I  currently use Ultimate Terrain/GEX with my FSX-SE installation. In the plus side I like what Ultimate Terrain did for the geography. My mountains and ridges here in Pennsylvania loo spot on to there real life elevations and contours.

But I want to move to Prepar3d and I was considering using an Orbx combination with it. I am considering 

Global

Vector

and 

North America LC 

Do I get terrain improvements with any of that or just textures and lines? Do any of the Orbx products improve terrain resolution? Can anyone give me a fair comparison between F1 Ultimate Terrain and Orbx?

Thanks

Elevation and contour will be a function of the mesh you use. Orbx Global is a full texture replacement which many regard as essential in P3D. 
Bear in mind in P3D v5 + you are in DX12 graphics so it may al look very vivid compared to what you are used to. Also Orbx Vector is not needed in v5 as they did a sort of vector update internally. Up to you decide.

none of this should affect your mesh. Note Orbx regions will have their own mesh.

Sorry - I meant to say I always used UT in FSX as it covered US Can/Alaska and UK. It came with mesh and was very good mostly.

still prefer Orbx in P3D though but it’s more expensive as ideally you might want regions as well. It’s richer in my opinion than UTX

Finally I’m not sure UTX 2 is supported by flight1 anymore.

GEX is also and old product and I’m unsure of it’s ongoing support. It really has largely been superseded by ORBX Global now. And of course support and development is still active by Orbx.

so there we are I’ll shut up now. 

I truly hope either LM or Laminer works something out with Google to do with Google Earth what MSFS does with Bing Satellite data. Give MS some graphic competition.

I'm not going to MSFS due to Live requirement and the fact there will be a lot kids in the virtual skys on xbox consoles.

Although Orbx "Land Class" scenery is not "True Earth", the textures used in a lot of the Orbx regions tend to be of higher resolution than those of photo scenery and can look very good indeed as well as providing very good performance.

Also there is the option of photoreal sceneries for a great many areas on the various continents from Orbx with their True Earth series as well as other orgs such as Mega Scenery, BlueSky, SimWest, NL, Hawaii, Gibson and others.

And if you want a world wide high resolution mesh coverage there is always Pilots or FreeMesh to provide that global coverage.

Orbx Europe Land Class over France.

Photoreal over USA Salt Lake area.

Cheers

Edited May 10, 20215 yr by Rogen

I would be pleased with accurate mountains, water, road, tracks, and realistic autogen representation of non high res towns and cities. The town's don't have to be down to the building correct as I already know MSFS is. Just realistic footprints. Photo real looks good from tubeliner altitude but 80 to 90 percent of my flying is GA A2A or the better Carenado/Alabeo productions. 3000 to 8000 flight level. Sometimes 25000 with PC-12, 421C, or B200.

I use a combination of Orbx FTX Global for texture replacement, Orbx OpenLC for landclass and Ultimate Terrain for vector data (coastlines, roads, waterways, etc).  Orbx Vector has been a mixed bucket of worms for a long time, and as I understand it the version that runs with v5 is partially-disabled.  If you like having to fiddle with lots of niggling elevation issues at airports, Orbx Vector is for you.

Terrain enhancement requires a mesh add-on, as mentioned above.  And I have yet to see a mesh add-on that does not induce a lot of elevation issues as well, as most airport add-ons are generally built upon the stock mesh.  The added butt pain of having to mess with elevation at my 325+ add-on airports led me to forego add-on mesh the last couple of installs (P3Dv4 and P3Dv5), and I really don't miss the hassles.

 ORBX removed the elevation correction for Vector in V5. In V4 and previous, vector was often blamed for various elevation issues even for airports that it didn't do anything to, most were from user error due to incorrect layering of the insertion points or inaccurate addon airports with respect to field elevation.

 I 100% agree about mesh though. While it looks great in flight, the added elevation issues it brings due to it being so accurate and FSX/P3d only seeing airports as having 1 elevation creates all sort of issues.

