walterg74 Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Hey folks, I know John has stated that the next region will be SoCal, but I'm curious to know what's next. I read around that for questions unknown to me, some areas would in theorpy not be done, like Germany(?), but are the other places that are also ruled out? Which ones are either in the works or at least planned in intention? Anything outside the US not wanting to know dates or anything, just in general there is anything that can be shared. Thanks!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 We have begun work on FTX Germany North. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 We have begun work on FTX Germany North. That's amazing! I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to FTX Germany North Greetings Tim Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remko Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Holland is almost part of Germany North isn't it? ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest M31 Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Awesome Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walterg74 Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 We have begun work on FTX Germany North.That is some GREAT news! Progress keeps on going towards filling up Europe too Can't wait Holland is almost part of Germany North isn't it? ;-) Ha! I'd vote for that too! Would love to see Holland but also if something was started from the beginning of the west, like Portugal, Spain and France Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rolfspan Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Great News. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VH-KDK Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 We have begun work on FTX Germany North. This is excellent news. Thanks for spilling the beans John. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
COBS Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Fantastic ! yes ! Cheers Karol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeJay Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Holland is almost part of Germany North isn't it? ;-) Try to convince Wolter of that.. BTW: Indeed fantastic news! That also means that Germany South has come a step closer then - what is even more fantastic news! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Hamilton Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 That also means that Germany South has come a step closer then - what is even more fantastic news! What makes you think that? We're still waiting for North Alaska, after how many years?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeeJay Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 What makes you think that? We're still waiting for North Alaska, after how many years?? True (actually personally I'm not waiting for North Alaska). But they finished the British Isles, they will finish California soon, and they finished Australia and New Zealand - and not all of them were good sellers. That's what makes me optimistic about South Germany. North Alaska is HUGE, and I personally doubt there are too many people who need another thousand glaciers with hardly any payware airport around. Maybe that's a factor of not making NAK up to date (?). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stillwater Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Holland is almost part of Germany North isn't it? ;-) That would be great - as well for Orbified pilots, as for football and hockey: We´d be unbeatable for decades ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walterg74 Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 Well, then maybe "Semi-North Alaska", or "'Mid-North Alaska", or "Rest-of-the-land-till-you-couldn't-spot-a-priest-in-the-snow Alaska"? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertPilot Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 At least in the interim (which might be a long--or even forever--interim), we've got openLC NA coming up to help out with Alaska.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rodger Pettichord Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 I'm sitting here with a computer full of ORBX scenery and loving every moment of every place I go. As far as I'm concerned, whatever ORBX decides to do is fine by me. I've yet to be disappointed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lennie Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 Would be great to get southeastern USA on the schedule: VA, NC, SC and GA! I will wait!! We've got mountains, the ocean, islands [outer banks] hilton head, asheville, and of course the First Flight Airport! All waiting for a refresh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ripcord Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 True (actually personally I'm not waiting for North Alaska). But they finished the British Isles, they will finish California soon, and they finished Australia and New Zealand - and not all of them were good sellers. That's what makes me optimistic about South Germany. North Alaska is HUGE, and I personally doubt there are too many people who need another thousand glaciers with hardly any payware airport around. Maybe that's a factor of not making NAK up to date (?). Probably all the glaciers are already covered in SAK but I get your point. There are reasons why Norway and NorCal/SoCal got pushed ahead of 'Alaska Part II', but it doesn't necessarily means that it won't ever get done. I would say that there are a LOT of bush flyers here in our community and some kind of Alaska Part II module would sell pretty well. Just Kodiak, the Aleutian chain, and on up to Nome and Kotzebue would be well worth having. ORBX has always gravitated to the 'mountains & coastline' areas and this is definately all of that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominique Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 I'd love to have a North Alaska scenery. I'm all for it with some minor changes though. Instead of glaciers let's have large dry riverbeds, instead of the cold ocean, let's have a hot desert basin, no fog but plenty of sun. And let's call it Arizona. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jabble Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 True (actually personally I'm not waiting for North Alaska). But they finished the British Isles, they will finish California soon, and they finished Australia and New Zealand - and not all of them were good sellers. That's what makes me optimistic about South Germany. North Alaska is HUGE, and I personally doubt there are too many people who need another thousand glaciers with hardly any payware airport around. Maybe that's a factor of not making NAK up to date (?). Personally I'd like the Rest-of-Alaska and Southern-Rockies-Great-Basin, if it's not too much to ask. There are quite a few bush fliers in Orbx country, and these are the sort of areas that really benefit from good landclass scenery. There are many smaller airports and rough strips catering for remote communities, farms, mines, etc, and some of these can present real challenges, as well as portraying the beauty of the wilderness. I appreciate there are also many people who prefer heavily populated areas and larger airports, but why should one be at the expense of the other? