Mesh question: What works best with ORBX - FTX?

[ThinkingManNeil]

Hi All;

I'm still plugging away at re-installing FSX on to my relatively new, custom rig. I've got the sim up and running and I've been re-familiarizing myself with things and doing some fun flying. On my old system I had ORBX for New Zealand - both North and South Islands - and was quite happy with it, so I've decided to commit to ORBX on a larger scale and will eventually get as much of their stuff as I want to tailor to my flying style and experience. But I'd like to get some opinions on what mesh (presumably 19-metre) works best with ORBX? I have some older FS Genesis stuff for North America, Alaska, and Hawaii, which, along with NZ, are my main focus flying-wise, but I'd like to expand to the UK and Europe eventually. I'd especially like to see some good scenery for mountainous regions with nicely crenelated alpine peaks instead of mountains of partially melted ice cream, but that's probably asking too much. I do like me some jagged mountains..

Anyways, I'd appreciate your input...

N.

[cavaricooper]

Neil-

I have used Pilots for years, and just bought their latest Ultimate Package.

Works for me... YMMV.

HTH- Carl

[Penzoil3]

Orbx Scenery is designed on the Pilot's FTX 2010 mesh. This http://www.flightsimstore.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=249&products_id=4116 is the modern version. Note FTX compatible, and on sale right now.
Sue

[Craig Taylor]

Orbx regions come with their own mesh, I believe, so you should be good to go there. I use FreeMeshX for everywhere else (38m res for everywhere except Antarctica, Greenland, and Russia above 60N). Can't beat the price, and I think it's at least as good as the old FSGenesis that I've had since FS9. You should also check out some of the free products on the Orbx site. They host some excellent mesh by Holger Sandmann for Australia (essential if you get around to buying the Orbx Australia, but it's not required) and Papua/New Guinea.

Justin Tyme (from FSGenesis) has a new site now, Toposim. You might want to check that out as well.

[Penzoil3]

FTX Global Base + FTX Global Vector + FTX Global openLC North America
Is a mesh product needed in addition to the above? If so, what product would you recommend?
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Doug Sawatzky (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/profile/25927-doug-sawatzky/)



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ID: 2 (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/129463-does-ftx-global-include-mesh/#comment-1152441) Posted January 22 (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/129463-does-ftx-global-include-mesh/?do=findComment&comment=1152441)

Hi, Welcome to the forums,

Mesh is not included in the three Global products listed above. The recommended mesh product that has been used in conjunction with developing Orbx products is the "PILOTS FSGlobal2010FTX" Link below.


http://www.pilots.shop/Cms/

The Orbx Regions which are not Global products, do include all of the above, including mesh..

Cheers

Doug

[kdl]

When buying new have a look for the successor "FS Global 2018 FTX Download".

[gavinc]

I second Craig,

FreemeshX works great with Orbx Global for all the areas outside the "full fat" Orbx regions.

Gavin

[BendyFlyer]

Well I would say as above: ORBX GLOBAL, ORBX VECTOR and then appropriate ORBX LC and other special scenery packages for specific areas. I found ORBX Global alone fixed up a number of areas in different parts of the world where there were significant inaccuracies between the real world outlines etc and what FSX was showing. ORBX trees also did wonders around the globe and reduced the autogen load as well and is highly recommended. I learned all this the hard way from working on a number of obscure islands or coastal areas in the Pacific region, where in FSX I would use the correct lat and long for the area and discover that it was not there, water for example instead of sandy flats. By and large ORBX Global addressed this nicely, even if the autogen with it is not, well, ideal but OK. The trouble with FSX is also that some areas were actually done very well and other than specialised addons for airports or some unusual scenery feature the basic of default FSX scenery and mesh was just fine, as an example, Japan, it is very good indeed probably because it was extensively worked on over the years by the ACE team. IN other areas the basic data is not available and no amount of mesh will fix it, case in point a lot of desert areas and the Himalyas and Andes Mountain range areas which leave a lot to be desired no matter what you use.

Over my time in FSX (and that now includes 3 complete rebuilds) I have learnt that in some areas it is not the mesh that is the issue but the LC and then possibly the mesh. I have tried a number of meshes for different areas and concluded that they either did: nothing to enhance the visuals or they caused problems with other local or small area scenery addons. I have also found that correct or detailed mesh availability for a number of global areas is simply not available because the work, geosurvey-satellite etc was not done and probably will not be done and this will still be the case today for some areas on the globe.

I guess it comes down to what level of detail and correctness you want to achieve, if your going to sim a lot in a particular area then a proper area wide scenery package is the best way to go as just a mesh will not address the topographical and geographical detail. For example in the Southern Hemisphere summer period I do a bit of Antartic flying, FSX default is terrible but the AEROSOFT Antartica scenery package is very good. So my approach now is if I want to do a lot of flying in a particular area then I look for a good area scenery package for that area.

