ORBX FTX England scenery for FSX/P3D review. How much better is it than FTX Global / default? 

I've just come back to flightsim after a few years away. I've got the A2A C172 and I'm just thinking of buying the whole Orbx package from Global FTX up to EUEngland so this video was really helpful. Great commentary (and no music). Thanks a lot for uploading!

I was most impressed with the changes in the shore lines, the ftx England really smoothed the unrealistic straight shore lines and the hard sharp corners

Appreciate the detail you put into this... helps heaps when deciding what to add

Thanks Rich, great video as usual, bought the FTX England in anticipation, actually improved my frame rates over the countryside, also got Scotland too, which is great -don't fly anywhere else at the moment, this has to be a must-have add on if you fly the small aircraft.

As someone who has been to Walney lots of times, this scenery is excellent: it's very recognisable, and as you mention it's not a heavily populated part of the world (70,000 people, with an hour's drive to the next major population centre). The town isn't quite the right shape, but the landscape (hills, Lake District skyline, seascape) etc are absolutely outstanding - down to the level of the Slag Bank (an old relic of the ironworks and essentially a small hill on the eastern approach to the east-west runway). The skyline isn't just "similar, with the right feel" - it's recognisably the same thing. Late edit: specifically regarding the three runways, the photo you saw was definitely runway 35 (Black Combe, the mountain you take off towards, is pretty unique looking and obvious in the photo). The airfield was originally 3 runways but only two are currently used, the third is just a glorified taxiway now.

Hey Rich, hope your good. Would just like to say that i really enjoy your analytical approach to these types of videos, it makes it much easier to see the work Orbx put in between the different versions. I have heard some good reports about their new open land-class Europe addon , might be worth putting on your list. Thanks for your vids.

Thanks for the detailed comparisons - something I don't have the patience to do but happy to watch someone else do the leg work. lol Cheers

Nice video, as always. Cracking 'dead stick' landing at Fenland in the last few minutes, though I wouldn't like to do that in real life - it certainly looked like incipient spin territory :)

What an awesome scenery add on!

love the video, never seen youre channel before, keep the videos coming, deserved a subscribe, a reaaly in depth vid, well done :)

Fantastic video thanks for the information on ORBX FTX very new to FSX and would really like to get this add on at a later date.

Fantastic landing at the end!

I'm even more impressed with their NA and NZ addons. England is good too but for me others are even better.

Nice video. You have a clear, friendly, matter-of-fact way of talking. So many people doing similar videos are hard to listen to. I would like to suggest a few things for scenery reviews: - Cockpits take up a lot of the screen. Though its engine sound is annoying the trike is great for looking around - and you could reduce the engine sound to barely audible. I know you love that Piper, and it is a fine looking cockpit, but I didn't load the video to see it. You probably do aircraft reviews too right? That's when I'd expect to see it. - Why not use FSX's video record feature, or the freeware fsrecorder, and record flights on default and then, when you replay them, enable the scenery you're critiquing? That way you fly the exact same path. Plus, if you do use the trike, most of the time it really won't matter which way you're looking. - Since a lot of your subscribers are probably new to FSX and have little to no payware addons why not disable ALL addons for the default flight and then only enable the specific addon you're reviewing? Saves explaining things like FTX Global adds that. Rex adds that. Etc etc. Maybe show a screenshot of the scenery library so people can see, without you even needing to say it, what the settings are. A screenshot of the scenery slider settings, for each flyover, would be great too. Don't get me wrong. I rarely watch long review videos all the way through without skipping ahead. The fact that I did with yours speaks to how nice it is to listen to another enthusiast calmly explain things. A lot of other reviewers talk in an obviously fake excited manner that's just annoying. Checking your system specs I can see you're not timid about spending a lot of cash on your rig. I'm surprised you don't use TrackIR for looking around naturally by just turning your head. It's not super pricey and one will last through many system builds. Alternatively FaceTrackNoIR ( facetracknoir.sourceforge.net/home/default.htm ) is a donation-ware head movement tracker that uses your webcam to pick up your movements. I had TrackIR so I never tried it but it's been around long enough its probably well refined by now. Me I now have an Oculus DK2 VR headset and, once I tried FlyInside FSX with it, well, there's no going back to looking at a screen to fly. Now I'm IN the cockpit. At times it feels so real it's a little disconcerting looking waaaay down at the ground - especially if one is over-stressing the aircraft as I did once lol. What you (currently) lose in visual clarity will be more than made up for by the feeling of what they're calling "prescence," in the Oculus marketing department - and for good reason. I would not advise buying Oculus's first commercial release, their CV1 (Commercial Version 1) as the "screen door effect" is only about 25% less and its padding for your face is not as plush as the DK2's. Sure it's a bit lighter, and the built in headphones sound great, but it's just not worth so much more cash than what you should be able to pick up a used DK2 for. NOT the DK1 though. Its resolution is crap. Oh and if you like gliders check out the UKVGA.org site. I just joined them. They do cross country flights every Tuesday and Thursday evening, UK time, and are a good lot of guys. Very relaxed and welcoming. For quite realistic thermals they disable the FSX default ones and use CumulusX!. It's free but you can pay 15 euros to be able to tell the tow plane to fly a left or right circuit. Plus it'll try to drag you right into a thermal. The default tow plane flies straight out without turning. It's dumb dumb dumb. Buying a license also smooths out CumulusX!'s custom cloud shadows. It also adds birds here and there that are themselves working a thermal - though they're flapping their wings lol. Having flown gliders in my teens, and hang gliders in my twenties, I've enough experience to be very impressed by the program. Well worth the euros. Cheers!

