mutley 4,495 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Just published is Brian Buckley's latest review of Scottish airports. This time we are off to Shetland and Sumburgh Airport. So put on your Shetland jumper and pour a wee dram and enjoy Brian's review. Read on... Link to post Share on other sites
ddavid 149 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Well done, Bro' - clear and concise, with some excellent screenshots. Chers - Dai. Link to post Share on other sites
Kevin Firth 114 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Disappointed that you didnt give any real consideration to compatibility with non orbx addons. My understanding is that there are some very serious issues relating to terrain (that Chris Low identified) when using it with anything other than FTX Scotland. For me, thats the only reason why I didnt pick this up on release as I dont have the time atm to fix issues that IMHO is a developer's responsibility . its a fab airfield though and I haven been able to see anything else iffy with it at all... Link to post Share on other sites
mutley 4,495 Posted September 27, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Kevin, why would we give consideration to non Orbx addons? The product is designed for FTX Scotland, if you have other scenery addons then expect compatibility issues, it is not the developers responsibility to make their software compatible with a competitors, it just doesn't make commercial sense. What you should be doing is getting onto the likes of Scotflight or UK2000 to up their game. Cheers.. Joe Link to post Share on other sites
Kevin Firth 114 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Not a criticism Joe, just not everyone wants to only use OrbX products exclusively so a bit of a nod towards what it does and doesnt work with nicely would be very useful I may be wrong but as I understand it the issues Chris encountered were terrain related so would likely be a result of incompatibilities between different mesh resolutions of the airport and underlying scenery? Thats very much in OrbX's court and nothing to do with any other Uk scenery developer? Link to post Share on other sites
mutley 4,495 Posted September 27, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Kevin, it's great to get feedback, but why would we single out one developer and go looking around to find issues with other scenery that it is not designed to work with? We don't do it for Horizon, ES, MSE or others. 'Caveat emptor' comes to mind, if you buy a product not designed for use with your set up then that's your look out, if they said it was compatible then that would be another story. You wouldn't expect an iFly 737 addon to work work with PMDG, would you? Link to post Share on other sites
Christopher Low 63 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 I did discuss this with Lars (the airport developer), and it sounded to me like he would have liked to have done more to make FTX EGPB Sumburgh more compatible with other products. Unfortunately, he did not have the time to do this before the airport package was released, and I think that he is currently at college (or something like that), and unable to spend any time on it at the moment. As for compatibility, I agree with Kevin. I have always stated that JV should have included full photoscenery compatibility for the FTX England/Wales/Scotland airfield packages. Fortunately, the vast majority of these airfields work very well with Horizon photoscenery (after a few minor tweaks), and Kevin himself has provided merged autogen packages for compatibility with ES Treescapes (on a side note, I have also done this for FTX EGTF Fairoaks). Unfortunately, EGPB Sumburgh seems to be meshed rather more tightly with the FTX Scotland product, so getting it to work properly with Horizon VFR5 Orkneys & Shetland Isles photoscenery is proving to be a much more difficult task. Frankly, this was a mistake. This airport is very high quality, and I guarantee that a large number of photoscenery users would purchase it if it was marketed as fully compatible with the Horizon scenery. It's rather ironic that JV was disappointed with sales of most of the FTX UK airfields, when the opportunity to increase his customer base was staring him in the face! I do not understand the ORBx philosophy of "FTX only" when it comes to compatibility with regional scenery packages. Photoscenery users generally are not interested in landclass, and therefore a rather large number of potential customers are effectively excluded from purchasing the UK airfield products. Like I said, almost all of them work if you have FTX England/Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland installed, but I wonder just how many photoscenery users are unaware of this? It's also worth noting that you do NOT need FTX England installed to use the relevant English airfield packages. You only need ONE of the regional areas. I purchased FTX Northern Ireland plus the English airfields, and all of those airfields worked just fine. Link to post Share on other sites
Kevin Firth 114 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Orbx or any other developers are entitled to do business and create products however they like and I wouldnt want to single any one development house out. I think all developers should strive for maximum compatibility, and the onus to provide that inevitably rests more on those who make their product second. Just my humble opinion. I would have liked in this case to get a bit more understanding of what issues I might encounter if I do buy it, but Lars is clearly very talented and Brian's review shows it is obviously a superlative bit of scenery in virtually all respects Link to post Share on other sites
