http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/384...i-south-island/

Looks like VLC has nothing to worry about, the trees are a bit nicer in the shots, but thats about it. And note they don't have Tekapo modeled to fly out of... yet?

LOL oh my god we have been waiting for this ? not to down the team over there but that looks horrible and are more than happy to continue with VLC in my system which looks alot better than those screens , yuck and happy to be VLC supporter ..
ty kelvin for the heads up i stopped looking awhile ago but yeah im going to bed happier actually over the moon that this looks worst than ever ..
opinion

Don't forget it's a beta build. Wait for the final version!

I have to be honest, I was expecting a bit more from ORBX as well

Regards to all
Dave

The trees are totally alien, look nothing at all like anything in our native or introduced bush, definately gonna have to do something about that.
Kinda strange how the posts in that thread are talking it up, cant be many kiwis amongst the postees so far?

Shots 3 and 8 look pretty good. All of the shots with autogen are ugly as they are all the same kermy green trees. Not at all like the diverse native bush that we have. Hopefully they will address that.

When I saw these shots I did think that this post wasn't aimed at us locals, people love Orbx mountains, so it is kind of inevitable that they would showcase the alps. It does make sense to give potential customers a bit of the drama, whereas here we are more likely to want to see something we recognise. I have no doubt that the finished package will have it's strong points, but the few comments here confirm what I believe -- that VLC is world-class, and under-rated outside NZ.

There are a few Orbx 'features' which I never wanted to see here in New Zealand, and a lot of them are illustrated in these screenshots, but some of these are my own rather slanted view -- for instance, I think that one of the main features of New Zealand, which is borne out by my own experience flying, is the sunshine, and one of the major Orbx 'themes' is moody, stormy, cold-looking screenshots full of dramatic clouds. We have to embrace our hole in the ozone layer, and you gotta love NZ's bright sun and deep shadow. Sure, we have some stink weather, that's for sure, but we don't fly in it unless we have to.

EDIT: Oops, I did get a PM telling-off regarding this post. I guess it does imply that the Orbx screenshots are moody, whereas they are 'good weather' shots, which I like. I was in fact refering to the cold-looking rock, but my original post did go on a lot, so I trimmed most of it out. Which I shouldn't have bothered with, since this is going to get lengthy anyway...

My main Orbx 'feature' was trimmed because a couple of others have mentioned the trees. Actually, I'm not too worried about the trees they've shown, Orbx have a knack of pulling some pretty amazing trees out of the hat just before release. It is not an easy job to represent NZ native bush in the sim, mainly because you need to represent a dozen different climates in just one set. This was a major issue in VLC, and the finished product is always going to be a compromise. Believe me, the VLC bush went through a lot of different iterations before it was finished, and I expect Orbx to do the same.

Looks like it did two years ago when there was a landclass file released that used Oz blue textures over NZ north and south ,really not much difference to that and looks the same to me but this time there is only one Island ,all this flow stuff etc how about "scenery flow "were you dont need a switcher and flps flow which dont drop to a crawl on a 6 core ,i stand by VLC for a couple of reasons ,first big one is that its cheap and its accurate in everyway possible telephone poles/ cell towers /road lighting main highways and side roads /maori maraes 3500 airstrips and a lot more which can be added over the both islands very quickly due to the Vector design and one hell of a NZ designer Timmo ,with on going work developing the very good base we have its only going to get better and will never be a pavlova made out of custard ..

Im surprised you got told off for your opinion via PM i thought we dodged that bullet when we all stood down being admin/mods so we could have a say , like others do so easy without the bombardment of PMs ,i suppose if we were on the other side we just delete that member or posts for whatever we felt was not in our interest or business interest , pretty horrible way to treat people im glad we dont do that around here without good reason ..
opinion

I am going to join the 'underwhelmed group' on this one. I was excited to read that more NZSI screenshots were out, and that 1st November that it was going on prepay, but when I saw the shots, I was also very underwhelmed by them. I only hope that in the remaining weeks that they improve it a lot, as compared to the other Orbx areas, this one does not look anywhere near as good.

But time will tell.......only a beta as they say.

It is going to be very interesting to compare screenshots once it is finally released.

smooth landings.

Maybe it's time for some more cross-forum adverting for VLC?....

OrbX has a track record, and many people would probably be over-hyped and ecstatic for it even if their NZ South looked like Antarctica. (It's OrbX, so it must be accurate....)

Advertise the unique, accurate features of VLC, as well as all those great screenshots, and more customers will come.

The opposing offering will probably look very nice, but I think the argument here to use in the advertising is accuracy over maybe...over the top visuals that may not necessarily be valid in the real world. Hard to explain without making VLC out to be a product lacking in visuals...but you know what I mean.

