ORBX or VLC?

[ThinkingManNeil]

Hi All;

Been away for awhile, but I'm back and now with FSX Gold. I've come to enjoy FSX over the past month or so that I've been running it (especially like the improved autumn foliage colours and ground cover over FS9's muted fall browns. Moving traffic on freeways is a nice touch, too). But I'm a little disappointed in the state of scenery development for many areas, especially my native Canada, so I do a lot of my flying out of Andover-Aeroflex in New Jersey, one of the prettiest little airports to be had in the both sim and real worlds. But being a huge fan of New Zealand and its landscapes I'm eager to be flying there too, but I'm in a bit of a quandry over which mesh/landclass to choose to enhance the experience. Now, this isn't a "Us vs. Them" thing and I don't want it to degrade into that, but the two leading contenders both have a lot to offer it seems. I've seen videos on YouTube of some of ORBX's stuff and was very impressed with the level of detail offered, and now they have packages for both the North and South Islands of NZ available, But I see that a lot of airport scenery -- especially smaller fields like Foxpine, Mandeville, and Alexandra, the kind of fields I'm interested in flying out of for the kind of low 'n slow flying I favour -- are designed for Vector Land Class (VLC). So here are a few questions for the group:

1. Which offers the best mesh, landclass, and general overall depiction of New Zealand's amazingly varied terrain?

2. The variations in vegetation and climate in NZ are as amazing as its topography and geography. From the lush, green, almost sub-tropical Northland to the rolling Coromandel peninsula to the flat farmland of the Canterbury Plains, the dry, golden semi-arid Central Otago and Lakes district, the colossal, frigid Southern Alps, the Nordic Fjordlands in the far south and the wild West Coast, NZ offers an incredible array of terrains and plant life. Which of the two -- ORBX or VLC -- best reflects these wildly diverse scenes? How well are the different seasons depicted?

3. Volcanoes. Which package best depicts the volcanic complexes of the North Island (Taranaki, Tongariro-Ruapehu, Rotorua-Terawera, Rangitoto, White Island)?

4. Finally, which is more easily handled on an average PC? My system's a 2-year old Dell Studio XPS i9000 running Windows 7 on a 64-bit Pentium i7-960 core at 3.20 GHz, 500 GB primary hard drive and a secondary 1TB drive dedicated to my flight sims. Graphics card is an AMD Radeon 5450 with 1GB of memory,

Thanks in advance,

N.

[gojozoom]

Hi there,

I have both of those products, and I'm happy to share my personal opinion about them. I won't be including any technical details though, this more about the look and feel.

MESH : I found the mesh very similar in VLC and ORBX. They are both sharp and accurate. Example : I live in Titahi Bay and there is this a hill next to us, that has a very specific shape to it. It's perfectly "cloned" into the virtual world of FSX by both offerings.

COLORS: In terms of colours VLC's version is more realistic, the ORBX world has a bit too much of green all around.

TEXTURE: I found that ORBX has slightly more realistic textures, that makes the whole scenery more "believable". VLC textures are nice too, but the boundaries between different areas (eg forest, vineyards, agricultural fields) are a bit too sharp, somehow they lack the smooth transition that ORBX has. I have to add, that Tim is constantly working on updating VLC textures and libraries, that significantly enhance the product.

AIRPORTS/AIRSTRIPS: They are both fantastic. They both have all those small trips in the middle of nowhere (for bush flying) and accurate models of the bigger airports too. The people-flow feature of ORBX adds more immersion, however it's nothing I couldn't live without.

COMPATIBILITY WITH PHOTO-REAL ADD-ONS: VLC is the way to go if this is priority for you. It's very fiddly to make anything work with ORBX, whereas VLC is very 3rd-party friendly. Also, Rob at Godzoneproduces fantastic photoreal products that are compatible with VLC.

Dan

[toprob]

Yes, the most visible difference is that Orbx includes a complete set of landclass textures, and replacement autogen vegetation, whereas VLC mainly relies on default textures. Dan mentioned the lack of blending on boundaries between different landclass textures, and this has been a common complaint, which would only really be solved by a completely new texture set for VLC. However to balance that, Orbx does tend to 'fix' the issue by reducing the number of smaller vector areas, and by basing the textures on a reduced colour palette. This works well with landclass textures, but they do tend to make their trees all similar colour.

Of course the difference in approach is reflected in the download file size -- 360MB for VLC, 6+ GB for Orbx, really only an issue for NZers on limited bandwidth plans. (VLC is hosted in NZ.)

My favourite Orbx feature is the autogen trees, these have huge potential for custom scenery. I'm not too keen on the people-flow, this works well at a distance, but is far too cartoony/computery up close, kind of like The Sims -- this actually matches the style of Orbx airports, but doesn't work well with custom, photo-textured airports.

