Medellinexpat

I just bought this from the Org. Store and it seems as if there was an update in 01/22 to address some of your issues. Did you see that?

Interesting as always. The X-Plane community does love the freeware. I made the mistake, on another forum, of welcoming the new payware Narita that’s just been released. There isn’t much good payware for Asia at the moment and the developer does have a decent record. My post instantly attracted negative comments. Why welcome this new scenery when there was a good freeware alternative - which there is? The temerity of the developer in releasing a product in competition to a liked freeware!

On the MSFS gold rush it seems that everyday four or five new sceneries are released. But the choice of subjects is usually interesting. I’ve a good knowledge of geography and the world’s airports but often the choice of subject elicits the response where or what part of the community is that aimed at. Panning for gold is one thing. Choosing a location where you will find enough to pay for your dinner is another.

 

Well, I bought the scenery and I’m very happy with it. As the review says a good location and its a great scenery for the money ($18). Pleasingly it’s not bloated in size as many sceneries these days seem to be. Look forward to more from this developer. 

I didn’t say you shouldn’t say it as you see it nor ignore, in fact I say the complete opposite. All I suggested was that getting and including feedback from developers. Yes some developers are bull headed, many not though. 
 

On this review ‘I love the scenery’ yes I can see that in the summary. However getting to the summary is the problem. Your language on the flaws is pretty strong and overwhelms the mid portion of the review. 
 

You allow feedback on your site but you tend to be as bull headed as the developers in rejecting comments. All I suggested was whether developer input might be useful and you’ve turned it back into suggesting that I’ve said you overlook issues. ‘I will say it as I see it’. That is not useful.
 

An interesting review and as you say a location that is useful for short over water flights. Also the stock airport isn’t much to get excited about.

While I do understand not wanting developer influence on the review I do wonder if in cases like this some discussion with the developer might be useful. For example was the decision about the poor beyond the airport work perhaps driven by performance factors? Some developers are no doubt better at balancing the performance of their sceneries and others may need to take more drastic action. Of course that doesn’t change the fact that you found the beyond the airport poor but as your reviews can be pretty influential on sales, in particular through the Org store, perhaps getting some feedback might be fair for some smaller developers. 

It is true that the 10 fps is an individual user decision. But it is always trade offs. For example the latest generation of commercial airliners for Xplane like the Inbuilds A300 or the SSG 748 are often heavier on frame rates than the generation before. Then add in other plugs in that people use and performance can be impacted pretty quickly. In your reviews you don’t list what plug ins and other sceneries that you are using. Looking at the screenshots you post it looks as if you used Zibo and one of the Toliss Airbuses. But other than that its difficult to judge how complex your set up is.

Perhaps, at least for me, this might be useful for general aviation but the idea of stutters is a little worrying. I also use Activesky, not available in the org.store I know, and I’ve generally been pretty happy with the weather in that. However your review is food for thought.

You are right, $10 and importantly 10fps less. I am sure that it has its fans but the complexity of the interface for me suggests too much fiddling around and not enough flying. However the developer deserves credit for trying to resolve some of the current Xplane issues.

Vulkan has given me a pleasant but not huge increase in frame rates. Not sure that I want to give that back or add stutters. 

I know that the Orbx ortho is an add on. I made sure, that in saying I had no issues with the scenery I did identify my different usage to you. However it appears that you haven’t taken my feedback in the spirit that it was made in. It’s interesting that in a scenery that does present some options - and important options no doubt for many users - they aren’t mentioned in your review. Nor is the fact that the scenery is a lot cheaper on the developers own site. 

I have this scenery and have updated it and am not having any issues. I am using the TE Orbx Florida mesh though. 

Your issue sounds like an Ortho issue - the floating items. Did you look at the manual, that should have cleared the floating bridge?

There’s also freeware for the city of Tampa that might create issues - it adds airport buildings. Again you using that? There’s a link to a Tampa city freeware that removes the issue in the documentation.

