Joined: Feb 25, 2006 Posts: 322 Location: Perth, Western Australia
Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:30 pm Post subject: Review - Full Terrain Experience
Review - Full Terrain Experience
by Gavin Gillett
With every review there are certain challenges to overcome, the biggest challenge for me was to put down the simulator long enough to pencil a few words on a page. FTX has taken up a vast amount of my time since it's release. Why not? Have a read to find out why.
History in the making
When I was very young, I got my hands on one of the first FlightSim ever to grace the screen of a computer. It was 1988 and the FlightSim was "Aviator" running on a Commodore Amiga. I find it important to look back at where you have been to fully appreciate where you are going. The scenery twenty years ago had little definition in terrain and the dynamic scenery consisted of a few pixels rolling down the screen to give you a sense of movement over ground.
Roll on another ten years and it seemed like Microsoft Flight Sim 98 had reached the very edge of what was possible. For the first time we had detailed buildings and cities we could recognise and navigate via site alone when flying from one landmark such as the Empire State Building to another like the Statue of Liberty. This gave a real sense of detail and realism at the time and Meigs field would have been nearly impossible to find without that big black building called the Sears Tower to use as a visual reference amongst all those shades of grey depicting urban sprawl.
Another 10 years have passed and those days of blurred textures are long behind us but a key element to creating a realistic flight experience still needed to be addressed. March 6th 2008 is the year many of us will remember for the next twenty years as we celebrate the day all of that changed forever. The issue addressed and the future mapped out we have the arrival of Full Terrain Experience (FTX). With vision and composure, the creators of FTX took the lessons learned with the experience and successes gained by the hugely popular FS9 add-on VOZ and have applied them to new frontiers. For the first time in flight sim history, we have the tools to navigate via visual reference to the ground. We can leave the safety of the cities and towns to explore the previously unknown. We can traverse the gaps between, without fear of loosing our way and we can set our compass instead of tuning navigational aids to track across open ground to distant locations. This is the Full Terrain Experience and nothing will be the same again. We have entered the next phase in FlightSim development and lucky for all of us there will be no turning back.
Before FTX - Click on the image to view the slideshow
The slideshow above demonstrates the potential of FlightSim X while reveling it's ugly flaws and you could be forgiven for thinking everyone in Perth have large court yards in the middle of there business's.
Orbx Simulation Systems Pty Ltd
Formed in December 2005 on the back of the success with Vista Australis, Orbx has quickly become a market leader in high quality terrain development. With a large group of talented developers contributing to the success of VOZ, and her later version updates becoming more popular with every release, Orbx founder and texture developer John Venema had well known resources to draw from for the flagship products under planned development in the following years. With John’s desire to keep VOZ a free product he decided to hand over the Vista Australis rains to good friend and fellow VOZ contributor Jay Kae to allow him the time to fully concentrate on Orbx as a company and the FTX project, while still remaining the inspirational force and patron behind the VOZ freeware development project.
Orbx will also target the Global Aviation and Defense Force training markets with high quality low cost simulation solutions to bridge the gap between multi million dollar simulators and the home simulation market. In the mean time, home simulation enthusiast will see the benefit of their continued development in high quality imagery and simulation enhancement technologies. "Ed. - What a shame hey?"
Mapping the Future
Orbx and the Full Terrain Experience have hit the ground running with a large amount of work scheduled ahead of them. It’s unusual for a company to project there goals so publicly and this far ahead because of the potential for a competitor to take advantage of that information and move into their market space. However, it is a reflection of how far ahead the Full Terrain Experience project is in the current market. Orbx executives feel safe in announcing roughly two years of development scope to the public. The competition is just too far behind to offer a similar product in the same period. So in the foreseeable future FTX and Orbx have our full attention.
Following in the footsteps of VOZ, FTX will use the now famous coloured map display to distinguish between the different regions. FTX AU Blue being the first of 4 Australian regions under development and at least one international region in "FTX USA Blue" currently in the pre-alpha stage. Orbx will no doubt be looking at the lucrative US and UK markets for future expansion opportunities.
FTX will also feature many freeware add-ons in the coming weeks and months. Some of those have already been released such as the freeware AU Blue GA airports package. Those projects will enhance cities and airports to levels never seen until now. Featuring texture details as high as 15cm per pixel. Australia's busiest general aviation airport gets a new look as well. Jandakot in Perth, Western Australia is a major training hub for locals and international flying schools as well as Melbourne's famous Tullamarine International Airport in Victoria just to name a few. Tullamarine will be Australia's most detailed Airport with 28km's sq of photo real terrain that includes suburbs, scrubland and industrial estates surrounding the airport. While this is all very promising it should be noted that it was only a few years ago that discussions by many market leaders were suggesting it would be 5-10 years before we the public see these types of resolutions and detail in home based flight simulation software. Much to the credit and foresight of the Orbx team for accelerating the availability of such products.
