FTX North America (Pacific NW) Shots

[c87]

There are some more development shots of the next FTX installment, NA Blue in the Pacific Northwest in this thread at FlightSimWorld.com
http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums...owtopic=164791

Some amazing shots. They're going to include photoreal Seattle at 60cm/pixel and full autogen with custom objects. May also consider Portland too. Prelim pics are shown in the thread.

The shot of the Squamish area in British Columbia has my mouth watering.

[Kiwikat]

I guess I'll post my opinion here as I don't know how well it would be received there. Compared to what I have in that area right now (Ultimate terrain X usa and canada, Ground environment x, and usa and canada terrain meshes) FTX doesn't look a whole lot better, if any. Not like it was in Australia where they had no competition. They are going to have to show some more impressive shots if I'm going to buy it. Now a seattle and portland addon would be welcomed, but the rest of the area really doesn't look much if any better than my current setup.

Just IMHO. No flames intended. I look forward to FTX proving me wrong.

[hobofat]

I guess I'll post my opinion here as I don't know how well it would be received there. Compared to what I have in that area right now (Ultimate terrain X usa and canada, Ground environment x, and usa and canada terrain meshes) FTX doesn't look a whole lot better, if any. Not like it was in Australia where they had no competition. They are going to have to show some more impressive shots if I'm going to buy it. Now a seattle and portland addon would be welcomed, but the rest of the area really doesn't look much if any better than my current setup.

Just IMHO. No flames intended. I look forward to FTX proving me wrong.

True, but they haven't done the texture work yet, those were just default textures in the photo. Hopefully when they get the textures done it will be looking a whole lot different! The topo stuff looks nice, but looking forward to the ground textures for sure!

[MCDesigns]

I dunno, looks pretty impressive to me, but then again, I don't have the addons you have.

I don't usually fly around Seattle due to low performance, but that looks pretty sweet. Wonder what Renton looks like?

[tigisfat]

Kiwi's right. I like to think of what FTX does like this: It's how we want default scenery to look but can't expect.

Hopefully they will apply their attention to detail and become competitiev with North American scenery; but the competition is fierce.

[orionll]

It looks nice, but what angers me even more is that I was on the beta team until Venema kicked me out :/. If it still has the --censored-- FTX mode, I'm not sure if I'll even buy it.

[SolarEagle]

I guess I'll post my opinion here as I don't know how well it would be received there. Compared to what I have in that area right now (Ultimate terrain X usa and canada, Ground environment x, and usa and canada terrain meshes) FTX doesn't look a whole lot better, if any. Not like it was in Australia where they had no competition. They are going to have to show some more impressive shots if I'm going to buy it. Now a seattle and portland addon would be welcomed, but the rest of the area really doesn't look much if any better than my current setup.

You must have missed the disclaimer....

DISCLAIMER: There are many default FSX textures in these screenshots. We are only about 15% into the texture development work, so please understand these shots are early days yet. The main focus in showing you these images is to highlight the high resolution mesh, coastlines roads, hydro, and topo development work which is nearing completion

So there's no FTX landclass or textures in those shots, which is the primary feature of what FTX does, so really you are not seeing FTX at all, just coastlines and mesh. Although some of the photoreal textures are in place, such as this shot of Mt Baker that I grabbed from the beta build I'm testing. They're using 1m ortho imagery above the treeline blended into landclass textures below.

[sberlins]

I dunno, looks pretty impressive to me, but then again, I don't have the addons you have.

I don't usually fly around Seattle due to low performance, but that looks pretty sweet. Wonder what Renton looks like?

The FTX stuff is nice but they do have competiton. Here's a shot looking back toward Renton airport, and a couple of California and a last shot of Snohomish.

[SolarEagle]

The FTX stuff is nice but they do have competiton. Here's a shot looking back toward Renton airport, and a couple of California and a last shot of Snohomish.

But that's photo scenery, FTX is landclass scenery, which are different types of prodcuts. Photo scenery is good for deserts, but I happen to like autogen since I'm a low and slow/fast type of guy.