Thats exactly my reaction although I wasn't going prepay it...it would of been a possible purchase in the future.

One thing with VLC is that we have a lot more detailed airports both freeware and payware. At this stage Orbx only have Queenstown planned.

Im also looking at building a free Queenstown airport upgrade shortly as a request from a customer who lives nearby ,im happy to go head on with them ,competition is a good thing and im going to enjoy every minute of it ..

The 'told off' bit was a bit tongue in cheek, the message did come from a kiwi who I respect for his opinions, and is sometimes my 'conscience'.




I mentioned this a while ago, I think that we get a bit comfy here at NZFF, and although a lot of our members contribute to other forums, maybe a lot of us are happy just to stay here. When I say 'us', I mean VLC users who don't have a vested interest in the business side of things...

Trolly's NZ flight is a case in point -- a beautiful, professional-quality 'article' showcasing New Zealand -- but kind of preaching to the converted here at NZFF:)

The flightsim 'market' does have its foibles. Orbx is firmly aimed at the US market, whereas in my experience the US has no interest in NZ, whereas Europeans make up a huge chunk of my customers. But if Orbx use their existing customer base to sell NZ to the US, then it doesn't really matter whether it looks like our New Zealand, it would actually make more sense to filter it through the Lord of the Rings, and make it a Hollywood version of a Kiwi's image of an English writer's epic...

Which reminds me, I reread the Hobbit this week, I thought I wouldn't enjoy it as much as when I was 12, but I think I enjoyed it more, now that I have a visual guide to the characters and places, courtesy of Peter Jackson. Now Bilbo has a voice, albeit Ian Holm's, rather than Martin Freeman...

Read the newer posts on the orbx SI forum and you will see that someone tried to mention VLC without using the name when Venema just said it out loud and praised VLC. He also mentions a new approach to mass autogen with little effect on fps. I am sure the finished product will be as every bit polished as all the other orbx products. Thats one of their strong points - They are always pushing the envelope, but only because they have the money and resources.

The quality of the NZ scenery blows me away though concidering the comparitave manpower to the bigger scenery developers.

Not a member of the OrbX forums so I can't access them, but it's interesting to hear that the person you named actually blatantly advertised for VLC. I wonder what kind of responses that got.

Nice to hear that they are working on the FPS issues. I've heard a few iffy things about their Pacific NW series, and though I tried the demo with minimal ill effects (it looked great), I understand that overall, their products can look fantastic, but have a tendency to be "draining".

If this "Venema" person is an OrbX staff member, then that's great (and refreshing) to hear that there is not bashing going on between developers, because I suspect that there could be some flare-ups since they are now competing with pretty much every other New Zealand scenery developer at this point, and will be more engaged in doing so in the future as they expand on their product. (Figuring one day we'll see OrbX Hamilton, Wellington, etc, etc, thus putting a few people at odds.)

John Venema is the GM/MD of Orbx.

I'm also posting the tour over at flightsimulationforums.com as I've been a member there for a few years.

I would go sign up for flightsim.com/avsim.com's forums, and share the VLC awesomeness there too, but I know how annoying it is having randoms newbies showing up and just copy and pasting their content from other forums- so I don't want to be 'that guy'! Once I've completed the final leg, I'll be sticking the whole thing on a dedicated new page of my blog website for my flying friends to see however.


Best news of the day! Hands up for being a beta tester!


John's a good guy and its pleasant to see him complimenting VLC on his own forums. There seems to be way to much bad blood among various factions of the flight simulator world- at the end of the day, it's only a game!

Having said this, from the beta screenshots they've uploaded so far, I'm jumping on the 'unimpressed at this stage' bandwagon. I look forward to seeing future developments!

Trolly its a Simulator he he

This seems to be a very emotional topic, and as my Frog partner pointed out - we as Kiwis do tend to be a bit one eyed when it comes to any competition against us. But as I pointed out to her the best will always float to the top…

I have a lot of respect for Orbx products – I have all of their Auzzie Freeware and all but their last release payware for Oz, and all the US areas, but the budget doesn’t extend to airports too.

I will not be buying it based on what I’ve seen because it would be a step backwards, but in time it might float to the top…

What John said about VLC -kudos to him for being objective.



Tolly - Wash your mouth out with soap

... and I'll get off the box

interesting read guys, im going to wait for the locals seal of approval before buying it

i wasnt impressed that much with the AU regions, even more so the tropical regions, when i would flash up the sim and look out the window i saw no resemblance and dont even start me of the blue blobs of snot they called reefs

and im not sure where they got their land class from either , I guess looking at tourist pamphlets is different from living there

but on a positive note, HS' mesh is great, and thats one of the few reasons why i keep it installed

sadly like other forums you cant raise some issues as you get shot down by staff and all the loyal muppet fans join in for example "I highlighted the reef blobs, and got told thats how they look, and then a some american told me yes thats how they look, funny enough I worked on the reef for the past 14yrs, but i could be wrong who knows


best of luck of getting a near to real life representation of your south island so I think i will wait to see and hear more from you guys before purchasing this

Speaking as an observer from a different hemisphere, my initial reaction to the Beta shots from Orbx is - lighten up. Where's the green? The Alps are fine but look almost generic - "When you've seen one Alp.............". On the plus side, never spotted a single misaligned hedgerow .