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominique Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 Personally I'd like the Rest-of-Alaska and Southern-Rockies-Great-Basin, if it's not too much to ask. There are quite a few bush fliers in Orbx country, and these are the sort of areas that really benefit from good landclass scenery. There are many smaller airports and rough strips catering for remote communities, farms, mines, etc, and some of these can present real challenges, as well as portraying the beauty of the wilderness. I appreciate there are also many people who prefer heavily populated areas and larger airports, but why should one be at the expense of the other? Looking at OpenLC EU, its counterpart in NA might very well be enough for the rest of Alaska (except the Mc Kinley/Denali area ?) in consideration of the rather flatish/barren artic landscape. Anyway, who has ever seen anything below his/her aircraft in the Aleautians above 500 feet AGL . Fog or rain, rain or fog. Or both togeher. I wished that OrbX had a stronger interest not for metropolitan areas but for desertic areas, the hot kind. Leaving Palm Springs Eastward.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jabble Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 Looking at OpenLC EU, its counterpart in NA might very well be enough for the rest of Alaska (except the Mc Kinley/Denali area ?) in consideration of the rather flatish/barren artic landscape. Anyway, who has ever seen anything below his/her aircraft in the Aleautians above 500 feet AGL . Fog or rain, rain or fog. Or both togeher. I wished that OrbX had a stronger interest not for metropolitan areas but for desertic areas, the hot kind. Leaving Palm Springs Eastward.. Fair enough, we'll see how OLC NA copes, though I reckon there is still mileage for more detailed work, e.g Denali / Katmai / Kodiak, especially for those of us who like to fly below 500 ft. Mountains ahead? Find a cloud-free valley! IMO one of the weaknesses of the current sim engine is that it doesn't portray towns accurately, unless there is hand-crafting which is very laborious, so country/wilderness areas benefit more from good design. I'd be happy with deserts too - I think Arizona can definitely be considered part of the Great Basin with all its beauty and challenges. I'd also like to see more of the smaller strips added, and at the moment that would mean full-fat regions or experience packages. Maybe there's mileage in having additional small-strip packages for Global, where basic strips are added but without the detail that Full-Fats and Experiences add. That could work well in the OLC areas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
birdguy Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 I think Monument Valley and OZ's Death Valley are good examples of what can be done with desert scenery. Canyonlands and Arches in Utah would be good companions to Devil's Tower. Noel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominique Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 Fair enough, we'll see how OLC NA copes, though I reckon there is still mileage for more detailed work, e.g Denali / Katmai / Kodiak, especially for those of us who like to fly below 500 ft. Mountains ahead? Find a cloud-free valley! IMO one of the weaknesses of the current sim engine is that it doesn't portray towns accurately, unless there is hand-crafting which is very laborious, so country/wilderness areas benefit more from good design. I'd be happy with deserts too - I think Arizona can definitely be considered part of the Great Basin with all its beauty and challenges. I'd also like to see more of the smaller strips added, and at the moment that would mean full-fat regions or experience packages. Maybe there's mileage in having additional small-strip packages for Global, where basic strips are added but without the detail that Full-Fats and Experiences add. That could work well in the OLC areas. Urban area textures: Vector shows that there's a lot of urban street data (in the US and Europe at least) and I wonder whether some automation couldn't place houses along them. Frankly speaking, I do not care much for some of the Global urban textures. I hope that a V2 would, at least, revisit them... I like your idea a small strip packages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew47 Posted June 26, 2015 Share Posted June 26, 2015 John Are you willing to give an "estimate of time" when we could see S. Cal. Also, will it work well with LatinVFR's John Wayne Airport? Matthew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jabble Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 Urban area textures: Vector shows that there's a lot of urban street data (in the US and Europe at least) and I wonder whether some automation couldn't place houses along them. Frankly speaking, I do not care much for some of the Global urban textures. I hope that a V2 would, at least, revisit them... I like your idea a small strip packages. The data sources can only get better, and there's bound to be automation solutions to include them in scenery. However, I guess the current engines would struggle to cope with that level of detail. For example, it may be possible to tie vector street data to autogen buildings, but we all know that heavy-autogen cities are CPU-killers at present. An alternative may be to automatically generate textures to accurately fit the vector streets, but that would also be CPU-intensive and would best be done prior to flight. That technique would effectively create 'artificial photoscenery' and would bloat the download size of the product, unless it could be generated on the user's PC at install time. Another use for automation may be to include a variety of POIs and other features that would otherwise need to be hand-placed, if they can be uniquely identified in the data sources. For example, it may be possible to identify dams and power stations, and those could find their way into the scenery to augment vector rivers and lakes. The level of detail would be limited compared to hand-crafted versions, but it would still be a lot better than omission, as it's unrealistic to hand-craft large numbers of such features. So I reckon the future is bright for inclusion of more detail, but I expect the major improvements will need a next-gen engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertPilot Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 John Are you willing to give an "estimate of time" when we could see S. Cal. Also, will it work well with LatinVFR's John Wayne Airport? Matthew As for the "estimate of time" part, see JV's post at: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/97614-socal/?p=884324 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matthew47 Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 Excellent DesertPilot85. Thanks. Matthew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 An alternative may be to automatically generate textures to accurately fit the vector streets, but that would also be CPU-intensive and would best be done prior to flight. That technique would effectively create 'artificial photoscenery' and would bloat the download size of the product, unless it could be generated on the user's PC at install time. ORBX will be forced to implement this into in the Global product range one day, and I'd investigating this better earlier than later. The present mismatch between vector road date and autogen hurts the eyes, notably under VFR conditions which ORBX is geared to. There will be a point in time, where users are no longer willing to accept this. Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rimshot Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 Holland is almost part of Germany North isn't it? ;-) I wouldn't mind if it were a part of it! FTX wise that is of course. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dominique Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 ORBX will be forced to implement this into in the Global product range one day, and I'd investigating this better earlier than later. The present mismatch between vector road date and autogen hurts the eyes, notably under VFR conditions which ORBX is geared to. There will be a point in time, where users are no longer willing to accept this. Kind regards, Michael I totally agree with you Michael. And anyway, in P3D, the building autogen is not the burden on the frame rate that it used to be in FSX. It still has a flaw (flashing artifacts at maximum level - the vegetation is OK) acknowledged by LM but you can now fly high density urban areas at full autogen without stuttering or too low a framerate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chumley Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 What makes you think that? We're still waiting for North Alaska, after how many years?? I'm not Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derfsxpilot Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 rly ? germany is not one region ? why split it ? it´s not that huge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jabble Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 I totally agree with you Michael. And anyway, in P3D, the building autogen is not the burden on the frame rate that it used to be in FSX. It still has a flaw (flashing artifacts at maximum level - the vegetation is OK) acknowledged by LM but you can now fly high density urban areas at full autogen without stuttering or too low a framerate. Good point, though it may mean that the abilities of FSX and P3D scenery installs would diverge significantly. That is further confused by the fact that P3D is a moving target, and Dovetail seems to be aiming at a new codebase too. However, the underlying techniques of clever urban texturing would likely be the same. Currently, vector mapping is used for the main roads in a town, not the smaller streets. However, human recognition of a town often relies on seeing these smaller streets too, along with appropriate buildings. As the OSM (or other) street data is mainly vector based, these could be used as 'guidelines' for generating the specific town textures, and for synchronising with the 'regular' vector roads. That would end the jarring effect of vector roads cutting across textures. There would also need to be realistic division of the town into commercial, residential and industrial zones, which could be a challenge to do well. The textures could be built from a 'library' of individual buildings (or parts), cleverly placed along the streets, and there the challenge is to make the placement & joins look realistic and not jarring. The library could include different styles to represent different regions, or even individual towns in some cases. Similar techniques could be used to place 3D buildings too, and the density could be scalable (as now) to cope with different PC setups. Why do I think it's possible? In recent times procedural generation has appeared in the games industry, and here is a video of a procedural city generator. [i suggest you turn the sound off ] Flightsim scenery uses real-world data so city layouts are already defined, but the video shows it should be possible to fill them in with texture and/or 3D buildings. A problem is that the quality of available real-world data is not the same for everywhere, so the techniques would have to be clever enough to cope with inconsistent data, and scalable to cope with sparse data. While we can discuss such basic techniques, we have to appreciate that this is not a trivial thing to do in practice, nor easy to do well. Nevertheless I hope it's considered as a direction for the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DesertPilot Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 rly ? germany is not one region ? why split it ? it´s not that huge Interesting comparison of Germany's size to California/Nevada as well as the United Kingdom at: http://www.travelersdigest.com/7356-how-big-is-germany-in-comparison-to-the-united-states-united-kingdom-japan/ Germany appears to be 1.5 times the size of the United Kingdom. And Orbx needed four regions to cover UK. So, at least three regions does make sense for Germany, with its numerous cities/towns/villages and so on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
derfsxpilot Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 Interesting comparison of Germany's size to California/Nevada as well as the United Kingdom at: http://www.travelersdigest.com/7356-how-big-is-germany-in-comparison-to-the-united-states-united-kingdom-japan/ Germany appears to be 1.5 times the size of the United Kingdom. And Orbx needed four regions to cover UK. So, at least three regions does make sense for Germany, with its numerous cities/towns/villages and so on. ok, so I throw Australia at you :D http://mapfight.appspot.com/au-vs-de/australia-germany-size-comparison it was orignally 4 regions if I remember correctly ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 Factor in that Germany is very densely poulated (probably a bit more than Australia) and has a high density of airports and airfields having to be "enhanced". Plus, it has to be done better than any prior ORBX Region as German simmers have the reputation to be the most critical ones in the world. Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChaoticBeauty Posted June 27, 2015 Share Posted June 27, 2015 I'm pretty sure they said Germany will be split in 2 regions. The thread in which it was said was deleted though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wedge1047 Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 I'm sitting here with a computer full of ORBX scenery and loving every moment of every place I go. As far as I'm concerned, whatever ORBX decides to do is fine by me. I've yet to be disappointed. seconded! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sydney1962 Posted June 28, 2015 Share Posted June 28, 2015 What About South Africa , beautiful country and with nice airports to fly in like Capetown, Johannesburg and Durban , also VFR really nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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