NOTED EuropeLC scenery far from reality [Belgium and Italy]

[snoopy_belgium]

I have Prepar3D on my PC together with FTX Global, Vector and Europe LC. Yesterday I had some flights in Belgium and Italy. 

The new textures look really good, but I'm disappointed with the lack of reality of the scenery.

A couple of examples:

- the harbour of Ostend (Belgium) is not there. The docks are there but instead of harbour buildings and ships a forest can be seen.

- the harbour of Zeebrugge (Belgium): the harbour is there, but most part of it is only gray with no buildings (like all other harbour areas, why no buildings there?). Between the seadocks there is also a residential area with housing, a strange place for people to live.

- also the cities are not there where they should be. The city of Lier (Belgium) for example is missing. The roads, rivers, everything is there, but it seems this city has disapeared in the ORBX world.

 

Maybe Belgium didn't receive much attention when the scenery was made; so I made a flight around Naples in Italy. The nice looking volcano looks great. Maybe the part of the world got some more attention. 

But also there I'm disappointed because when I fly to the island of Capri, the part that is closest to Sorrento is bold (brown colered) and covered with a few bushes. The rest of the island is OK. When I look on Google maps the island should be green (garming) with some trees and some villages).

 

Has ORBX plans to improve the scenery so that it comes closer to reality? 

 

Best regards,

Snoopy_belgium (order number FSS0303941)

[Wolter van der Spoel]

For support queries please be so kind and add your ordernumber(s) to your Sig as per forum rules.

Info on how to do that you can find here => http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/1157-important-notice-please-add-your-order-to-your-sig-for-support

[snoopy_belgium]

I have added the order number.

 

Best regards,

 

Snoopy_belgium

[teecee]

Snoopy, just remember what you used to fly over pre Orbx, and be thankful that someone took the trouble to drag simming out of the dark ages.. If you want real ..fly over boring Photo scenery. Teecee.

[snoopy_belgium]

I'm not convinced. The scenery should match the open street maps according to the manual.

When you look into open street map the harbour areas are there as well as the city. So why it isn't there in the scenery?

When I was flying in FSX with Ultimate terrain everything was there.

I'm patient and it cannot be build in one day. So will there be any improvement in the near future to make the scenery a bit more realistic?

 

Best regards,

Snoopy

[John Venema]

Hi Snoopy,

 

I am not sure what you are reading from the manual or if you understand what landclass does for FSX/P3D; but just because some of the data about land use is OSM-derived does not mean you're going to see docks with 3D objects on them.

 

openLC is a 1km x 1km resolution landclass product. It is vastly superior to default FSX/P3D textures or any other landclass released to date. Please don't expect anything more than 1km square textures covering all of Europe, and the manual certainly does not make claim to delivering anything more.

 

If there are any inaccuracies for land-use types > 1km in resolution (i.e. missing cities), then please log a support call and we will deal with it for upcoming patches.

 

Finally, I would urge you to think back to what your Belgium experience looked like in default FSX/P3D and let us know if our product makes it worse in any way?

[Ron Attwood]

Snoopy, have you tried flying over Europe (Austria in my case) with Europe selected in FTX Central? Don't, it's a mess. Fly Europe with Global selected, entirely different story! Very, very good. Just shy of full fat regions I'd say. Sure, there are some bridges missing and roads to nowhere but the overall impression is terrific. Also, in due course, it'll get better and better.

PNW is an example of how these thing mature with age.

 

Top job.

[snoopy_belgium]

Hi John,

 

Thanks for your reply.

You are right: compared to default FSX/P3D it looks much better. But I compare also to my old flight simming platform, and that was FSX with UTX Europe. The textures are much better now, but the base map was better on the old platform. 

The harbours on this old platform also look better. I don't expect any 3D buildings there, but a large grey surface is below expectations. Maybe these gray surfaces can be replaced by some harbour textures, like container docks, warehouses, car parkings, fuel tanks, ....

Anyway: keep up the good work! As with any new products there is always room for some improvement.