[Kiwikat]

I'll be looking forward to seeing some more shots as the textures get done. Even looking at the parts they have done, I don't think its any improvement over what UTX and mesh does. I remain hopeful though. Australia was and still is incredible. I'd like to think they could keep that up and do it for other popular parts of the world.

FTX Great Lakes would be nice

And yeah Orion, it is a shame they won't eliminate "FTX Mode". I was against it on their little poll thing.

[spotlope]

They have some competition in this part of the world, it's true. But I've seen what Holger was able to do with SE Alaska in Tongass Fjords, and a lot of his tricks were learned while working on Australia for ORBX. If he's able to do for the PNW what he did for Alaska and down under, I dare say the competition should be quaking in their boots right now. I had a chance to review some of the photo terrain he tried for Emma Field X alongside his own custom non-photo terrain, and I chose to use his stuff. For my money, it looks better than aerial shots, and it blends much more smoothly with the surrounding terrain as well. This is going to be something to watch!

By the way, if anyone in charge is listening... Portland! Portland! Portland! :woot:

[crashaz]

WoW! Thats all I have to say! To the doubters I say this. I saw FTX in it's early stages in Seattle in Nov 2007. It looked nice then... and then they released the finished product....their textures make all the difference.

John and team (even Holger is working on this!?!) is going to impress again... of course the States is a tough market because of all the other competition.. but they are going to stand out front again.

:ernae:

[datter]

Any hints as to the final pricing will be on this stuff? As it stands a full package of the Australia scenery would come to over $300 Canadian (!!!). I think it would need to come with a real life plot of land on some Australian waterfront somewhere to justify that (for me). I wonder if the US stuff will be more reasonably priced?

[harleyman]

datter....You need to hunt Job # 2......LOL :faint:

[MCDesigns]

Any hints as to the final pricing will be on this stuff? As it stands a full package of the Australia scenery would come to over $300 Canadian (!!!). I think it would need to come with a real life plot of land on some Australian waterfront somewhere to justify that (for me). I wonder if the US stuff will be more reasonably priced?

For what you get the Australian packs are very reasonably priced. I just checked, the 4 packs combined cost around $160 Canadian, I guess you are adding the individual airports which some are kinda pricey.

harleyman, if he gets job #2, when will he have time to fly?

[Mithrin]

I guess anyone in doubt will just have to check back in two months or so when they are getting near release status. These are very early screenies yet but I already love the mesh and landclass detail. Will be a must buy for me.

[Bone]

datter....You need to hunt Job # 2......LOL :faint:

We're all going to need second jobs to pay for the plethora of FSX upgrades and addons. Who needs FS11, anyway.

[gera]

I guess I'll post my opinion here as I don't know how well it would be received there. Compared to what I have in that area right now (Ultimate terrain X usa and canada, Ground environment x, and usa and canada terrain meshes) FTX doesn't look a whole lot better, if any. Not like it was in Australia where they had no competition. They are going to have to show some more impressive shots if I'm going to buy it. Now a seattle and portland addon would be welcomed, but the rest of the area really doesn't look much if any better than my current setup.

Just IMHO. No flames intended. I look forward to FTX proving me wrong.

I bet you a case of beer that you and we all are going to be "very highly surprised" by FTX´s releases of USA and Canada and whatever else....just spend a few days flying in their Australia tuff.........They have absolutely No competition in the FSX world...............:gossip:

[crashaz]

:amen:

[sberlins]

But that's photo scenery, FTX is landclass scenery, which are different types of prodcuts. Photo scenery is good for deserts, but I happen to like autogen since I'm a low and slow/fast type of guy.

Autogen is used with this particular scenery. Here are some other lower level shots:

[Dexdoggy]

Even though I'm an Aussie, when I first started on FSX, the area I flew most was pacific north-west, as even the default stuff looked great to me! (As opposed to Australia, which looked terrible!) + there have been a lot of add-ons (textures, grass, trees, scenery) to improve the sim in US and Canada.
I also have UTX which really improved VFR stuff. Then, as Orbx released their products I found all my flights were back at home (nothing like being able to actually recognise places of home from the air in the sim!). I have always loved the sim bush flying, and I eagerly await what Orbx will do here - I am convinced it will be nothing less than awesome and amazing!