30:07 "we've got the london eye over here".............. apparently the millenium dome has turned into a ferris wheel

Hi, I have just bought FTX England and have found your video very interesting. I don't have anywhere near as many buildings in my London cityscape as you have on this video, I seem to have the default overlaying with ftx, what do you think I'm doing wrong. Thanks for posting.

Really enjoying your videos (thanks). I downloaded the ORBX PNW demo and I'm impressed. I wonder if you could answer - If I want to use FTX England, do I need to have Global installed as a 'base' - or do the regions install and run okay without Global?

hey thats my home town walney island , well its barrow in furness

Does this video include FTX Global Vector as well? If not, would that improve it further on top of the FTX Endland package or does FTX England require you to have both FTX Global base and FTX Global vector installed?

I tried this before buying FTX England, mine was different but i do have Land class and Vector

Very interesting and informative video. I am looking forward to reinstalling FSX when I finish rebuilding my PC this week so am interested in recent developments, what are your system specs?

hello sir how do u change the color of the sea.? i donk like the default

I'm back to watch this one again. :) By the way, is the framerate better in P3D when flying over London (FTX England) or similar to FSX; have you compared them?

Cool this is great!! What add-on is the Piper? Cheers

Could you please tell us your scenery settings? Cheers

Hello, I just bought FTX England and all of my trees have disappeared and the only 3D objects I have are buildings. I've tried everything I could but with no luck, any suggestions?

Orbx FTX England is quite nice indeed. The major problem I see with the Orbx regional, or area, add-ons is that there simply aren't enough of them, especially if you live in the USA and do most of your flying there, as I do. We only have FTX regional add-ons for the Pacific Northwest, Northern California, Southern Alaska, and parts of the Rocky Mountain States. Nothing whatsoever for the middle of the country or the East-where I hail from. And it's been that way for a year and a half now. I think that's seriously disappointing. It seems Orbx has forgotten about us. Many of their US airport add-ons are very obscure, as well, at the exclusion of more useful and higher-trafficked ones. So, as one who primarily flies in America, I simply can't justify buying-into the Orbx "system". It's a shame because their regional add-ons really are superior.

cool scenery what aircraft is that?

its the irish sea off the coast of walney ;)

do you fly with 15 fps often ? or it was only to demonstrate max details shown

Have you ever played Aerofly FS? I've seen screenshots of it and it looks nice, but i'm unsure of whether it performs well. Would be nice to see you do a video of this :)

Damn nice landing sir

is it possible to install ftx england without installing thee base package the global one?

Hi What is OpenLC Europe? Where would that sit in the hierarchy or don't you need it? Thanks -Jason

What addon is for that water?

Hi. How do you download orbx England is it instant download or do you have to extract it onto fsx steam?

the runway you see in the pic is no longer in use its a battered old one where they used to test the as90 self propelled guns built at bae in barrow.

just to conpare notes mate, I've not got the ultimate set up for gaming as my alienware gave up the ghost unfortunately, so running i3 processor and intel iris HD graphics, can't find any system requirements for this at all. what are you running hardware wise on your pc?

Holy shit! Fenland! That small town in the distance is Holbeach and where I grew up. Don't miss it one bit 😆 Only thing is though that road does do that, only there is a village there and is a little closer to the airfield.

FTX England is a nice product especially that I fly exclusively in the UK, but vectors are lacking. Many of the important river lines are missing. I know ORBX products are not intended for VFR flying, but they should at least include proper vectors around the VRPs.