Rural Tasmania - Click on the image to view the slideshow
High Detail vs. Performance
One of the most commonly asked questions asked about any add-on released onto the FS market is; How will all this extra detail affect the performance? This question might be the single most important question to the developers of FTX and the answer could make or break a young company. Performance is the biggest issue with Flight Sim X and the performance has been the topic of heated debate all over the world. FSX is by far the most detailed game to hit the market in recent years and remains the most punishing piece of gaming software you can install onto your PC. FSX requires enormous computing power to gain the benefits of its core features and visual enhancements, the majority of add-on's available today tend to degrade performance further.
To these questions, FTX developers answered with an astonishing reply. Announcing FTX would help your flight sim to perform better with it installed. An outrageous statement if it were any other company or any other person making it. Armed with a list of easily understood explanations (for us common people) and statements as to why your PC will perform better with FTX. The reasoning behind the statement made sense and so we sat back and waited for the release with baited breath.
To my surprise and delight, we didn’t have to wait long for FTX and the arrival was only delayed by a few hours. Installation was simple and the Readme attached suggested I not bother with reading instructions or the feature list because FTX has been installed with much less user participation than previous VOZ installers I may be familiar with. For the first time I didn’t have to do anything, just install and play. I wasted no time and took the suggestion by firing up FSX as quickly as my computer would load it. A long delay in the scenery loading screen suggested some amazing detail was being punched into the FSX scenery files for my viewing pleasure. It’s worth noting that I have not adjusted my detail sliders at this point to test the hype surrounding performance claims. My personal computer is somewhat of a monster and capable of running FSX with extreme custom enhanced detail. So I wanted to see how my performance would be affected with my standard graphics settings.
With the loading of scenery complete, I setup my aircraft in Australia’s largest city at dawn with building storms as the weather theme. Sydney’s (YSSY) runway 16L flying the WilcoPub Citation X. This would push FTX to the limit and challenge scenery loading times with all those custom payware textures from the Citation combined with the high speed aircraft flying low over the city. My PC under these conditions would produce 18-35 FPS so I was interested to see how much things have changed since installing FTX.
I took off without hesitation and noticed a few stutters as she loaded the last of the scenery on my rollout. Flying between 1000-3000ft AGL I made a rate one turn towards the CBD. It didn't take long before I noticed the stunning effects of the new street lighting. Full Terrain Experience came with new customisable night lighting, that you will find is a vast improvement on the original FSX system. In the Sydney slideshow you can see for your self how complicated the Sydney roads are leading into the heart of the city. Orbx have done a great job of keeping these areas detailed but un-cluttered. It would have been very easy for these areas to look like a sea of lights had things not been well controlled. FTX now features street lighting that more accurately depicts what you would see on a night flight around any town and city in Australia. The street lights are a realistic size and shape and the default lights come in two colours, white and gold. The light shows a realistic reflection on the ground with limited radius as apposed to the FSX default where you could seemingly light a whole city with fewer than 100 street lights. FTX has also removed the surrounding glow that seemed to cover every street and building like a river of light running down the streets. This made for a much brighter city at night, sometimes making every city or town regardless of size resemble the Los Vegas Strip after dark. VFR pilots will benefit on those Night VFR flights and will now have a much harder time maintaining that elusive horizon, and approaches towards cities will better simulate some of the visuals you expect to see when flying in the real world. The street lights are well made free standing polls with realistically sized light shining onto the ground in low light dusk conditions. The light polls being well spaced and perfectly 3d in appearance with no jagged edges and no light penetrating through gaps on the poll or lighting mounts. The second thing worth noting was the improved roads and highways complete with on and off ramps in the correct locations and directions. It quickly became evident how easy it would be to follow a recognisable freeway to your desired destination. It was at this time I looked up at my FPS to gauge the performance hit for all these added extras I was seeing. Now straight and level with the CBD in sight I was getting 28-40 FPS for the first time in an urban environment. The FPS improved slightly when removing the cockpit all together which for me further proved the performance question of FTX. FPS would get as high as 50 when turning towards the outer suburbs and there wasn't a blurry in site.
As if challenging the software I entered the scenery panel to adjust some sliders. I have personally had large negative FPS hits with the addition of traffic on my roads and so they are normally turned off. I started with 10%, which later I found was the recommended level for road traffic and realistic appearance in FTX. After a much shorter delay in loading the scenery, I entered the world of Flight Sim X for the first time with traffic turned on since I bought the product more than a year earlier. I fly closer to the CBD noticing the FPS hit but nothing more than 2-3 FPS. I loop around the CBD making a left hand turn over the bridge and towards Olympic park down the river. That is when I looked down to see hundreds of cars traveling below with the Sydney CBD in the background. 25 FPS "hallelujah", the realisation sinks in that the promised performance gains via the purchase of FTX was credible, even incredible. For the next 6 hours, I would climb to 4000 ft and travel south to Canberra and then Melbourne taking in all the rugged beauty the FTX scenery had to offer. Occasionally swooping down to view farmhouses and paddocks for a closer inspection, at 0430 local WA time and with satisfied exhaustion, I sent a message to my friend online that is just waking up to start his day on the east coast informing him that I was going to bed satisfied my FSX experience just got better.