 

Best regards,

Snoopy

[Bugdani]

hello,

 

so let's hope a more realistic Belgium in a future patch....

 

Thank you!

 

Bug.

[FleetingThought]

Confirming what Ron said: I have _finally_ developed a clearer understanding of what "Region Exclusive" settings in FTX Central means! (Ancient, slow brain.....): setting to any of the specific regions is appropriate only if you are going to fly within the ORBX region(s) you have installed in that area.

 

This became entirely clear when I'd set FTX Central to Europe, then flew around Geneva, Switzerland.  There is no ORBX Region (yet) for Switzerland; only for UK, Scotland and Ireland.

 

Ditto for Papua New Guinea.  It's not Australia.

 

So make sure you're set to FTX Global if you're using OpenLC outside those specific ORBX Regions, and it makes a big difference.

 

On top of that, though, the land-class stuff is mainly "flat" terrain textures, overlaid on the vector info that FTX VECTOR and terrain info that FTX Global provide.  So you're not going to get the kind of detailed, 3D-modeled specifics you'd get with purchase of an FTX Airport,  Region (specifically, only those areas in the Region concentrated on), or other company's Airport or City add-ons, for that matter (Drzwiecki Designs' NYC X, for instance).

 

Hope that helps!

[farman]

I have Prepar3D on my PC together with FTX Global, Vector and Europe LC. Yesterday I had some flights in Belgium and Italy. 

The new textures look really good, but I'm disappointed with the lack of reality of the scenery.

A couple of examples:

- the harbour of Ostend (Belgium) is not there. The docks are there but instead of harbour buildings and ships a forest can be seen.

- the harbour of Zeebrugge (Belgium): the harbour is there, but most part of it is only gray with no buildings (like all other harbour areas, why no buildings there?). Between the seadocks there is also a residential area with housing, a strange place for people to live.

- also the cities are not there where they should be. The city of Lier (Belgium) for example is missing. The roads, rivers, everything is there, but it seems this city has disapeared in the ORBX world.

 

Maybe Belgium didn't receive much attention when the scenery was made; so I made a flight around Naples in Italy. The nice looking volcano looks great. Maybe the part of the world got some more attention. 

But also there I'm disappointed because when I fly to the island of Capri, the part that is closest to Sorrento is bold (brown colered) and covered with a few bushes. The rest of the island is OK. When I look on Google maps the island should be green (garming) with some trees and some villages).

 

Has ORBX plans to improve the scenery so that it comes closer to reality? 

 

Best regards,

Snoopy_belgium (order number FSS0303941)

Hi Snoopy, I was too absolutely eager about Europe LC, but as soon as I flew over my own city, Trieste, I.. didn't find it. I was not the only one. Could you be so kind, please, to check if this occurs to me only? Please, check for images on my post "City of Trieste is missing".

Thanks in advance (of course if you can spend some time for this),

Fulvio

[pmb]

Hi Fulvio,

 

I was in Trieste a few years ago and was interested in the region, too. Here is a shot.

 

 

This is with Global Base, OpenLC EU, Vector, and Pilot's Ultimate Mesh under Prepar3d2, entering the city form the North. I'd not judge as far as it's correct, but it's certainly not only fields and grass as on the images in the other thread.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[farman]

Hi Fulvio,

 

I was in Trieste a few years ago and was interested in the region, too. Here is a shot.

 

 

This is with Global Base, OpenLC EU, Vector, and Pilot's Ultimate Mesh under Prepar3d2, entering the city form the North. I'd not judge as far as it's correct, but it's certainly not only fields and grass as on the images in the other thread.

 

Kind regards, Michael

Hi Michael,

thanks for your shot. Of course this is much worring me, because the image represents how my Trieste should be, instead of mine such it would appeared in the Middle Ages. Can't understand what might have happened, apart from my usual, favourite culprit that is FS Global Ultimate Europe.