mutley 4,495 Posted September 27, 2014 Author Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Hi Chris, Kevin, I fully accept and appreciate your points of view, unfortunately Orbx do not see it the same way, but we cannot mark the product down for that, or make exceptions on a developer by developer basis, we can only base our findings on the published requirements to achieve maximum detail and performance, and if they deliver then we mark accordingly. So, I am not saying that the Orbx way is correct, a couple of their contributing 3rd party developers such as Sim720 have gone the extra mile to offer the photoscenery compatibility and full marks for doing so. So to reiterate, sorry Kevin for not testing this scenery with other sceneries but that is not our remit. Cheers... Joe Link to post Share on other sites
Christopher Low 63 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Just a note to say that my comments are in no way a criticism of Brian's review. I was just expanding on the comments that Kevin had posted. If I ever find a way to get FTX EGPB Sumburgh to work with the photoscenery, then I will surely let everyone here know about it Link to post Share on other sites
ddavid 149 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 I'm sorry to have to say this, but we risk losing our Hangar's independent image in respect of reviews by not including any discussion of compatibility with other relevant add-ons. Whilst I realise that OrbX has a huge following within the flight sim community as a developer of many excellent products, we shouldn't, in my personal opinion, treat OrbX any differently to other developers. I'm afraid that by ignoring compatibility issues in these reviews, we elevate OrbX above other developers and appear to treat their products more favourably than perhaps we should. And I fully realise that there are 2 camps within our Forum, each with their own opposing views on improved land-class or photo-scenery. However, they both are projected onto the underlying mesh - mess with that and you get problems. Let's address these issues in a practical and constructive way rather than ignoring them and hope they go away. They won't, and as one of the most respected Forums in flight simming, we overlook them at our peril. I hope you don't mind me raising this question, Joe - if you feel it's a topic that might cause more problems than it's worth, then So be it. Cheers - Dai. Link to post Share on other sites
allardjd 1,853 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Great review, Bri. Something's wrong, however, with the top-down screenshot labeled "Default FSX Sumburgh Airport". A number of features in your screenshot don't match what I get, particularly the terminal building, the large hangar across 15/33 from the terminal, the large concrete aprons around both ends of 09/27 and some kind of maritime facility near the 27 end of 09/27. That shot doesn't appear to be stock FSX. John Link to post Share on other sites
Christopher Low 63 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Dai makes a good point. Whilst I doubt that it will make a difference as far as ORBx products are concerned, it can't do any harm to highlight issues like this, even if the overall conclusion remains unaffected Link to post Share on other sites
needles 1,011 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 In answer to most of the above. I can't mention compatibility issues for any review if I do not have the said 'incompatible' software on my system. I write my reviews using the installed software namely Orbx scenery. I only fly using Orbx scenery these days and I therefore do not have any photscenery software installed. Apologies. I do not take any of the comments raised thus far as personal comments, I'm all for constructive criticism. Thanks all for your input. Cheers Link to post Share on other sites
needles 1,011 Posted September 27, 2014 Report Share Posted September 27, 2014 Great review, Bri. Something's wrong, however, with the top-down screenshot labeled "Default FSX Sumburgh Airport". A number of features in your screenshot don't match what I get, particularly the terminal building, the large hangar across 15/33 from the terminal, the large concrete aprons around both ends of 09/27 and some kind of maritime facility near the 27 end of 09/27. That shot doesn't appear to be stock FSX. John Cheers John, I will recheck what I have. ATB Link to post Share on other sites
Jess-b 420 Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 Great review Brian. On the subject of compatibility, or lack of, well from my point of view, it's all a bit mute. Orbx state their product only work with orbx regions. We can't mark them down for that. I can't complain that Sumburgh isn't compatable with X-plane. It's not designed for x plane, and Sumburgh isn't designed for a non orbx region. Orbx even warn you in advance that you can install it into fsx default, but the quality will be worse compared to FTX Scotland. For me, you review a product in isolation. That means I look at what the product was designed to do, not what I'd like it to do. Sumburgh is designed for use with orbx products, so I look at how well it fits with FTX Scotland. Nothing else. Jess 3 Link to post Share on other sites
hifly 925 Posted September 28, 2014 Report Share Posted September 28, 2014 Exactly my thoughts Jess, you don't buy a Boeing and expect Airbus parts to fit. Edit. BTW Brian, an excellent review. 1 Link to post Share on other sites
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