Zitat

Posted Today, 11:37 AM
In 2013 we will be releasing a FTX product that covers the entire world with FTX textures combined from the twelve different regions we have developed since 2008 including England and Wales. It won't be a perfect solution because it is textures only (no landclass, airports, POIs, or geodata), but it will cover the whole globe with Orbx so you never have to experience FSX default again.

It will include custom autogen, 3D lights and some custom trees as well, which will need an installer that manages some global files, but you will be able to uninstall it and revert to default FSX again if you wish.

I am testing an alpha build at the moment and I can promise you most of the places mentioned in this thread look beautiful covered in Orbx textures. I did a dusk flight over the south of France last week and to see all the 3D lights twinkling over villages and towns was magical

The price of this product (less than $200) will include free perpetual upgrades including a constant flow of upgraded airports at key locations around the world, for example Helsinki in Finland or Manila in the Phillipines. We are building a dedicated team of people who will do nothing but work on continual improvements, POIs and airports around the world. Additionally, as Orbx releases the much more detailed and sophisticated regions around the world, we will dip into the expanding texture pool to finesse the global product, all at no charge.

Stay tuned for the formal announcement in January along with many screenshots and some video footage.

If you can imagine your whole world covered in Orbx, you won't have to wait too much longer
Regards,
JV

Zitat

John Venema
Yesterday I sneaked in a "soft" announcement hidden inside a topic to gauge reaction. Needless to say it has been overwhelmingly positive. This project has been top secret and only a few people inside Orbx itself knew of its existence. This has been a product I have wanted to release for quite some time but only now do we have the depth of textures to cover the globe in a semi-realistic manner.

In 2013 we will be releasing a FTX product that covers the entire world with FTX textures combined from the twelve different regions we have developed since 2008 including England. It won't be a perfect solution like a "full-fat" FTX region because it is predominately textures only. However, it will cover the whole globe with Orbx so you never have to experience FSX default textures again.



What does FTX Global include?
Complete replacement of FSX ground textures
Custom autogen houses and objects
3D lights with FTX Day/Night Mode support
Selection of custom trees
Replaces default FSX so you can run with FTX Central set to EU, NA etc
Can be uninstalled so you can revert to default FSX
Some custom landclass in sample areas initially (can be disabled if desired)
Perpetual free updates (textures, landclass tweaks, POI objects, upgraded default airports)
Dedicated staff working on upgrades full-time
What does FTX Global NOT include?
Geographical and vector data (roads, rivers, coastlines, elevation mesh)
Full hand-crafted landclass and polygon landclass
Unique ground textures native to the area you're flying in
Upgraded airports everywhere
Traffic on all major roads (only default FSX traffic)
Extensive custom modelled POIs like power stations, windfarms, stadiums, photoreal areas etc
What does it look like?

Spectacular! I am testing a pre-alpha build at the moment and I can promise you most of the places I randomly pick to visit around the world look beautiful covered in Orbx textures. I did a dusk flight over the south of France last week and to see all the 3D lights twinkling over villages and towns was magical. I have included a selection of screenshots below.

However, beware of the limitations of FTX Global. It is first and foremost a texture replacement and it uses the current 'pool' of textures Orbx has created since 2008. This means that in many places the cityscapes and rural crops and fields won't look right at all. The initial release will have a whole bunch of warts because of the restrictions of the FSX landclass texture system. (This is the very reason we make full-featured FTX regions). We will have a team to deal with obvious landclass back spots first and then slowly begin to add POIs, airports and new content. Think of FTX Global as an upfront investment in an evolving ecosystem which improves over time. We will also invest in code that allows you to auto-update FTX Global or as a mimum alert you to new content and patches.


How does it perform?

The performance is fantastic - I am running FSX inside a virtual machine using Parallels Desktop 8.0 on my humble Macbook Air 2.0Ghz and it runs quite smoothly (the Windows 7 VM was allocated 4GB of RAM, 512MB of VRAM, 1x CPU). On a decent PC configured for FSX properly it should scream. I'm in the process of setting a proper quad-core i7 testing PC at 3.2Ghz with a GTX650m GPU and I'll update you on the performance side of things again. The Switzerland and Ireland screenshots were taken from this VM running on my Mac.


What will it cost?

The price of this product is AU$195 and will include free perpetual upgrades including a constant flow of upgraded airports at key locations around the world, for example Helsinki in Finland or Manila in the Phillipines. We are building a dedicated team of people who will do nothing but work on continual improvements, POIs and airports and key areas of custom landclass around the world. Additionally, as Orbx releases the much more detailed and sophisticated regions around the world, we will dip into the expanding texture pool to finesse the global product, all at no charge.


Will it affect the "regular" Orbx regions being worked on?