Performance-wise, VLC is well-proven, and Orbx has a good reputation for optimisation, which is great considering the extra detail included in these products. However this really only applies to high-end systems -- at the moment I have Orbx NZ activated while patching Tauranga, and I need to reduce the settings almost to minimal to get Orbx working on my system, compared to VLC, and even then FPS is halved. I actually need to turn my settings up high to test the 'look' of my airport within NZNI, but the disc-thrashing is freaking me out. As I said, though, this won't be a problem if you have a nice modern system. Your system specs fall into this category.

[Timbo]

ORBX NZSI-NZNI offers..

1. 100% custom Mesh, Landclass and Ground Textures, all made using local NZ photos and aerial imagery suppliers, this means your seeing REAL NZ in every texture/tree/house, plus our ground textures utilize our unique M-Tile system which blends together textures naturally and seamlessly unlike the default system which gives you that ugly 'shotgun' blend you see with the default FSX textures

2. With Orbx's 100% autogen tree replacement, its an entirly re-worked autogen system, using local NZ photos, now you will see...Willows, Mountain Beeches, Halls Totaras, Black Beeches, Kuris, Kahikatea, Norfolk Pines, Nikau Palms, Tree Ferns, Wattles, Radiatas, Cypress, Gorse, Cabbage Trees, Tea Trees, Green and Grey Scrub, Pohutakawa, Tussock grass, Flax grass, Pampus grass, Eucalypts, Cypress Hedges and Sycamores...and many more, plus ORBX includes a custom seasons file made by Holger Sandmann, so different parts of NZ change in different months of the year, and of course Orbx provides 5 x unique sets of Ground textures to cater for Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Hard Winter

3. Orbx offers photoreal for most of the volcanoes you listed, plus a lot of Glaciers, check out the product pages for more info:
https://www.fullterrain.com/product_nzsi.html
https://www.fullterrain.com/product_nzni.html
Up the top near the top-right hand corner of the website are custom made Google Earth KMZs which provide a virtual guide to the FTX areas

4. On your system (same as mine) its a smooth as butter due to our unique Autogen system


ORBX NZSI and NZNI........New Zealand built from the ground up, welcome to 2012

Cheers
Tim Harris
Orbx Simulations

[Kahu]

Probably the best way to make this difficult decision is to look at peoples screenshots of VLC and Orbx and decide what you like the best. You wont be disappointed either way.

Its funny one of the criticism of Orbx is its to green, but I find here in the BOP-Waikato area its perfect.

Its just going to be a personal preference decision.

Goodluck

[jgruschow]

I have used both VLC and Orbx and both have faults and both have their good points.VLC seems to me to have been designed for older,(slow), computers and as such does an excellent job. Orbx, on the other hand seems to run and show better on a top of the line computer.
When NZSI was released I'm afraid I removed VLC and haven't looked at it since. I think SI is the best rendition of scenery I have seen anywhere. It is realistic and so simple to navigate. It looks like what it is supposed to. The mountain texture is real.
NZNI, on the other hand was mildly disapointing. So much missing. Like all the Hydro dams on the Waikato river. Ninety mile beach, Wairakei power station. And what made me laugh was the number of geysers and steam vents.Geysers in Kuirau Park! White Island a good attempt, but not real. The airstrip on Mt.Tarawera. Trees growing in what is farmland or residential.
I have done over a thousand flights from Rotorua, so I can criticise.
Never-the-less, overall NI is not too bad, and I'm sure it will get better via upgrades. (paid for of course!!!!)
Looking at the FS-Creations work makes it easy to see how much is missing in what Orbx has given us.

[Naki]

I tend think they have done a better job with NZNI than NZSI....the colours are much more like it is and there are a few other improvements.

I havent checked whether the dams are there but there is something resembling Wairakei, Ninety Mile beach and the airstrip on Tarawera IIRC, but I agree with the steam vents, geysers etc....they seems to be over done...especially in Taupo! There are lots bits and pieces that are in NZNI such as Waitangi, wind farms etc, etc

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE (jgruschow @ Aug 20 2012,4:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I have done over a thousand flights from Rotorua, so I can criticise.

Jack , my fave is the Taumaruni-Turangi to Raetihi run and god forbid i say it in a C188 AG plane in typical seasonal weather .

[Nzeddy]

FTX NZNI airport screenshots:

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/47271-nzni-airports/
http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/472...-international/
http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/472...-intl-up-close/

[mfraser]

Great thread and all valid arguments - good to see no extreme fanboy posts! I already have VLC and I can't really justify spending another $100 on ORBX (At least not yet). I wonder - has anyone experimented with default texture replacements and VLC? I seem to remember FScene did some good payware replacement textures for both FS9 and FSX. I wonder if something like that would bridge the gap?

[bennz]

Hi everyone,

could someone give me some ideas of which of these is better ( yet accurate) for IFR flying? for class A and C. I am not really a bush flyer but would enjoy to see as real as it gets factor(Including airports) while flying across NZ.