I agree fellas, I think with some really good state-of-the-art photography for NZ textures and implanting them with VLC I think we have something greater than ORBX NZ. So, who's up for taking some texture shots?? Just imagine VLC calling on real NZ textures, they will just go in the right places won't they?

There is a huge difference in the way FSX uses photoreal landclass textures and photoreal area textures.

more shots up, even worse than the first
http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/385...-martin-and-jv/

these are a bit better
http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/385...eview-21-shots/

hmmm, they are running a pretty strict regime over there, I posted something along the lines of how while international peoples may love the look of NZ South Island, for NZ'ers it does not really represent NZ, and then I went on to compliment on how well they represented Dunedin Airport in their ORBX Default style.....nek minnut, whole thing deleted aw well, I just wanted to share my opinion, too bad they didn't like it.
Still, I look forward to future updates

Well the Airports look different all together from what i expected i would see from these guys ..
edit: Yes i to posted that my addons should be compatible with there landclass ,they deleted whole post which was very useful info to there customer base that have NZ addons already ,real nice business and repor i think not

You guys really need to get an interview on one of the podcasts like FSBreak, flick them an email, introduce yourself, get some visibility with the US and European audiience who otherwise only ever hear about the likes of Orbx, Aerosoft and PMDG.
I'm not slagging either of those three vendors, they do make some amazing products, its just that most peeps really dont know of anything else unless you get some air-time

Yeah know what you mean though ive always wanted to stay low key and not put my stuff on simmarket and the likes , i always try to do as much as i can to plug my work and others ,Yesterday i posted a movie at one place in the US and got over 50 views by the end of the night which plugs all NZ, also put most of my freeware airports up at flightsim.com which are now all over 120 odd DL in 12 hours ,i think what we have will only shine out above this release and there customers may look even more into the Real NZ feel

I can see this thread heading south (no pun intended) so just a warning that although this is of great interest to NZers, and therefore we should encourage the discussion here, we don't want to see it turn into a slag-fest.

These are still early development shots, and I'm sure that any developer would hate to be judged on half-finished screenshots.

On a lighter note though, seeing the Picton shot I was reminded of this old post I made using beta Vector Land Class -- just for those who consider VLC a poor cousin of Orbx! Tim has a lot to be proud of.

To me its a bit like the Rugby i see no difference saying we are better ,anyway last comment on this Topic im fully happy with my opinion

Well us Kiwi "experts" just because we live here got told.

Looks like Kelvin Heights according to licensed aerial photography is now a "Pine forest"

its some what disappointing seeing how you locals are getting shut down by the staff and people with no knowledge of the area over there, when you raise concerns of your backyard

i wont be surprised this site will see the cold shoulder from them like they did with ozx and all posts referring to this place and other kiwi sceneries blacklisted

Ohh well, they are targeting the US market, (I think that dll is called "MoneyFlow") and we know what that is like, feed an average yank enough false propaganda and they will believe an orange is a dog

hey I know and i apologise for all the half witted Australians over there

Can we move on please. I'm getting tired of this us and them mentality.

Speaking as an 'average Yank', you're entitled to your opinion but I wish you'd keep it to yourself .

Ooh yes, flightsimming is such a contact sport, time for apologies all round, and a little time out doing our favourite thing.
It's great that people are doing NZ stuff, keeps interest up in the hobby.
Nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything, and competition is always a good thing in the market place, it ups the ante to our benefit ultimately.

Lol I said "Average" I think everyone here will agree that you surpass that level

I just wonder as to how they would go if a Kiwi started doing scenery for Australia would they give us the same bashing as some Kiwi's seem to be giving them.
The main thing is instead of bashing their products if you don't like them then just don't buy them.
At the moment there are a very small number of NZFF members dedicating a lot of their time to improving the scenery of NZ in flight sim and a lot of it is for free, pity some more members wouldn't join in and spend their time working on NZ scenery instead of wasting their time bashing our neighbors across the ditch for coming in and doing NZ scenery that could be done by all you guys.

This thread has run its course. There's plenty of scope for discussion on anything which has a direct bearing on New Zealand simming, and NZFF is certainly the place to do that, but do so within the rules. In particular, don't direct abuse at anyone, or any organisation.