Not at all. There will be zero impact on regular regions since we're hiring new staff to make this product and we're using existing texture assets. If anything in 2013 we will release more regular FTX regions than any year of our short history; South Alaska, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and Northern California as well. Our average release rate has been 1.75 regions per year; in 2013 it will be 5+

We also hope to move into Europe next year, with Holland confirmed and then perhaps Norway, Belgium, Germany etc. FTX Global simply does not have the depth and scale of detail of our regular FTX regions, there's no comparison and those upcoming regions are made with unique textures licensed from aerial imagery over those particular countries.


What is FTX Global Compatible with?

Ultimate Terrain X (UTX)
SceneryTech LC or any other LC addon
Any FSX scenery addon - but be aware Orbx textures are richer and darker than FSX default so many airports may not blend in at the edges of their photoreal coverage area
FTX Global ships with Orbxlibs so all our "Flow" tech is supported
REX/AS2012/Other weather texture addons
FSWC
Enbseries
Shade


What is it not compatible with?

GEX - it does the same thing (replaces FSX default textures) so you decide if you want GEX or FTX Global
FScene4X - as above
Orbx payware airports - those are designed and matched to our dedicated full FTX regions for AU/NA/NZ/EU because of mesh elevation and other landscape mods


When will it be released?

We don't give release dates at Orbx (and when I have broken this rule in the past invariably releases have been delayed for various reasons, so I won't again). It will be in the first half of 2013, that much is sure.

If you can imagine your whole world covered in Orbx, you won't have to wait too much longer. Here are some screenshots taken from random locations. We'll be posting lots more over the coming month and I am sure Emmsie will be using his magic eye to find amazing locations. After all, it's a big planet!

Zitat von »guenseli«

..Ausser 3D-Lichtchen sehe ich bei FTX grade keinen großen Unterschied zu GEX - wäre was anderes, wenn tatsächlich weltweite Landclassen etc inbegriffen wären.
Aber so liefern beide "nur" Austauschtexturen, die sich letztlich wirklich nicht sooooo wahnsinning unterscheiden dürften - eher Geschmackssache dann.

Zitat von »Samy«

Zitat von »PIO«

Legt jemand Wert auf korrektes Mesh, und das kann nicht ausschliesslich für Sichtflieger relevant sein, reicht FTX Global alleine nicht. Beispielsweise muss dann zusätzlich FSGlobal UND beispielsweise global UTX zu FTX Global dazugekauft werden. Ich nenne nur Beispiele, es gibt natürlich Alternative Lösungen.

Nur um eines klar zu stellen;

FTX Global wird kein Mesh beinhalten und auch selber kein Mesh sein! FTX Global wird Austauschtexturen a la GEX beinhalten!

Zitat von »PIO«

..Dahingehend klingt es für mich durchaus positiv wenn nun einer voran geht, das Heft in die Hand nimmt und global entwickelt. Das kommt mir grundsätzlich entgegen, denn ich vermeide "Scheibchenkäufe". Ich gehe sozusagen einmal kaufen, bezahlen und kann sofort fliegen gehen.
Nur wenn ich sozusagen auf das "Monopol" setze, dann bitte ein komplettes Produkt, das ich global ein- oder auschalten kann. Das bedeutet ich möchte Mesh, Landclass und texturen sowie Objekte haben. Wenn ich nun wieder Stückeln muss, weil kein Mesh dabei ist, wird meine Zeit zum Fliegen wieder geringer und ich muss doch wieder auf die Suche nach Kombinationen die funktionieren ausweichen..

Zitat von »PIO«

..Es gibt also Pro und Kontra. Ich lasse noch weitere Informationen auf mich einwirken um zu sehen, was ich tun werde. Es ist ja noch Zeit bis zu Release, wobei globale announcements schon ab sofort Einfluss auf Kaufentscheidungen anderer Produkte nehemen. Schwierig. Mir fehlt derzeit eindeutig ein Mesh bei dem angekündigten Produkt. Wäre ein Mesh und Lanclassen dabei, könnte es im Gegenzug aber wiederum zu den Höhenproblemen kommen, wenn ein Flugplate eines Drittanbieters im Gebiet installiert wird..

Zitat

We will in fact create a whole new front end app for FTX Global which will:

- Make FTX Central redundant, you can keep all Orbx regions active at once
- Choose which tree and autogen set to use (we will see if we can code a DLL to do this dynamically for you)
- Automatically check for patches, SP1, updates for all Orbx installed products when connected to to the internet, then let you choose which to download
- Control the 3D lights on/off, links to Aero and the Lights Tweaker

At least, this is my wish-list

We need to plan how to implement this and then I need to hire a coder to write the app.

I want FTX Global to act as the overriding front end to Orbx which manages everything for you. That means if you purchase an older region off DVD which still uses FTX Central, when you run the FTX Global app it will automatically "detect" a new region has been installed and ensure the corrected files are put into place so all regions can remain active at once.

Basically if you use the FTX Global app to launch FSX you can always be assured all your Orbx products are up to date and all regions remain active at once.
Regards,
JV