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I decided to buy V5, because everyone's pics looked so good.

Sundog

Sundog

SOH-CM-2025
First, the negative. I tried installing my Orbx files in V5 and needless to say, my scenery is completely FUBARed. No autogen, water tiles that randomly pop up, most airfields are below the terrain when you approach them. I went and read Orbx regarding P3DV5 and Orbx and basically it comes down to they're install through Orbx Central isn't really compatible. I did some programming way back when I was in school, but what you have to go through to get Orbx files to work in it I could probably figure out if I spent three or four hours messing with it, but I'm not going to do that. The default terrain isn't bad, but I'll stick with V4 for now. I find the scenery issues with V5 make it unflyable for me. Also, controls I was able to program in sim in V4 I can't program in V5. It's annoying.

Now the positive; The new clouds/sky model look amazing. Apparently the new cloud models don't cast shadows, but given how good they look, it didn't bother me that much. I also like how looking at the map now doesn't pause the sim. I also like that weird Lockheed turboprop trainer that looks like a T-6 II with an F-4 influence.

Having said that, I'll probably uninstall it and wait to re-install it when Orbx figures out how to make terrain installs work through their Orbx Central program. Although, i did finally figure out how to install planes outside of the sim, which I'm happy about.

All in all, I can see where it's an improvement over V4, and if you don't use all of the Orbx scenery like I do, I would say give it a try.

Regards,
Ken
 
Hold on!! I'm waiting for my new rig to be delivered, and this is new to me. I thought that at least the problems with FTX Global base, Trees and TEGB were solved with the latest iteration of P3Dv5.

Don't tell me I'll have to wait for M$ to release their new flightsim?!

Priller
 
Synching ORBX is a must. I also experienced the random water tiles and so forth. As for the sunken and/or raised airfields...not so much can be done about that until ORBX does something with Vector.
 
Well I'll come out and say it. IF you don't have an 8gig video card, don't bother. V4.5 is the better running, better looking(because you can't use the V5 features) sim. My day-to-day test rig still runs a 6gig card and I can't use ORBX or any other enhancement in V5. I can't run high-end add-ons either. V5 still has many bugs too. 4k textures are also a no-no.
 
Orbx stuff is mostly fine. They have a v5 compatible list of their scenery. Make sure you have your insertion points in the correct spot. Otherwise, the GPU counter is your best friend. It took me a bit to get everything settled down, but can fly most anywhere on a 6gig card, even Heathrow with Enhanced Atmospherics. Cloud rez played the biggest factor. The frame rates are unbelievably good. Caveat: I don't use PMDG ;)
 
I've synced and verified everything, the insertion points were always correct in Central, etc. Maybe I'll go through the scenery config file by hand and see what's up. It's good to know you guys didn't have any problems, as something obviously didn't work correctly on my end.

Thanks for the heads up.

EDIT: OK, I did some investigating, and it appears about 1/3 of the Orbx scenery I installed is below the 000 Base scenery of the sim itself! I have no idea how it was placed there, as the rest of the scenery installed exactly where it should be. Also, since I install into an external location and not directly into the sim, all of my Orbx scenery is "grayed" out and it doesn't allow me to move it up or down to change it's location/hierarchy in the config file. Should I just uninstall all of the scenery below 000 and try re-installing it?

Thanks,
Ken
 
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Ken, I think maybe your problem is with Orbx Vector, the old one doesn't work with V5, you will have to download the new one, it's no charge if you've bought the old one.



Ian
 
I also Bought V5 on the third.. Turned right around and bought True Earth Oregon. Tonight I took the P-61 up starting from KSFO with default V5 scenery and ended at KBDN here in Bend Oregon which SHOULD be true earth Oregon. However. Mt Hood does not exist.. On a clear day, we can see it from here in Bend, a hundred and fifty miles away. It Looms over Portland the way Ranier looms over Seattle, and its not there.. It was a 71 gigabyte download for oregon which took all night and all of this morning to download and install, and Mt Hood isnt there.. I think I'm miffed.. I couldnt find the nuclear sub in portland either. The USS Blueback. Yup, its a real thing.. Outside of that, the rest of oregon looks like everywhere else in V5. Maybe I need a lesson in settings?? I dont know.. V5 DOES look better than any other version of P3D. Tons better. Oddly, FSX Steam ( which I also installed about a week ago ) looks like V5 P3D.. Weird.. I guess the gist of this rant is, I'm not impressed with OrbX. My machine isnt a slouch. I run V5 on maximum everything and get 60FPS. I've got a good GTX1070 GPU in there, and 24 gigs of ram.. I would expect that when I pay forty bucks and spend nearly 12 hours downloading that OrbiX would ( as advertised ) make improvements to the default V5 scenery, but it doesnt.. Even PDX is wrong.. I'll need to buy iBlueYonders PDX to get it right.. Yet another purchase.. Oy!

