Orbx

[Penzoil3]

They haven't been hacked. They're migrating the servers. It's been going on since Friday, off and on.
Sue

 

[Bruce Thompson]

I think you can also use it for some automatic updates and to check if any of your add-ons require an updated download as well. I love the unified system.

Thanks for pointing that out Sundog, I also like this unified system.

 

[thefrog]

If thay are doing internal reorganisation of their website, perhaps they could have mentioned it elsewhere, e.g. on their Facebook page?

 

[ChipShop]

Thanks for the 'heads-up' Sue!
I have to agree with 'thefrog'; some prior warning of pending changes and interruption of normal service would have been quite helpful!
Anyhow, it'll be great to see them back up to full speed!
ChipShop

 

[ChipShop]

Here's what the Orbx CEO has to say on the ORBX FTX forum:-

We're still using Jay's hosting infrastructure and the operations centre is migrating a bunch of their servers. Expect more outages through this week.

We will be moving to our own hosting providers soon as well as announcing other initiatives later this month.

Apologies for the interruption to our service.

ChipShop

 

[RobM]

What happened...?

I had upgraded to the new unified region FTX Central, but I just went into FTX Central to see if there were any
new updates, there was, and it reset Central back to the way it was where you have to activate regions.

I had read of people having problems or noticing texture anomalies on the FTX forums. I was happy with it, but
I guess FTX decided the new system wasn't quite ready for prime time.

Anyway, unless it's my PC only (always a possibility with FSX), we may be back to having to activate our Orbx
regions again in Central, at least until FTX gets the problems sorted out.

Thanks - Rob

PS: I tried going onto the FTX forums for confirmation of the change back, but they're down again.

 

[Roger]

Well since the "Unified" and then "Un-unified" situation in FTX Central 2, my textures are morphing into all sorts of odd variants. I can't remember what I did to resolve this issue, years ago and I am fed-up to put it politely.

 

[RobM]

More and more bizarre. After my last post, when I went into FTX this morning, there was a new update that
changed Central back to unified mode, and everything seemed fine. But when I got home tonight, there was
another update that changed it back to the old active region mode.

Aaack, stop the madness, I want to get off!! So I did: in FTX Central under settings, under the General tab,
there are two tick boxes for check for updates for FTX Central and for Orbx products. I've unticked both
those for now. Hopefully that will stop the continuous updating.

Now I'm back to the old activate region Central, and everything seems ok after a few quick flights. But before
the forums went down (and last I looked, they're still down), someone on there who was having problems with
the new unified Central said that what he did to revert back was to get a copy of the old Orbx folder from his
previous monthly back-up, delete out the current Orbx folder with the unfied Central from his FSX folder, and copy
and paste the old one back in. And apparently this reverted Central back to the old active region mode.

I have not done this myself and I am quoting from memory, so be forewarned.

In any case, hopefully everything gets sorted out soon.

Thanks - Rob

PS: Actually a further thought on the delete/copy/paste mentioned above: in the Orbx folder, there is a sub folder
for FTX Central. So maybe you don't need to delete/copy/paste the whole Orbx folder, just the FTX Centraf sub
folder. As said, I have not had to do this myself, but I am just mentioning from memory what someone else was saying.

 

[ChipShop]

Forum down-time and ftx central 2

Hi Guys,

I take it that as you have ORBX FTX scenery, then you look at the ORBX FTX Forum as well!?

I have just seen this very important post on the ORBX Forum, from the ORBX CEO John Venema;

Please allow me to firstly apologise for the extended downtime we've had this week on the forums and the website. Believe me, it's not by choice that this has happened and we're working with Jay to try to get things back on track. Jay's service provider has moved several servers to new hardware and the migration process has not been quite as smooth as hoped. This is not Jay's fault, he has been up to early hours of several mornings to try to minimise the impact.

Please be aware that this server migration was forced upon us by a third party hosting company and not planned by us but we're hoping it stabilizes very soon. We would never release a major update like FTX Central 2.1 and then choose to migrate servers at the same time. We have been planning a coordinated and disruption-free move to completely new hosted servers in July and we may move that forward now.