Best regards,

Fulvio

[pmb]

Fulvio,

 

I can well understand you're upset having had situations like this one before. Unfortunately, I am pretty much lossed  given there were already a number of hints by experts. I don't recall having done any particular manipulation, I had Global Base, Vector, and Pilot's Ultimate running well before, and just installed the four OpenLC packages. I made sure that the library order is as suggested in Ed's document linked in the other thread.

 

I still would not exclude a library order issue, the ORBX library entries have a tendency to rearrange when switching regions if not taken care of it.

 

Kind regards, Michael

 

As a sidenote, I was at ICTP Miramare 20 years ago. What a wonderful and friendly place.

[Culley44]

someone like this in every bunch, shew 

[farman]

Fulvio,

 

I can well understand you're upset having had situations like this one before. Unfortunately, I am pretty much lossed  given there were already a number of hints by experts. I don't recall having done any particular manipulation, I had Global Base, Vector, and Pilot's Ultimate running well before, and just installed the four OpenLC packages. I made sure that the library order is as suggested in Ed's document linked in the other thread.

 

I still would not exclude a library order issue, the ORBX library entries have a tendency to rearrange when switching regions if not taken care of it.

 

Kind regards, Michael

 

As a sidenote, I was at ICTP Miramare 20 years ago. What a wonderful and friendly place.

Miramare will be, for my wife and me, our eternal resting place, together with our beloved Dolmites.

[snoopy_belgium]

Yesterday, I have made a comparison between standard P3D and P3D in the ORBX world. I have made a flight around Napoli where you can find the nice vulcano which is included in Europe LC.

After departure at Napoli you can have a look on the harbour (N40°51'43.23" O14°16'19.85"). In the ORBX world these docks are just grey surfaces. And on the pier you can see some residential housing.

 

 

In the standard P3D world it looks like this:

 

 

Also no harbour buildings there, but it looks more realistic because less empty.

 

Then we fly to the island of Capri (N40°34'38.48" O14°13'48.01"). In the ORBX world it looks like this:

 

 

One side of the island has some strange vegetation, somebody has cut the forest it seems. When you look on google it should be completely green with some villages:

 

 

In the standard P3D world the island of Capri looks like:

 

 

So it seems that the ORBX version of Capri uses a wrong landclass at one side of the island.

 

Then we return back to Napoli and we pass some nice holiday destinations. In google it looks like:

 

 

 

So many towns and harbours along the cost and on the mountains there. In the ORBX world it looks like:

 

 

The coastline is correct, but no harbours and towns can be seen. The town of Amalfi is not so small (6000 habitants), but it used to be much more populated in the past and has even a cathedral, so it is not a small place. But not a single trace of it in the ORBX world and also not in the standard P3D world.

 

My comparison made something clear for me:

- the ORBX products make the standard P3D scenery much more attractive and offers great benefits.

- but when I do VFR flying more detail is needed to make the ORBX scenery more realistic.

 

Best regards,

Snoopy_belgium

[Renegade0147]

Before i used OpenLC i used UTX Europe..

Now i read so much from OpenLC and looking very nice previous screenshots from the ORBX Team and says : ohh looking damnn good.

 

But

 

now i must say Towns (not big Cities) looking better in UTX as in OpenLC. In compare with UTX i miss many Towns shown in UTX. The big Bonus of OpenLC are the very nice Textures.

And i think OLC must be compared with other Landcalsses as with FSX-Default.

 

I think the OLC Designer have a lot to do to fix this.

 

Sorry for my hard words, but OLC is in my eyes not final

 

my Conclusion:

 

FTX Global: Top

FTX Global Vector: Top

FTX OpenLC: Textutes Top, Towns need much overhaul and much Towns missing

 

This my 2 cent

 

Greetings Peter

[bdrichmond]

Greetings All,

Gentlemen, don't forget that you can still use UTX.... Or at least parts of it, with the Global products. You will need to experiment withe the settings, but may be able to get back some of the smaller towns.

Respectfully,

Brian

[Renegade0147]

Hello Brian,

yes i can use UTX with FTX-Global no problem, but then i have only the Global Textures.

I hoped that OLX is comparable with other landclasses like UTX or for example OpenVFR Germany.

