ICYMI: Orbx announces UK & Ireland regions

  • Hey all :)

    While this site was having issues, Orbx announced that they will be doing UK and Ireland regions for AFS2 and other sims. The regions will be packaged like their old detailed regions - into England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland. Germany was also confirmed in the announcement (previously it hasn't been 100%). The photoreal region product lineup name will be formally announced this weekend. For more info, check it all out here - https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/15…fs2-and-fsxp3d/

    Orbx CEO John Venema later confirms in the thread some extra details - the photos will be 1m resolution; he is considering discount options but it wouldn't be the normal 40% cross-platform discount due to the high cost of the orthoimagery (the photos are being taken with a low-flying plane) and they will cost the normal region price ($AU 54.95).

    - Ashley

    P3D v4 / AFS2 / XP11 | Intel i7-4790K oc'ed @ 4.6GHz | 16GB RAM | 8GB Nvidia GTX1070 | Windows 10 64-bit | Oculus Rift

  • PNW is scheduled for AeroflyFS by ORBX as well.

    Despite, I would take all this with a grain of salt. I've been a long-standing ORBX customer and own their complete catalogue for Prepar3d and AeroflyFS. It wouldn't be the first time they announce something to later take a turn and cancel it. It will all depened on sales of their early photo scenery releases. If The Netherlands and, say, England will sell less than expected, you can be sure Germany never to materialize.

    Germany was estimated to be 120 GB. You can make your math for the whole of the UK.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Intel i7-6700K 4.0 GHz / Asus MAXIMUS VIII RANGER / Kingston 32 GB DDR4 / Samsung SSD M.2 500 GB + Samsung SSD 1 TB + Intel SSD 500 GB (AeroflyFS2) + WD HD 6 TB / EVGA GTX 1080Ti 11 GB / LG 34UM95 3440 x 1440 / HP Reverb / Win 10/64

  • Orbx regions do normally contain default airports which are detailed up a little bit, though John has stated they haven't fully decided what to do with default airports for AFS2 (in regards to how detailed they will be). And Orbx are the ones doing the Pacific North West (PNW) region. That has already been confirmed.

    - Ashley

    P3D v4 / AFS2 / XP11 | Intel i7-4790K oc'ed @ 4.6GHz | 16GB RAM | 8GB Nvidia GTX1070 | Windows 10 64-bit | Oculus Rift

  • Certainly has the potential to be a really exciting product. They are talking about photo based scenery, not the landclass stuff from their original UK packages, so every building, road and feature in the country should be represented. Sounds massively ambitious, but really amazing if it comes off.

    i5-12600K/MSI RTX 3080/Win11/64Gb RAM/Asus Xonar DX+ Beyer DT990 pro headphones/LG 34" UM65 @2560x1080/Quest Pro/TM Warthog+VKB MkIV Rudder pedals

  • so every building, road and feature in the country should be represented. Sounds massively ambitious

    Well, it's been done for years and years already so nothing too ambitious in that regard. What IS ambitious is that they plan on adding 'autogen' absolutely everywhere and in the correct spot too. I am looking forward to see how well that works out.


    Orbx regions do normally contain default airports which are detailed up a little bit, though John has stated they haven't fully decided what to do with default airports for AFS2 (in regards to how detailed they will be).

    I asked him about that over there because as we all know AFS2 has no airports AT ALL in the UK right now so if Orbx decides to not update the airports we will have nothing to take off from and land on. ;)

  • That would be a super huge DLC. At least 80GB I guess.

    By the way, do ORBX regions contain airports? And what about the northwest US? Is IPACS doing that or ORBX?

    Don't worry about airports. I have a solution for that coming in a couple of weeks. Airports, runways, buildings, static aircraft. Just no orthoscenery so this Orbx announcement is great news. Its been in development for 3 months and a bunch of us are beta testing it right now (and making new airports daily), aiming for Easter release.

    P.S. Its a free community, crowd-sourcing wikipedia style project.

  • I really hope they will include airports there. Otherwise I won't be interested. This can be even worst in X-Plane where is pretty easy to have Orthophoto scenery + great airports from the community. I'm sure Orbx can make a big difference if they decide to sell scenery packages that includes all what they promised + detailed airports.

  • Germany was estimated to be 120 GB. You can make your math for the whole of the UK.

    I'm afraid of the big data downloads. It is a pity that there are no other solutions!

  • Don't worry about airports. I have a solution for that coming in a couple of weeks. Airports, runways, buildings, static aircraft. Just no orthoscenery so this Orbx announcement is great news. Its been in development for 3 months and a bunch of us are beta testing it right now (and making new airports daily), aiming for Easter release.

    P.S. Its a free community, crowd-sourcing wikipedia style project.

    Taxiways?

    Ken

  • Taxiways?

    It isn't a substitute for a fully hand modelled airport done using Ac3D etc but it's turned out to be quite effective. Rapport came from rapid Airport creator. Taxiways are not yet modelled however I hope they can be in a v1.1. There are some technical challenges to achieving taxiways with the method used and I had to draw the line at a good first version for release.

  • I'm afraid of the big data downloads. It is a pity that there are no other solutions!

    I would be too.....but Aerofly doesn't really benefit from an SSD like other sims. I run on a fast machine with a good GPU and SSD system drive, but enjoy my Steam install of Aerofly on a standard HDD with lots of terabytes of space --- easily Ultra settings in AFS2......thus, solution found for me. Do I get a scenery load skip now and then? Maybe, but the darn thing is so smooth I never notice it. I am one who optimistically believes IPACS when they say they have lots of headroom to add in features such as ATC and Weather with little impact on performance. -- so, in reference to this thread....bring it on Orbx!

  • In-terms of the big data downloads, while they did once mention the whole of Germany would be 120GB, John stated in the thread I linked that he's thinking of splitting Germany in half due to the size. So roughly that would be 60GB each. Based on the sizes of the different regions of the UK, I would expect it to be about 60GB for England/Ireland and less for Wales/Scotland/Northern Ireland. These are all just estimates based off the original estimate for all of Germany. We will have to wait and see, but they will certainly be large. The AFS2 DLC regions themselves are 20GB, and not all areas of the DLC have 1m resolution.

    - Ashley

    P3D v4 / AFS2 / XP11 | Intel i7-4790K oc'ed @ 4.6GHz | 16GB RAM | 8GB Nvidia GTX1070 | Windows 10 64-bit | Oculus Rift