I am planning to get Obrx Aus Eastern airports and Secenry but for NZ I am undecided.


many thanks:-)

[Ian Warren]

The best of both worlds - I had 'Scubcutter' around here , he want to look at the ORBX SI , show him in around Ashburton and across the Southern Canterbury plains , Mark was more interested to compare his real world paraglider flights he has from the hills above Birdlings Flat on Banks Peninsular to Burnham , I said look how much better aligned the ORBX textures and paddocks compared to VLC ... he preferred VLC because of the accurate mapping of the roads which he used for nav , the textures did not worry him ..... He is Colour Blind ! The best of both worlds

[bennz]

This might be too much of asking but is it possible that someone put photos of the same location both from ORBX and VLC so I can compare to my liking? Much appreciate it !

[toprob]

QUOTE (mfraser @ Aug 21 2012,5:31 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Great thread and all valid arguments - good to see no extreme fanboy posts! I already have VLC and I can't really justify spending another $100 on ORBX (At least not yet). I wonder - has anyone experimented with default texture replacements and VLC? I seem to remember FScene did some good payware replacement textures for both FS9 and FSX. I wonder if something like that would bridge the gap?

I think that when Tim put VLC together he went through the default textures very carefully to choose the proper 'look' for each land class, rather than just choose the matching landclass for a particular area, which is why the overall look works so well, colour and tonal-wise. (And why down low you tend to notice that these are just default textures.) Most custom texture sets will reduce this realism, even if they add textural detail. You could pick and choose textures from various sets, but it isn't a simple process, and you won't fix the main issue -- mis-matched colours in most of the default textures. You'd need to rename textures to match the VLC landclass definitions, and this is where you'd have problems -- some texture sets have different numbers of textures, and different patterns to mix and match.

Orbx and VLC differ in one main area when it comes to producing custom landclass textures -- Orbx relies on the textures themselves to include the detail, so you'll see more variations within a single texture class, but these won't necessarily match actual features. For example, you can put orchards or pockets of bush in texture sets, but these won't match the actual location of any real orchard or bush. VLC defines a lot more small, real areas, albeit with default textures. This won't make any real difference for some people, unless you know the area well, and want to navigate using known features.

Producing custom textures for VLC would actually be trickier, the Orbx method is certainly easier. But I have done enough experimenting to know that with a lot of care taken with colour-matching, a custom texture set for VLC would make all the difference. Whether it would be financially viable is another story -- a lot of people are very happy with the Orbx method, which is tricky to compete with. Here's an illustration of the issue --

Here's a Google Earth screenshot showing an airstrip which I found (by stumbling across 'Airstrip Road' which I followed to the end.)



In Vector Land Class, I can follow the road (in this case, I flew to the coast from Dargaville, followed Omamari Road until I found the turn-off.) There's the airstrip just above the end of the road --


Now I'm aware that this is an ugly screenshot -- it can't compare with the equivalent shot from NZNI --



Now that is a beautiful landscape, I could imagine having a picnic there, amongst those trees. And further along, there's a row of poplars which are just stunning. this is an unspoilt, natural green wonderland. There is no airstrip, and no road, though, and in reality, New Zealand is a bit more unkempt. And people do live and work here, and make a mess doing both.

At the moment you need to make up your mind between the realism of VLC and the beauty of Orbx, a custom texture set for VLC would make the decision trickier, rather than easier:)

EDIT: I should really clarify 'realism' -- I mean topographical realism. Some people would find the NZNI shot more photographically realistic.

[Ian Warren]

As i said to Adrian , all i needed was a Chain Saw , the Wobblyville chainsaw tree cut massacre in the real world .. all we need is the virtual type and we'd be away , new fields and strips - nothing to it

[bennz]

Nice comparison, that helped but none looks like the real thing
Just wondering if the colours and texture change in various seasons or its all the same all around the year? ( Am I too optimistic ? haha )

To me VLC looks more real, not too green but I might compare more shots to make my mind.

[toprob]

QUOTE (bennz @ Aug 21 2012,12:07 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Nice comparison, that helped but none looks like the real thing
Just wondering if the colours and texture change in various seasons or its all the same all around the year? ( Am I too optimistic ? haha )

To me VLC looks more real, not too green but I might compare more shots to make my mind.

Both use customised season files to display seasonal textures.

[bennz]

So I guess both of the screenshots were taken in the same "season" in fsx. because they look quite different.
How do airports look in each one? Does VLC stand up to Orbx details when it comes to airports? And I guess the "adding" extra parts if the tricky one like you said in VLC compared to Orbx.. hmmm decisions decisions.. I want to do it right once, so its hard to know which suits me the best.

[toprob]

Just a quick apology -- the VLC shot I originally posted above included a 'test' custom texture for the pasture, so I've replaced it with the actual VLC texture.

Here's a 'wider' comparison of the same area:

In Google Earth:



Vector Land Class:


Orbx NZNI:


As far as airports are concerned, Orbx have a basic update for every airport as part of the package, whereas VLC uses 'airfield packs' and custom airport releases via the Vector Land Class website.

[Ian Warren]

Those VLC textures are really starting to look the part