 

Now OLC is continious in development and i hope only the best for the future.

 

Greetings Peter

[snoopy_belgium]

Hi Peter and Brian,

 

Thanks for your reply. I came to the same conclusion as you: the ORBX products (Global, vector and Open LC) change the standard scenery in a much nicer and more realistic looking scenery, but many cities are missing which makes it less interesting for VFR-flying. Compared to UTX the base map of ORBX is less good, so the scenery has less detail.

Unfortunately UTX cannot be used in Prepar3D. So I hope the ORBX will do some extra work to show all the missing cities and villages in their scenery.

 

Best regards,

Snoopy

[Jack the Swede in Spain]

Unfortunately UTX cannot be used in Prepar3D. So I hope the ORBX will do some extra work to show all the missing cities and villages in their scenery.

 

Best regards,

Snoopy

 

I use UTX in P3D and it works just fine.

 

Jack

the Swede in Spain

[masterhawk]

Hi everyone,

just my 2 cents.

You can not compare UTX with openLC. Especially regarding towns.

1. openLC uses a texture resolution of 1kmx1km. You will only see a town/village if It's larger than 1km²

2. UTX uses polygon data for displaying towns. Something like that is planned for openLC 2.0

3. openLC uses open source data. This data doesn't provide the same quality all over the world/Europe

4. It's not possible for a company like ORBX to check every town, if it's represented in the source data compared to the reality

5. As far as I know UTX uses a commercial data-source

 

It's possible to install UTX into P3D. But you have to use some migration tools.

And then you have to check which layer of UTX you want to use in combination with openLC. There you have to experiment.

If you use only UTX without the openLC landclass data, you will not have access to the additional textures openLC offers.

UTX has access to the 147 default landclasstypes. Global Base are replacement textures for them. With openLC there where additional landclass types added, what makes now every Europe region unique. But there for you have to use openLC landclass data. It might be possible to top it with the urban polygon data of UTX, but you have to experiment.

[Gino Leopoldo Patrassi]

Well... Friday I came back from Istanbul flying from ltba to lipz and filmed the whole takeoff until 10000 ft.

Today I managed to do the same flight with fsx, meteo on the time I made the real flight . Impressive! It looked just as It was in reality! Clouds but most important the terrain! It was a huge satisfaction to me and thank you orbx!

[snoopy_belgium]

Yes, for IFR flying it is great. From a far distance and with high speed the ORBX scenery looks fantastic! Then the correct location of cities, roads, small rivers and lakes is less important.

But for VFR flying the scenery is much less realistic because many cities are missing. 

In my neigbourhood in Belgium for example one city of 30000 inhabitants in missing. The roads around the city center, the different rivers, everything is there, exept the houses. 

1km2 is not very big, so i'm sure most cities and town in populated areas must fit in that area and should be visible in the orbx scenery.

So if ORBX could do something to add the missing cities it would be great. 

 

Best regards,

Snoopy

[DunRingill]

The landclass scenery in OpenLC is brilliant. But the limitations with LC is very noticable when you are familiar with the scenery IRL. As long as I stay away from my home airport and town it looks great

[Guest]

Please don't use OpenLC for VFR if you know the place by heart. If not the case, the flight looks fantastic with OpenLC

[snoopy_belgium]

For VFR flying rivers, major roads, highways, cities, railways should be correctly displayed. When the basis of the scenery is a base map on which you can find these items, the scenery is suited for VFR flying.

It seems that the base map of the ORBX scenery is still lacking many items, especially cities. I hope that ORBX will make a patch to add all the missing cities.

 

Best regards,

Snoopy

[Maurizio Giorgi]

Hi Snoopy, only a photoreal scenery (filled with 3D objects) could represent exactly the terrain, the purpose of OpenLC is to represent better in general a very large area, with the limitation of the landclass square size, and personally i think it does very well his job.