7a45fba0349d07f81c6725bdab3afe78.jpg


Addendum::
OK, so it seems thaat with my installation, since I installed it to an Orbix Library on a seperate drive, that the scenery was not being installed to my p3D scenery config.. So, I copied over the true earth Oregon scenery to my p3D scenery and added it by hand to the config and there seems to be an improvement.. I now have a rather diminutive but none the less there, Mt. Hood.. I'm going to use Orbx Central to redownload Oregon and this time install it directly to P3D.. That should help things a great deal..
 
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Pam, Mt. Hood is with the Washington TE. Why???? Probably, because they wanted to give something extra to their first US TE. I think ORBX should have included it with Oregon. After all, it IS in Oregon.
 
jmig said:
Pam, Mt. Hood is with the Washington TE. Why???? Probably, because they wanted to give something extra to their first US TE. I think ORBX should have included it with Oregon. After all, it IS in Oregon.
Click to expand...

That is most assuredly Puzzling, but then, that seems to be the nature of things this morning.. Yesterdays Orbx download was 71 gigs. Yetm when I copied it too P3D's scenery folder, it was barely more than 7 gigs. Now this Second download is 61 gigs. I DID attempt a manual download, but was told that TE Oregon doesnt have a complete install to place it in P3DV5. Personally, I have no idea what that means, but I decided to uninstall the original installation, and redownload it. Reason being was because Neither Mt Hood, Nor the Three Sisters, look anything like what they appear in Orbx's advertising images.. 2 gigs downloaded. 59 to go. Oy!..

I'm curious as too "Why 61 gigabytes"? The entirety of the global scenery for X-Plane is 80 Gigabyte, and yet here, One state is 61 gigabyte. Now, frankly, I dont think P3D looks as good as X-Plane, and I'm not biased regarding scenery. Good is good ( Which is why we're all waiting for FS2020 ), but P3D seems to have a great deal of high freaquency noise. Little shimmers and glitters around the edges of things, and the colors are closer to romper room than real life, but perhaps thats a subjective opinion. My eyes are no younger than I am and theyve been through the wringer as well.. I'll have to open up the scenery folder once its installed to see why its so darned big..
 
IanHenry said:
Ken, I think maybe your problem is with Orbx Vector, the old one doesn't work with V5, you will have to download the new one, it's no charge if you've bought the old one.



Ian
Click to expand...

Hi Ian,

The funny thing is I didn't install that, since I was told it was incompatible. I hadn't realized they updated it. Still, it doesn't account for the number of installations that didn't follow where Orbx Central had indicated they should be installed and ended up below all of the PSDV5 scenery. I'm still working on how to get those into correct position. Thanks for the heads up on Vector.

Ken
 
ORBX can be a pain at times. I've got loads of ORBX installed and it works briliantly. I've held back on Vector due to the forum post saying it can be good at what LM have missed out but can also make it untidy where LM have got it right. However, when it comes to scenery, even if the sync option is run after new scenery is installed, Lorby is a life saver for any version of P3D and it's free. Install, activate, reorder and save. All done.
 
Ken, I was going to mention what SW1E alluded to, and that is Lorby's Addon Organizer. I wouldn't be without it either. You can relayer even xml scenery.

https://www.lorby-si.com/downloads.html

Having said that, I would be careful relayering Orbx stuff, but at least you have the option. You might post your issue in the Orbx v5 support forum.

Warchild, on the product page it says the download is 71 gigs unpacking to 77.4 gigs. I think you have an incomplete download, which I've had happen as well.