[blanston12]

For a long time I have used ORBX Global and ORBX Vector. For the brief period of time where Global Vector was not available for P3D V4 I could really see the difference it made. For those area's where ORBX LC is not available I have started using TopoSim for the Mesh. Works fairly well when combined with ORBX Global and Vector.

[Penzoil3]

OrbX Global is texture replacement. Land class tells the sim what texture to put where. Mesh is the ground layer, how high the mountains are, how low the valleys, how wrinkled the sand dunes. They ate 3 totally different things.

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ID: 91 (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/114988-unified-lclookup-and-what-to-expect/?page=3#comment-1036296) Posted May 22, 2016 (http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/114988-unified-lclookup-and-what-to-expect/?do=findComment&comment=1036296) (edited)




"The OVERALL subject at hand is LANDCLASS and what it DOES...and even as importantly...DOESN'T do. Landclass files simply tell the flight simulator which "EARTH" TEXTURES to place WHERE in a given location in the simulator (they don't have anything to do with "building" textures, or "aircraft" textures, etc. Think of them as "Earth" textures...Landclass determines where "Earth" textures are placed...and that includes "ground", "water", "snow", etc textures). So let's look at how this all works with ORBX products that are "specifically" called "landclass" products, and how they work alongside other ORBX products that will also contain their OWN SPECIFIC landclass files within those specific products.

Your flight simulator world is built from the bottom up. The first layer of your world is Terrain Mesh (there is a lower layer that defines the "boundaries" of the world, but don't worry about that for now). Terrain Mesh gives your world depth and height...valleys and mountains, etc. It contain NO Textures and NO Landclass...it just adds "elevations" to your world. Without it, your entire world would be FLAT. Landclass has NOTHING to do with the Terrain Mesh layer. So don't worry about the new "Unified Landclass" update screwing up any of your Terrain Mesh.

The next TWO layers of your world are a COMBINATION of both TEXTURES and LANDCLASS. They work together, and they decide which TEXTURES will be "laid on top" of the Terrains Mesh "elevations". Let's start by building your flight sim world using the FTX GLOBAL BASE PACK product. This a a total TEXTURE replacement for the entire world. It replaces all of the DEFAULT textures that came with your flight sim. But it ALSO contains improved LANDCLASS files with it, specifically designed to put those GLOBAL TEXTURES in the places ORBX wants them to be. Here is part of the description of that from the FTX Blobal Base Pack product page:

"Base landclass updated to enhance Asia etc" and "Works with all 3rd party landclass products" and "Expandable with Orbx openLC packs!"

So, if you ONLY had FTX Global Base Pack installed, you would have all new GLOBAL TEXTURES for your sim, with improved landclass for it (to tell the sim WHERE to place those textures), but IF you wanted to, you could STILL use a third-party landclass product like Scenery Tech (or others) for specific geographic areas (like Scenery Tech Asia, etc).

The next "layer" you would have is a VECTOR GRAPHICS layer, like FTX GLOBAL Vector. This improves the location and accuracy of roads, rivers, lakes, shorelines, city boundaries, etc. Some vector graphics products come with their OWN included landclass files for "better" placement of the associated textures. FTX GLOBAL Vector is a GLOBAL product that does this for the WHOLE world all at once. Other third-party Vector products do it using "regional" areas of the world per product like just for Europe or North America, etc. Which products you use is up to you. There is a Compatibility sub-Forum in the ORBX main forum that give excellent guidance on making ORBX products work properly regardless of which Vector product you decide to use. The "simple" solution would be to use the ORBX Vector product, as it is designed to work seemlessly with all the other ORBX products.

OK, let's move on. You now install an ORBX SPECIFIC LANDCLASS product, like openLC EU (Europe). THIS product will include MORE SPECIFIC landclass files for the EUROPE AREA as a WHOLE (it will cover ALL of Europe with MORE detailed Landclass for ALL of Europe). THEY will be used instead of the GLOBAL landclass files included with FTX Global Base. It's that simple."

[BendyFlyer]

FALCONAF - No argument from me on that nice outline. The critical point I tried to get across is that accurate mesh is not available world wide because of the satellite and geophysical data has not been done or done to a high degree of accuracy or is available. Similarly there are variations between the data collected by European satellites and those of the US and others. I have no doubt that the Russians and Chinese have done this for their countries and territories but it is not available to us. So while some addon mesh's are a vast improvement on the basic mesh in FSX default, for lots of areas of the world accurate data has never been compiled or collected (not that it is publicly available).

I only really understood this when trying to improve the scenery outlines in some areas and after working through a number of available meshes did some further research on the issue because the mesh had made no improvement in some areas. But then again I do like to go to some out of the way places on the globe. I was aware from my days in RW aviation that the same issue of whats important to have satellite coverage for and what was not considered that important was well and truly made clear by the placement of GPS satellites. They provide high level coverage in the Northern Hemisphere but lesser coverage and hence accuracy in the Southern Hemisphere. So you could routinely lose sat coverage in southern regions south of Tasmania etc and in those southern latitudes where from time to time I flew a lot over the years.