Yes basic installation is easy. If you think that there aren’t many options perhaps you missed the Options folder. There there are sub folders for
 

Default

Grass Medium

Orbx

Orbx TE Orthos

With grass

With Orthophoto

Without grass

Without Orthophoto

User Nav Data

most of them undocumented

How many extras do you consider ‘not a lot’?

I bought this scenery and Lyon from the same developer. I cannot understand why the review doesn’t mention that Digital Designs documentation is very poor. Yes, there are options with the scenery, but the documentation excludes any mention of how to use them, except for Orbx. ‘Customize the scenery to your liking using the options folder’ is not documentation,

Also why are  manual updates needed to the base Xplane user_nav.dat files? The Orbx compatibility requires you to change files in True Earth. That’s fine of course until Orbx updates their files or you verify them using Central. I’m not that keen on add ons that require you to change other add onsanyway.
 

This, and Lyon which is similar, are really buys for users experienced and confident around Xplane scenery. The documentation is very, very thin and should have been a point in the review.
 

The existing BSS sound packs are good but the management of them isn’t simple. If BSS add more soundpacks that becomes even less easy or clumsy if you replicate the base Toliss pack for every sound option. Perhaps there might be some way of mapping the appropriate BSS sound pack to the engine choice menu? Having said that I don’t think that the Toliss/BSS relationship is what you would describe as close. For me, this time, I’m planning on sticking with the stock Toliss sounds.

You should tell the store that they’ve linked your review to Lyon not Liverpool

I’ve had positive and negative experiences with the Org store. I will agree it is a great resource, overall, for the community. However Orbx Central isn’t a bad portal and I do think that supporting more than one platform isn’t a bad thing. You are entitled to your preferences of course but that does add a bias to your reviews. Maybe you have connections to the Org store - your reviews are an important part of the information on there?

Thanks for this review. I had been pondering buying this but there is little information about it. In many case there were just the same half a dozen screen shots and only half of those showed the airport itself. The same lack of information is true of their Lyon Saint Exuperey offering.

From your review this looks worthwhile in particular with the TE compatability. Interesting that outside the airport the developer has done a good job but airside, with say the clutter, it misses a little. Am I the only one who believes that developers need to focus on the airside more and worry a little less about the eye candy outside?

I had seen talk that this airport was going to be available on the Orbx Direct platform. Do you know if that’s true, that Orbx are going to include Digital Designs products on their store?

As always Wikipedia is your friend

Flights between Westray Airport and Papa Westray Airport occur daily in both directions, except on Saturdays, when only flights from Westray to Papa Westray are available, and on Sunday, when only flights from Papa Westray to Westray are available.The total distance covered by the flights is 1.7 miles (2.7 km), which is about the same length as the runway at Edinburgh Airport. The flights are always combined with flights from and to Kirkwall Airport (27 mi (43 km) distance), flying in a narrow triangle.

I have the Nimbus BN-2 and would also recommend it. Including the Westray airports seems to me to be a good way to differentiate their product from the Torquesim one. For me when I originally bought the Nimbus it was something of a coin flip as both had decent reviews.

Thanks again for the review and the help on flying between the two airports. It cuts out a lot of trial and error!

On your reviews I do find them very useful and often they influence my buying. I believe that there is a real lack of useful reviews available. Maybe it’s an age thing but I find the long rambling video reviews less that useful. Increasingly those reviews seem to get longer and longer perhaps I guess to earn revenue from more advertisements. I also find that many of the reviews have some bias or deliberately look for small issues to make big.

However i think that the larger problem is that the development community does a very poor job in promoting their products. Expect me to drop $30 on a scenery or $70 on an aircraft and all you can offer is a few screenshots, a list of features and a short video with a banal soundtrack? After all that development work you can’t put some time into promoting the product? Some of the scenery developers seem to go out of their way to choose screenshots that make their wares look worse than most freeware.

