't got the NGX 737, but I do have the Captain Sim 737-200, and that's about the most FPS intensive bird I own. At UK2000 Leeds or Luton Xtreme (for example), within FTX Global and she'll stick to my locked 30 FPS like a Pit Bull Terrier with lock-Jaw. Same plane, same airport, only this time within FTX England (the region) and it'll waver between 24 FPS and 26 FPS, so no biggy, unless you have better things to do with those 4-6 frames.

[tonyc1946]

Thanks Mike and Ripcord thats really interesting.

 

To be honest my main interest in FTX England is the London scenery. I fly a lot from Heathrow and particularly London City so the London "skyline" is very important and I guess you won't get that just from Global?

 

I would however like to know more from anyone that has various other pay and freeware airports installed with FTX. It would be nice to know how they are affected.

[norfolk mike]

 FTX Global/ Open L/C might not give you the amount of custom buildings you want, in which case FTX England might well suit your needs better.

 

With regards to 'other' airports, the only ones I have are the freeware offerings from the ACG. Again, the photo real backgrounds can look 'washed out' against the higher saturation of the FTX Textures. In the case of the ACG Duxford, removing the 6 photo BGL's solved the issue. Conningsby for example blends reasonably well, whereas Marham does stand out a little too much for my own taste.

 

Future UK2000 (as well as the current Heathrow) will be made with FTX England in mind, so no worries on that front.

 

As for FTX Global, I've found that all of the NL2000 freeware airports/airfields blend almost seamlessly, but aren't as light on FPS as the UK2000 series.

[tonyc1946]

Thanks Mike. Actually the VFR airfield series from UK2000 (there are 3 in the series) give excellent renditions of all UK airfields including Duxford and Conningsby. Might be worth you taking a look though I suspect FTX England provides these as well?

[norfolk mike]

I believe one of the UK2000 VFR packages has now been updated to better harmonise with FTX England, although I've not got any of the series, yet.

 

The FTX England default airfields have indeed all had a make-over. They are better than default, but don't match the dedicated work put in by the ACG team for their Duxford, Coningsby, Marham (and soon Lakenheath) etc projects, but then again, they don't pretend to. The ACG airfields all have custom AI as well, but all except Duxford are military, so a bit of a niche area.

 

I seem to remember downloading the UK2000 VFR free sample which covered my local small airfield of Shipdham, but was a little underwhelmed. A lot of the objects looked 'stock' (understandable on a large scale project), and the gimmicky additions such as the hot air balloons and flocks of birds looked a little overdone. However, as Gary is revamping the series I'm sure it'll be worth another look. The Xtreme range of airports on the other hand I've always found to be superb!

[tonyc1946]

Thanks everyone for the heads up on the products. I have more or less decided to buy the Global and Vector products then probably the EU LC when it arrives.

 

Just one more question as my ageing mind struggles with some of the newer concepts!

 

I have GEX, REX and Ultimate Terrain X Europe. Does Global and Vector more or less replace these completely or will I need to reinstall some of them?

 

Thanks again for all the help!

[norfolk mike]

You'll have to lose GEX, because FTX Global base essentially does the same thing. Ie, both are default texture replacements.

 

UTX Europe is up to you. As said, I've elected to keep mine for now as its always worked well with FTX Global. If you buy FTX Vectors, then theoretically you could still use that in conjunction with Global base, because UTX offers certain land class components that vectors on its own does not. However, as you are planning to further enhance your sim with the soon to be released FTX EU Landclass, this will effectively make the UTX Land class component redundant, and therefore UTX Europe will be of no further value.

 

So, you could keep UTX, or buy FTX Vectors, but using both with EU Landclass would be pointless as they'll be doing the same thing. We don't know for sure what the results of using UTX with EU Landclass will be, but both are vector products and will therefore (hopefully) portray the vector components of Europe with equal accuracy. If you just want everything 'clean and compatible' from the start, and the further outlay for FTX vectors is of no consequence, that'll be the safer way to go.

 

Keep REX. Nothing within the FTX 'layer cake' competes with REX.

 

So, in summary, your GEX is now redundant, UTX an option to retain if you don't wish to purchase FTX vectors immediately (it all mounts up), and REX is pretty much compulsory.

 

With regards to REX, many users have now moved onto REX4 which gives further enhanced weather textures. It doesn't have the 'weather engine' however, so you can look upon REX4 as a supplement rather than a replacement for the REX you already have.

 

You've not mentioned a third party mesh? Again, optional but recommended especially when using FTX Vectors because of the corrected airport elevations (which can be overridden in the configuration panel). I'm not a 'mesh man' myself, as I find the FTX regions (which include mesh) to be adequate for much of my flying, but as the whole of Europe will be made more viable with the unleashing of landclass, it might be my next investment.

 

If I've got anything wrong, someone will tell me off, so you keep tuned and I'll keep my fingers crossed

[John Venema]

UTX has not been made to use FTX Global textures (it calls default plus a few of it's own custom textures) so anyone using with FTX Global will yield unpredictable results.

This is mainly due to our extensive edits and repurposing of lclookup.bgl to extend the very limited set of classes available in default.

[hychewright]

I would highly recommend FTX Global. I use to have GEX also but in my opinion FTX is so much better. Now is the time to make the switch.

[tonyc1946]

Mike

 

You are a star!

 

That is so clear and I thank you very much. I am at this moment downloading Global and Vector (only got another 10 hours to go !!!)

 

It looks to me as if the EU LC product won't be too long away (please correct me if I am wrong) but if this is the case I will not reinstall UTX and just wait wait for the EU LC.

 

I still haven't really got my head around the 3rd party mesh thing yet but I will keep reading the many posts and I am sure I will ultimately understand the reasoning for it.

 

John - thank you also for the update thus my decision to await your EU LC product in due course!

 

Tony

[tonyc1946]

Hi guys

 

I have installed Global and Vector with all looking ok.

 

One question I have about Mike's comment that "REX is pretty much compulsory". I bought REX plus Overdrive some time ago and installed it. It seems to concentrate more on Weather/ Cloud definition than Textures.

 

I have Active Sky Next which I use as my weather engine and does my FTX Global/Vector not give me the Textures? So why is REX so important to keep? Is it because the Textures it has is better than FTX?

 

Tony

[Holy Cheese]

It,s the REX weather textures (clouds, water etc) that you're interested in. These textures are not handled by FTX Global, and the REX cloaud textures are much better than default..

Cheers

Jack

[tonyc1946]

Thanks Jack

 

So ASN is purely a weather engine then and has no cloud texture properties?

[Holy Cheese]

That is correct.

Jack