A flight in complete relax is when you admire the textures without trying to find what it misses at the moment, otherwise you just need a photoreal, trying to check if everything is in the correct place

[Endyamon]

OpenLC is not realistic .. it isn't  than to create airport ... our planet is a huge we can't  expect that we get photorealistic terrain for all Europe or wide world  and this is absolutely great what we have now  maybe a little towns tune but otherwise it's great work

[lucky72]

Hello,

 

Despite I like very much how OpenLC Europe looks like, it appears that urban areas a suffer in many places from a shift that put them in wrong position like here in Biella (OACI LILE) :

 

Seems that the secenery suffers from a "left shit" of the urban areas : they are below the airport in FSX with OpenLC

 

This is unfortunately not the only place in Europe

 

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz89/lanacion54/lanacion54024/fsx2014-07-2819-34-42-39.jpg~original

 

http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz89/lanacion54/lanacion54024/Biella.jpg~original

 

 

 

Jean-Paul

[bdrichmond]

Greetings Jean-Paul,

This was talked about before the release of Vector and OpenLC... Microsoft put MANY airports in the wrong place for different reasons. (My home field of ID85 was shifted some 1.5-2 km east of its actual position and then MS dug into the mountain to get a flat strip)

If I remember correctly, The Global package (Vector, Global Mesh, OpenLC) tends to put the airports back where they belong. But that CAN have side effects that some find objectionable.

Respectfully,

Brian

[snoopy_belgium]

Hi Maurizio,

 

Thanks for your reply.. I don't expect to have a photoreal scenery after installing the Orbx scenery. The only thing that I expect is a scenery that looks a bit realistic with the most important scenery highlights in place, which makes it possible to do some visual navigation while flying. The lack of cities doesn't improve this navigation at all.

After a few test flights and reading some other topics from users on the forum I think many cities are missing.

 

So maybe it is a good idea to ask all readers of this message to have a flight around your home airport and to report any missing terrain items, especially cities. 

 

Without a realistic scenery I could also choose to fly on Mars. I bet on Mars there are also very nice valleys and the terrain colours must be nice there as well.

So dear orbx developers, I hope that some more effort can be put in finding the missing cities and adding them in a patch, which would make your scenery perfect.

The way it looks now is perfect from far, but also far from perfect. 

 

I also had the impression that the location of airports was not correct. I saw that on the airport of Deurne (EBAW) in Belgium. There is a main road at the end of the runway in Deurne and this road is outside of the airport terrain. In the orbx scenery the road is located on the airport terrain and cars are crossing the runway. So the location of the airport or the location of the road is wrong.

 

Best regards,

Snoopy

[Maurizio Giorgi]

Hi Snoopy, the airports in FSX generally doesn't coincide with the exact location in the reality. This is noted expecially when you create a photoreal, that's geographically specified by the coordinates, and you see that the aprons are not aligned with it and you have to correct it.

Despite of i understand the need to have a product as much as close to the reality, by the simmer side, i don't like the way you incite people to report bugs. Is it a referendum? I have to ask you to stop yourself in this line of behaviour, also using "dear ORBX developers" is a little ironic in this case, yes because this team has a technical baggage that you don't have, so you could address to us in a different way please.

[lucky72]

Greetings Jean-Paul,

This was talked about before the release of Vector and OpenLC... Microsoft put MANY airports in the wrong place for different reasons. (My home field of ID85 was shifted some 1.5-2 km east of its actual position and then MS dug into the mountain to get a flat strip)

If I remember correctly, The Global package (Vector, Global Mesh, OpenLC) tends to put the airports back where they belong. But that CAN have side effects that some find objectionable.

Respectfully,

Brian

 

Hello Brian,

 

I did not know

 

Thanks for your quick answer and your explanations.

 

Regards,

 

Jean-Paul

[snoopy_belgium]

Hi Maurizio,
 
I'm very sorry if you feel offended, that was not my intention. 
The idea to let other forum readers post images from missing terrain items was not for organizing a kind of referendum as you call it, but to make it easier for me to convince you and your collegues that some action should be taken. Orbx should be happy when customers report any missing items, because it helps the company to make products even better. 
I don't want to start a crusade, but the fact is that until now I didn't get any answer at all from your side about the errors I have reported in the posted screenshots. This topic has status 'answered' but that is not correct.
 