Does that explain why at some of my modded airports my aircraft tires are partially sunk in the tarmac?

I use ORBX Global and Vector and NA LC and a few others. I think they are pretty good in P3DV5 as long as you have the textures resolution, mesh etc set correctly as per ORBX recommendations. There will always be some spots where it is not perfect but given that MSFS have used 10 petabytes to get Bing Maps and World into a sim form, I guess I cannot match that nor can ORBX but what you get is pretty good. 

Vector adds stuff all over but it is not really needed to correct world geography like it was in FSX when the spatial representation of the earth left a lot to be desired (missing islands and incorrect coastlines etc). According to ORBX Vector was last to be updated becasue LM fixed up the mesh and general world geography issues so they did not need to. You will get issues with older airport scenery due to elevation mismatches. The only way to fix this is via ADE and resetting the altitude for an airport to agree with P3D. 

I also finally discovered what TESSALATION (In P3D World Settings) does - if you have it set low your mountains and landscape will look ordinary, rounded indistinct or not sharp but if you set it HIGH or ULTRA then the proper relief and shaping immediately is improved to almost a real world depiction and the textures are mapped properly to the mesh not wound back!. 

ORBX ASIA LC if and when it is released will no doubt be a must!

Edited May 11, 20215 yr by coastaldriver

7 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

I use ORBX Global and Vector and NA LC and a few others. I think they are pretty good in P3DV5 as long as you have the textures resolution, mesh etc set correctly as per ORBX recommendations. There will always be some spots where it is not perfect but given that MSFS have used 10 petabytes to get Bing Maps and World into a sim form, I guess I cannot match that nor can ORBX but what you get is pretty good. 

Vector adds stuff all over but it is not really needed to correct world geography like it was in FSX when the spatial representation of the earth left a lot to be desired (missing islands and incorrect coastlines etc). According to ORBX Vector was last to be updated becasue LM fixed up the mesh and general world geography issues so they did not need to. You will get issues with older airport scenery due to elevation mismatches. The only way to fix this is via ADE and resetting the altitude for an airport to agree with P3D. 

I also finally discovered what TESSALATION (In P3D World Settings) does - if you have it set low your mountains and landscape will look ordinary, rounded indistinct or not sharp but if you set it HIGH or ULTRA then the proper relief and shaping immediately is improved to almost a real world depiction and the textures are mapped properly to the mesh not wound back!. 

ORBX ASIA LC if and when it is released will no doubt be a must!

That is the combination I was considering. I plan on Version IV because a lot of my stuff works with it.

As long as I can get the mountains, ridges, and valleys and small towns of my home, Central Pennsylvania looking good. And all the small towns looking realistic, I'm happy.

Gary1124 Here are some shots of ORBX NA no addon airport scenery with Global and Vector;

KMDT on the runway and on Departure looking back

And here is a small airport KSEG . 1st shot is on the runway 2nd one is view out on departure. For both KMDT and KSEG the only addon is ORBX no airport addons other than what is either default or by ORBX as part of the airports NA freeware. 

On 5/10/2021 at 12:13 PM, w6kd said:

I use a combination of Orbx FTX Global for texture replacement, Orbx OpenLC for landclass and Ultimate Terrain for vector data (coastlines, roads, waterways, etc).  Orbx Vector has been a mixed bucket of worms for a long time, and as I understand it the version that runs with v5 is partially-disabled.  If you like having to fiddle with lots of niggling elevation issues at airports, Orbx Vector is for you.

Terrain enhancement requires a mesh add-on, as mentioned above.  And I have yet to see a mesh add-on that does not induce a lot of elevation issues as well, as most airport add-ons are generally built upon the stock mesh.  The added butt pain of having to mess with elevation at my 325+ add-on airports led me to forego add-on mesh the last couple of installs (P3Dv4 and P3Dv5), and I really don't miss the hassles.

So the better option would not to have mesh or vector installed for v4 or v5?

Cheers 

mike