The second issue Is some people seem to be experiencing is disruptions to ground textures etc from the migration to FTX Central 2.1 Unified lclookup. Whilst the overwhelming majority of users will have no issues there seems to be some who are experiencing an incomplete migration. Again, I apologise for this and despite months of extensive testing (since mid-April) some issues have slipped through the cracks. We've discovered one bug already that affect FTX NZ regions and the fix is ready to be pushed out.

To put things into context FTX Central v2.1 has been installed by over 7,000 people, with only around 10 people reporting issues so far.

Now for the good news! It's not a disaster for those with corrupt textures and other issues, because all the files you need to display everything properly are all still there, and we'll push out a fix ASAP.

However, here's what we don't want folks to do:

• Don't try to establish expert solutions on non-Orbx forums - this is only going to do further damage to your installations.
• Don't try to manually revert to the pre-unified FTX Central setup. The migration is a very complex process and cannot be easily reverted.
• If you haven't downloaded the latest Orbxlibs or migrated FTX Central, please hold off doing so for a few days until the team can push a fix out.

At present Ben McClintock is at 35,000FT over the Pacific Ocean flying to LAX then JFK for the FlightSimCon 2016 conference this weekend. He has been made aware of these issues and he'll likely address them as soon as he can connect and investigate.

So once again I'm very sorry, we're aware of the situation and we're doing our best in the circumstances given the server dramas and most of the management team travelling to the US.

A VERY relevant part to read is what ORBX 'DON'T WANT PEOPLE TO DO' !

Luckily, my unified system migration was successful; however, I can understand how frustrating it must be not to be able to use your flight simulator!

Hope this is helpful, and lets look forward to the new shiny all singing and dancing ORBX FTX unified scenery!

Ttfn,
ChipShop

 

[Roger]

After many attempts this week, I finally got into their forums last night and saw JV's post. I hope it's sorted quickly because FsX is a mess at the moment.

 

[Roger]

I opened FTX Central 2 this evening and received 2 updates. I now seem to have a Unified FTX Central 2. I will try the sim later on tonight and hopefully all will be good again.

 

[Roger]

Just made two flights from Cloverdale and then Bozeman and so far all seems well. Good job JV and his troops

 

[Roger]

Just tried a third flight, from KBHB, a recent purchase and found the aircraft below the runway. I ran the Vector config tool but that made no difference! So I tried the manual config and found that KBHB doesn't exist in Enabled or Disabled??

Time to post this in the ORBX forum, when I can get in (presently the apologies header is as far as I can go).

 

[AussieMan]

Apparently the migration is also effecting the OZx site as it has been down for the last 2 days.

 

[Roger]

Well I posted 2 issues in the ORBX support forums last night and although I've had some suggestions for one of the issues and none at all for the other, I want official ORBX updates to resolve them. I don't want to fubar several thousand dollars of ORBX scenery.

 

[Roger]

I accepted the advice for the elevation issue at KBHB and deleted some .bgl files. The result is the same as before - a start point several hundred metres above the runway.
I am fed up with this and will wait for an official update for this issue.

 

[scotth6]

I was under the impression from previous posts on ORBX and elsewhere that ORBX were moving everything away from Jay's servers and he had nothing to do with ORBX anymore. The quote from ORBX above seems to contradict this entirely.

 

[vora]

I was under the impression from previous posts on ORBX and elsewhere that ORBX were moving everything away from Jay's servers and he had nothing to do with ORBX anymore. The quote from ORBX above seems to contradict this entirely.

They wanted to move away next month. Combine this server move with Ben's attendance of Flightsimcon and you have a case of bad timing. They should have waited a month for the unified lclookup release, after their own server move.

 

[Roger]

I accepted the advice for the elevation issue at KBHB and deleted some .bgl files. The result is the same as before - a start point several hundred metres above the runway.
I am fed up with this and will wait for an official update for this issue.

KBHB is fixed

 

[wombat666]

I've had no hassles at all with the 'Unified System' from day 1, but I must admit to doing a complete new installation of everything ORBX using the latest updates and libraries.
JFTR, that includes FSX and P3Dv3.