What REX theme do you have?

mate i ve got error FSX\g3d.dll it come from ORBX FTX have you got this error? i ve seen on forum they say come from ORBX England have you got this error how did you fix?

Are there any add-ons that change the default buildings? I know many people can overlook it, but its jarring to come into land over a beautiful scenery and see those cardboard boxes with windows drawn on. It would be awesome if someone could add a type of moving "instance" around the aircraft once you are under say 500 feet, that renders a small radius of more realistic ground features. For heli flying this would be wonderful. Maybe that is the preserve of sims like Take On Helicopters where the map is small and handcrafted, but I for one would pay for such an add on gladly as I love flying low. Its a sim after all, no ATC to annoy :D EDIT: Just splashed out on a load of Orbx stuff. FTX Vector, Open Europe LC, England and Scotland packs, Northern California, Lake Tahoe and Palm Springs. I fancy some flights from Palm Springs to Lake Tahoe. I wonder if I will have enough fuel lol. Also some jaunts from Aberdeen to London, cos thats where I am from :)

Barrow is on the Irish sea, which is part of the atlantic, lol

I use UK2000 VFR 1,2 and 3 plus all their extreme airports which are very good, I'm guessing you do too.

The only place that I can find FTX Global is a place in Australia. And it appears to me it is an internet download only. You don't get a disk. Is that right?

30:06 - that's not the london eye...

Do you need to install FTX England over FTX Global, or is it a "standalone"?

this orbx might look good but a nightmare to load, cant get it working properly. thought it was supposed to be easy to use

30:08 Thats not the London eye, thats the millennium dome! XD

I know it's 4 years later but why doesn't your autogen "pop" into view as you fly. I thought this FSX problem was something that couldn't be fixed? Sorry carried on watching and I can see it "pops" in the London part, but still far less than mine. What was your computer setup please - cpu, graphics, memory

nice slideshow )

what your average frame rate

Are also using Orbx global vector?

I get a black screen between 33:30 and 37:50 - the period just before when you said your PC crashed. Nobody else seeing this?

thats the 2nd vid i watch on your channel, and as the first one i have a black video after about minute 30. sound is there but no vid. anyone else has this problem? (minute 33 to 38)

No, its definitely the Irish Sea off Walney Island, Cumbria, NOT the Atlantic Ocean lol. But, apart from that, and interesting video comparison.

300th like!

just look at the LPMA OR KLGA or KJFK or PAKT they did not care addon before them no calculation airport elevation it is also very hart to uninstall

I was screaming at my iPad during this, it took forever to cut to the chase

You sound so much like Squirrel

Its annoying that in a bigger aircraft a320 all payware the framews on this game becomes useless even with a fast pc, but then I relised this is just a pc version sim... real life sim's cost over 5 million so yeah....

wow! loox good from Ohio! lol. few yrs later, maybe even cheaper. gotta go chk the www. T/Y 4 d vid

such a glitchy ass game

If your looking for something a tiny bit better than the turgid rubbish that is the default's simulator scenery then maybe you should consider it. However it's nothing new, it isnt hyper realistic, in fact there seems to be an awful lot of random field generation that look identical in shape and size. Rivers look like they have just been slapped into the ground scenery from around 10,000 ft. I have tried to be forgiving over the years, and hoping for massive updates and improvements, but venema has done nothing when he should have done some major reworking for realism. After all thats the point we buy ground scenery, why we buy weather software, why we buy flight planning software, I could go on, but my point is simple, your trying to make your flight simulator as realistic and immersive as possible and for the cost of buying these UK countries, amounts to being ripped off if your really going for immersive. I generally dont fly VFR so I am very much less demanding than those who do, but if I can see, what I can at 32000 ft then up close , aside the from the ridiculous blurries which shouldnt exist in p3dv4.5 and dont in xp11, this scenery is an over expensive, concept idea of covering the default scenery, but it is nowhere near fit enough to be used as an immersive tool without complete true earth coverage which is a major revamp of this scenery software by the same developer. Reasonable to go good if you have nothing but bare bones flight sim scenery, but if your looking for something awesome and realisitic, then you should be aiming for true earth by orbx and not this expensive mistake they made...by the way you need p3dv4 or xp11 for true earth.

Weird. I just flew over Walney Island today .And bought FSX yesterday. For the record, the realism is garbage. Sorry, it is. x-plane does a reasonable job though.

jajajaja landing fuck !!

Don't but ORBX - I lost $150 - the installer failed and no support - buyer beware.