Most developers are small shops but few take any real steps to engage customers or provide decent feedback on forums. Three notable exceptions for me xOrganizer, Stick and Rudder Studios and Vertical Simulations. Some like Orbx can be really bad. Where they sell third party products they then pass questions to those developers who then provide no response. Want to know why I didn’t buy your scenery? It wasn’t because my question wasn’t answered it’s why you’re ignoring two other forum participants who are asking why, near the terminal, your scenery runs like a slide show.

And if you are a developer having a web site about your product that has little information or even worse broken links doesn’t enhance your chance of selling to me nor give me a lot of confidence in your capabilities.

Perhaps if the industry spent less time complaining about poor sales and focused more on promoting their wares things would be different. Or perhaps it’s just easier to ride on the coat tails of something like MSFS and hope that increases sales numbers?

In the end i reordered, from the Org.store, and had no issues. I’m very pleased with the purchases and your reviews are right on. I might have worried about the weather radar in the Navajo unless I’d seen your comments that it does pretty much nothing. My guess, given how few liveries are available for them, is that they’ve not had stellar sales.

Carenado aircraft are anything but perfect and since Thandra departed the community really don’t seem big fans. But at the sale price, the Navajo was less than $20 and the Bonanza $16, I’d argue they were pretty good buys. Buying one or two when a sale comes around isn’t an expensive way to build a interesting little fleet of GA aircraft. Of course whether they are updated in the future if that becomes necessary is a risk but they aren’t major investments. 
 

Anyway back to the Navajo currently en route from Ibiza to Malaga. A rather pleasant way to spend the afternoon.

Based on your reviews, which I find to be both useful and accurate I went and ordered both.

Once I’d purchased using Paypal I got a message that there was a problem on the vendor (Carenados) side. I went back to the Carenado site and my new purchases weren’t in my account. I did get a message from my Bank credit card (linked to Paypal) that the payment had been made. That charge (not a hold) now today shows on my credit card.

I opened a support ticket with Carenado and a day later there’s no response.

So at best I’m going to be spending hours sorting this out. Carenado doesn’t make it easy to report an issue. Having an account with them isn’t enough to file a support ticket you also need to open another account for the support section. It might make sense to them, it doesn’t to me.

I always try to buy directly from the vendors but in future I’ll get any Carenado purchases elsewhere.

I have a fair amount of Carenado aircraft and am pretty happy with them. There’s a sale on (again) but most of what I don’t have and would like get pretty dismal reviews. This Bonanza might be an exception. Recommended still at 11.5?

The Navajo also might be a buy. The review from 2018 on here was pretty positive but there’s little other feedback I can find. 
 

Neither, one or both?

‘In early 2021, I think the penny will drop for the Dev Houses’

I do worry that with some of them being so focused on MSFS that they will have ‘bet the farm’ on sales there being successful that they might not be around in 2021. Kudos to developers like Justsim in continuing to provide new content for Xplane. They deserve our support.

A little off the main subject but at least this is a release for XP11. Still very little or nothing at all from other developers like Orbx and Carenado. They’re obviously working hard on product for MSFS. There’s certainly a lot of payware content, in particular scenery, for MSFS. Any industry whispers about how sales are going? Is MSFS the gold mine that they seemed to think it would be?

You are right about having airports that form route networks, or at least provide some interesting alternatives in routes to fly. Looking at some of the airports under development or recently released for MSFS there’s a lot of niche stuff coming out. This for Xplane seems a worthwhile buy.

Having said that I do wonder if developers really think about their release dates as carefully as they might. This appeared just as Steam, and to a less extent the Org store are having sales. That means you’re competing against 50% off items. There’s always a temptation to buy those items when they appear.

This is well priced and I will pick it up. Your comment about the disappearing runway lighting is interesting. How did they achieve that? It’s not something I’ve noticed in other sceneries.

I think that the actual aircraft had a castoring tail wheel, so unconnected to the rudder movement. You may be right about the rudder but perhaps the tail wheel isn’t ‘free’ enough and creates too much directional  control. And shouldn’t the castor be a similar problem on takeoffs?

On flaps on landing I’ve seen articles that flaps 15 is more common in the real world (55 knots at touchdown) but flaps 30 improves the view over the nose.