All my words that I have written here are not so important. The problem is not me, but the screenshots I have posted. 
Because images say more than words, I have made some more screenshots from some places in Belgium I have reported about at the beginning of this topic.
 
At the Belgian cost whe have city called Ostend. This city has a harbour:

 
 
On Google earth it looks like this:
 

 
As you can see the docks are there, but instead of a harbour there is a park with trees standing next to the beach. In Belgium there are no trees at the coast (this is not British Columbia), so that is completely wrong. Also the part of the city that is located left of the harbour entrance is a park. The city center should be there.
 
 
The same we see for another city at the Belgian coast Nieuwpoort:
 

 
On google maps:
 

 
 
Also no harbour area her, forest near the beach, and where the city is we see only a few houses.
 
Next example is Lier, my home city:
 
 

 
On google maps:
 

 
Where is the city? All rivers are there, the belt way around the city, the railroads at the station, but the houses are not there. Maybe they are at the wrong place, because in the upper right corner there is much housing where it shouldn't.
 
So in order to finish this message we come to the following point:
- you are all very happy when you look at these screenshots and with the result that you have achieved. Nothing will be done to improve the scenery. Please let me know so that I can take my conclusions.
- you all realize that the scenery is not yet perfect and some efforts should be done to make it better. Please let your customers know when this will happen and how it will be distributed to the customers.
 
Thanks a lot,
 
Snoopy
-

[Guest]

Comparison with Google Earth is not very right. Much of place in the World are missing in FSX's default landscape, not only in Belgium...

[snoopy_belgium]

Hello Wildweasel,

 

Yes, many places are missing in the default FSX and P3D scenery, that is why I'm looking for products to make it a bit more realistic. Otherwise ORBX global scenery was not needed.

Google maps is of course the most realistic view because it is real and I know that non photoreal scenery will always be different from the real world.

But when open street map is used as a basis, one would expect that streets, rivers, railroads and cities should be there were you expect them to be.

 

Greetz,

 

Snoopy

[Dieter]

The title of this thread is basically correct.

That does not automatically mean that  Orbx openLC Europe (and followers) are bad procucts.
All landclass software products have display problems of different kind.

A very impressive screenshot collection might demonstrate this.
(A web page in German language,  but  pictures don't need to be translated)

In comparison are 10 different towns and areas in Germany showing the differences between the used landclass software like:
- Orbx openLC EU
- SceneryTech Landclass Europe
- XCloud Europe
- Ultimate Terrain X Europe
- openVFR Terrain

So now have a look:

http://www.simflight.de/2014/07/26/der-grosse-vergleich-mit-welchen-landklassen-und-texturen-sieht-deutschland-besten-aus/
 

[Maurizio Giorgi]

Hi Snoopy,

you say that

"So in order to finish this message we come to the following point:
- you are all very happy when you look at these screenshots and with the result that you have achieved. Nothing will be done to improve the scenery. Please let me know so that I can take my conclusions.
- you all realize that the scenery is not yet perfect and some efforts should be done to make it better. Please let your customers know when this will happen and how it will be distributed to the customers.
 
Thanks a lot,
 
Snoopy"

 

the problem is not that you're sorry if i felt offended from your post, because the real aim of your post was to jump immediately to the conclusion you explained us. And this is just your error, you reveal bugs, you show conclusions.... And those conclusions are partially wrong. Yes, we are happy for the result, OpenLC will be improved in the future with the patches, obviously not everything is revealed could be considered a bug for this kind of products. This is the thing you don't understand. A landclass product is done to improve in general a huge terrain, and with Vector and Global base is improved a lot, or not? Much is still to be done is your personal opinion, so, as i reapeat, you don't incite people with insignificant bug reports, expecially here. This is the conclusion, if you loose time to compare Google earth with the scenery to reveal little bugs, it's your affair, instead to have fun to fly and explore many beautifuls areas inside the scenery.