Outback NSW (4 Seasons) - Click on the image to view the slideshow
The slideshow above demonstrates an experiment I was running. I wanted to know what the different seasons might look like so I went about saving a flight in the same location and trying out the 4 different seasons including one screenshot with FTX turned off. This location was chosen because it demonstrates 4 key colour areas that indicate seasonal changes in my mind. Those colour changes apply to the open crop land, the farming/horticultural land or plantations, the trees and of course the original look of summer (Our most recent season ending on the 1st of March) in the same location. The changes into autumn and fall are nice and subtle allowing the every day pilot to gently adjust to the changes. They would be noticeable but not so in your face to make you wonder if someone has changed the settings on your GFX card or monitor. I also enjoyed the colours chosen as they were not to strong and accurately depicted the look of a burnt and dry country for summer. As well as the beautiful greens we have in winter. The over all appearance felt natural to look and fit the southern region well for the most part.
Some of the key locations in FTX would most certainly be the urban areas in and around our most popular cities. The FTX crew have put a lot of effort into this area with fantastic results. Cities come alive with photo real textures akin to what you would see on Google Earth. Add a splash of dynamic scenery and your 3D world comes alive. I can't imagine what it took to accomplish but the photo real textures mesh perfectly with the dynamic scenery. With understandable reasoning, your not likely to find your house as you would in Google Earth, but the shape and representation of suburbs are very well done. The roof top colour schemes seem to match those you find in Australia well and I especially like the way autogen trees are placed in the correct spot to match the terrain. The FTX design team haven't cut any corners and I was hard pressed to find areas in the scenery to pick on. One of my personal favorite parts to the urban environment that FTX have created is the outstanding detail they have put into industrial areas. So long have these areas been neglected with blocky buildings that don't resemble warehouses or there associated facilities. Even the placement, size and shape of those industrial areas is highly accurate. Accurate to a degree that you could only improve on by going down and taking photos in person. I did find one thing I wasn't 100% happy with and that was in some rural areas there was a level of repetitiveness about the terrain. I also found the latest FS9 version of VOZ better represented summer colours in Australia's large wheatbelt areas. For my liking some of the property and paddock sizes were also a little to small. I do however understand there are limitations to both the number of textures you can represent and the time it takes for you to make and incorporate them. These minor problems are quickly forgotten in most cases and they are still hundreds of times better than the default scenery.
Another vast and striking improvement over the vanilla FSX was the way FTX put special attention into the highways and freeways that cross our county. Highways are key navigational landmarks for pilots. We use them to indicate turning points for base or final approach and even entry lanes for GAAP airspace. People will easily be able to follow a map and navigate around unfamiliar cities from now on due to the care and accuracy in placement. Even the off ramps have been accurately placed and traffic for the most parts move in the correct direction on and off the ramps. A word of caution though, traffic can make large negative hit on FPS but I found that with recommended settings the highways are populated and have good levels of traffic without hitting the frame rates too much. Stick to the recommended 9% and most computer setups will notice only a small drop in FPS. The trade off is more than worth it for the added sense of immersion.
Perth - Click on the image to view the slideshow
One of the most exciting things about FTX is the promise of future support in the way of free add-ons. Orbx will slowly bring out upgraded features to both FTX buyers and the general public. This will ensure that for years to come we will be looking at a very different FlightSim environment upgraded on a regular basis. The capital cities will be given special attention and there are 4 under heavy development as we speak. Our cities will come alive with high detail texture upgrades and the difference between the vanilla cities is sure to amaze those unfamiliar with VOZ and Orbx.
One thing worth looking at in the future is the potential for an FTX AI add-on, now this is just my opinion but this is an area that VOZ touched on with limited success. Orbx might want to revisit the idea and I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is something Orbx had in mind for the future due to the lack of real local AI support from established AI software makers.
Sydney at Dusk - Click on the image to view the slideshow
Conclusion
I have given Orbx - FTX AU Blue a Solid 9 out of 10, A must have for anyone serious about realistic visual in the Oceanic region. Value for money and a solid add-on with few known bugs. Over all a great performer and a fantastic effort for a new company to come out with a well polished product and outstanding support to boot.
Likes - Solid installer requiring little user input. High quality textures enhancing visuals across all aspects of scenery. Future proof through free updates to software. Excellent Tech Support
Dislikes - It's a matter of personal taste but I would have preferred to have seen larger rural crop areas. This I think would have reduced the level of repetitive terrain for my liking.
It is with renewed pleasure that I have enjoyed FSX due to another quality enhancement released by the boys from VOZ the now Orbx.
Enjoy the slideshows and leave me a msg if you would like the full res version of any screenshots.
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