UTX vs GEX vs GLOBAL

[Benoit Huot 1]

Hi, feel like buying Montreal (Canada) from Fly Tampa but can't stand stock FSX. I also own Boston,I'm afraid to be deceived by anything else.

 

As a pilot this is where I learned to fly so it's appealing to me. Not that my corner of the world is exciting viewed from the air but again, this is where I live.

 

May I ask if any here do own UTX Canada.

 

I am so far not impress with Global stuff that I saw so.

 

Many thanks for any suggestions.

 

Ben

[britfrog 180]

it is all down to what and how you fly I found global did some nice night lighting but its scenery in many parts of europe was hopelessly wrong so I binned it.

Personally I prefer to use photoscenery as that is in reality photos taken from about 3000 feet so you can see your own house per se and the roads are correctly displayed . the downside is when you get lower the autogen flattens out other than where you have airport add ons. global stays 3d ish even on the ground  but the roads and general scenery are nothing like reality but you get a very nice ambiance. utx and gex give better scenery than the stock fsx but perhaps not as good as global.

Some devs have finally twigged that the best solution is to take photoscenery and add 3d houses and forests and electricity pylons etc France vfr has done this for the last 18 months on their regions of france ,ESI has in the last few days announced their own similar project for the UK. Megascenery has covered the US in photoscenery and is now adding highly detailed cities however it still all goes flat when you land., except for the hills. so it is all changing,

In an ideal world ftx would take photoscenery and add their magic, and it would sell by the zillions , sadly they choose to use a neaqrly fictitious countryside that loosely resembles an area, then try to make it look as realistic as possible something I have difficulty in understanding, why not take something we all recognise as reality and make it more realsitic?

and of course in all these cases , you pays ya money and you takes ya choice

  By and large we are an honest bunch of nutters here at mutleys, there is very little we dont know or havent experienced over the years when it comes to simming the difficult bit is taking what we do and applying it to your situ.

if you have a bottomless piggy bank as some people here seem to have, it doesnt matter if you buy something , find you dont like it and then bin it, however if you are like the majority and have to make careful educated purchases then the first thing to do is form a plan on how and where you want to fly, then ask questions, but be very aware simming is a very very very personal thing and no 2 people sim the same way so one persons advice must always be looked at with a long eye and how it pertains to you

[brett 2,315]

Well said Nigel.

 

I do not own any UTX products and only know what it looks like from screenshots and videos. It's nice but not the way I have chosen to go. Do your research and pick what you think is best for you.

 

I like ORBX/FTX products and am awaiting their openLC which would fill up the Canadian area with some better looking landclass along with the FTXGlobal and Vector addons. It's not totally accurate or perfect but good enough for me and I like how the ground textures looks colorwise compared to other products. As long as I can pick out a town, mountain, river, rail and road I will be a happy camper.

 

I am hoping one day ORBX/FTX will come out with a visual aid package that includes all or most of the visual reporting points, that would be really cool.    

[Jess-b 420]

Hi Benoit,

First thing to sort out is the difference between each of the packages. For starters, UTX Canada is a completely different type of product from both GEX and FTX Global.

Global and GEX both do the same thing. They replace the default textures used by fsx. That's all. The two programs are also direct competitors, so you can only use FTX Global or GEX, not both as they both do the same thing.

UTX Canada is a separate product called land class. It changes the default land class to something more accurate. Roads, rivers and shorelines are all positioned correctly and if your flying VFR, you can just about manage with the roads, rails and so forth. It will also arrange the cities and towns a bit better than the default. The look of the scenery will then depend in what base textures your using. (GEX or Global).

A few caveats for using UTX.

-GEX contains extra textures to use with UTX which is a bit of a bonus.

-the lighting UTX uses is very frame rate heavy. And if your flying with global, you'll need to disable the UTX lighting. You may also have to make a few changes in your Scenery.cfg file to have the Global lighting to show up.

That's about it. You can of course wait for orbx to release their open Landclass or openLC and couple that with orbx vectors for road placement. It could be an expensive option.

For the record I use Global with UTX USA and Canada.

Best wishes,

Jess B

[Benoit Huot 1]

May I thank you ALL. I mean it. I could never ask a question like that on ORBX forum

 

I personally don't really care about road placement accuracy, what I care is immersion. Immersion for me is what is seen from the air in real life.

In my part of the world it's mostly flat ground and lot of typical NA farmer field. Some small mountain and A LOT OF LAKES.

 

Let me try to explain, lately I was flying in Tongass in between FTX Alaska and FTX PF, I was in Sitka,  I said something is NOT right, mountain definition, color.. and even Sitka was not right

 

I finally inquire and Tongass was NOT installed.... he he. Just plain old FSX

 

Same goes for FTX England, don't care about accuracy but I care about general immersion. As simple as that. FTX region (like you can see in my sig) give me that immersion. In England I like the farmer field immersion. Crazy shape and very different from USA/Canada one.

 

So the point of my post was, What is the closest thing to FTX region for eastern Canada. I think there is sadly for now nothing.

 

I have seen Global + Fly Tampa picture of Montreal and I was not impress at all. Why, the land doesn't look right at all and it's NOT way better then stock FSX.

 

So if UTX Canada is mainly road and river accuracy it's not enough for me, yea sure a few more not well place building downtown is ok but no more.

 

And to be honest, I don't feel like adding layers and layers of different product to get... something I may not eve be happy.

 

That said I don't understand much about land-class, mesh and bla bla bla

 

I want thing to look like that:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AND NOT LIKE THAT (Montreal stock FSX)

 

 

Happy to be here guys

 

Ben

[brett 2,315]

Since you are an ORBX/FTX fan like me I would just wait it out for a year and wait for the openLC from them. You would also need FTXGlobal and Vectors. See this thread on openLC and this one about the different layers in FSX explained. I like the new textures that FTXGlobal added to FSX and wouldn't go back, if you buy them you will also get a small area of a beta openLC.

 

Whatever you decide, happy flying.

[J G 927]

I used to have all of the UTX products and was happy with them until I tried the OBIX software.  

 

Having said that the last things to go in my redesign were the UTX packages as you can use them with ORBX Global.

 

So why did UTX go?  Because I sold them off to fund the purchase of Global 2010. Question is... Did i do the right thing?

 

I don't know yet, because i only did it last week. Give me a few weeks to play with it and i will let you know.

[Benoit Huot 1]

Thanks again guys.

 

I was looking at my image above, stock FSX view of Montreal (last one) and it's pretty accurate, only the ground texture of some area (mostly the city) is a joke.

But the island, bridge, port and even raod are pretty good. Will openCL help the ground texture?

 

Thanks again

Ben

[brett 2,315]

The ground textures would come from FTXGlobal, grass, rock, and stuff,  the openLC would cover cities, towns, forest, farm land and the like, FTXVectors would take care of roads, rail, coastline, parks and rivers.