Todd
 
Thanks Snurdley. I think the 71 gig numbeer is reflecting the OrbX Library files as well, and since those were installed, I didnt need them for last nights re-install. So I ended up with 61 gigs instead of 71. Of the reinstall, I can say only three things: Wow, wow, and WTF??
Wow: The mesh work is the best Ive ever seen. There are parts of Oregon just north of Warm Springs, that No one gets right. FSX didnt get it right, P3D never got it right and XPlane didnt get it right, and thats because its the weirdest place on earth. You see, That part of Oregon used to be at the bottom of the sea, till one day or night, it was thrust up thousands of feet into the air; hundreds of sqaure miles of land just tossed upward like a feather in the wind. The sea floor shattered, creating deep fissures that reach down over a thousand feet into the earth, and created all these table top plateaus that the american west is so well known for. So kudo's to OrbX for coming closer than anyone has ever come to getting that right..

wow: Typical. Portland, Oregons largest most industrialized and most important city, is an Ortho. OrbX may as well have not even bothered. While I highly applaud their mesh work, this is inexcusable. I dont quite feel ripped off, but damned close..

WTF?:: So the day is done. I open the map and turn south east towards Bend, some hundred and fifty miles away. I fly over Warm Springs and Hoody and pass Mt Jeffersion on the way. It;s a hot day so the plane is flying like a bat out of hell, and I begin to slow her down about twenty miles out of Bend, circling in Over Pilot Butte before dropping gear and flaps. Setting her down nice and gentle, I find myself a mile in the air, tossing and turning and cartwheeling like mad. Turns out there are two KBDN's; One three feet above the other. WTF?? Oh well..

I'll keep checking: making sure something else isnt thrusting its way into p3D. But this is getting old.

WarmSpringsJefferson_Big.jpg
 
Pam, I just finished a flight starting from KBDN. It does have two versions, one on top of the other. There are a lot of these in P3Dv5, and ORBX. Reason being P3Dv5 has updated FAA airport info, with a lot of smaller airports having been upgraded to municipal rating/names/ICAO. ORBX still has the older names/ICAO, and it seems elevations are all off by about 3 feet in these. The previous version of ORBX Vector would fix these, however, it doesn't work with V5, because V5's built in vector mapping is much more correct than the older ORBX Vector. A new release does work, (free upgrade for those who have the previous version,) however, it can no longer correct airport elevations. ORBX is working on fixing these, as fast as possible, asking everyone to post in their forum about incorrect/doubled airports.

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/191238-airport-icao-code-changes-in-p3d-v5/
 
modelr said:
Pam, I just finished a flight starting from KBDN. It does have two versions, one on top of the other. There are a lot of these in P3Dv5, and ORBX. Reason being P3Dv5 has updated FAA airport info, with a lot of smaller airports having been upgraded to municipal rating/names/ICAO. ORBX still has the older names/ICAO, and it seems elevations are all off by about 3 feet in these. The previous version of ORBX Vector would fix these, however, it doesn't work with V5, because V5's built in vector mapping is much more correct than the older ORBX Vector. A new release does work, (free upgrade for those who have the previous version,) however, it can no longer correct airport elevations. ORBX is working on fixing these, as fast as possible, asking everyone to post in their forum about incorrect/doubled airports.

https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/191238-airport-icao-code-changes-in-p3d-v5/
Click to expand...

Awww, thanks Don.. you just saved OrbX from the trash bin.. I can deal with using free Ortho's from google, But having my plane bounced around like a ping pong ball every time I wanted to land at home, was just too much. If they ever get this fixed ( and they better if they want to see another penny of my money ) I promise I'll make KBDN real or as real as it is in real life ( which considering how much they charge Epic Aircraft I must question their grasp on reality ). I'll also do the same for 6K5 ( Sisters Eagle Air ).

qpmeqxf.png


Addendum:: I just bought Vector for V5. It;s a real good thing I got lots of chicken soup ::LOL::.. Jeeez, the things we do for our love of aviation..
 
"Addendum:: I just bought Vector for V5."

Really Pam, that's the very first thing you should have done!!!!!
Never had any ORBX problems and I'm running P3Dv5 on my old i7 hack box with a single 2080 and frames locked at 60.

VcAxSt.jpg
 
Only owned FTX Pacific Northwest before. This has turned into a nightmare real fast. Now OrbX is telling me I have to buy their Global Base to use Vector. Thats a hundred bucks.. Where does the greed end?? I'm old, disabled and on a very fixed income.. They sell products that dont work, and you have to buy more of their products that fix what didnt work with what you bought previously at ridicules prices. This is infuriating.
 
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