Orbx has today announced a brand new product for FSX and P3D users who are fans of the unique Australian landscapes. CityScene Gold Coast is a magnificent cityscape rendition of the Gold Coast area in south-east Queensland, Australia and is designed to blend into their FTX Australia product seamlessly.
This scenery also acts as our introduction to the newest member of the Orbx team, Allen Kriesman. Allen comes from a very experienced background, having been the designer behind the Scenery Solutions name for quite some time. They describe him as “a legend of the Flightsim community” and “a master of his craft for several decades”. We’re told to expect his expertise and even new technologies in future products throughout 2018.
You may be wondering what the “CityScene” part of the name is all about. Well, Orbx has outlined CityScene as a new line of products for urban areas. Rather than me try to explain it, here’s how it was described on their forum:
Orbx CityScene is a new line of scenery products that will recreate urban centres and cityscapes around the world in incredible detail. Building upon thousands of hours of R&D over several years, Allen’s ground-breaking new technology enables highly-detailed scenery, coupled with highly improved performance and optimisation compared to default city centres. Bypassing traditional autogen methods, buildings correctly replicate unusual footprints, improve on building height and type accuracy, and even add more details for an immersive experience. Vegetation, lighting, terrain, traffic, are all fully integrated. Most importantly, CityScene technology uses next-gen optimisation techniques to ensure the very best performance. The CityScene line will sit alongside bespoke hand-made Cityscapes such as Maurizio’s Canberra and Cote d’Azure; likewise some components of this new tech will be utilised in upcoming region and airport products.
Back to the product at hand though, and we’re told that the CityScene Gold Coast product is highly detailed, accurate representation of the City of Gold Coast and surrounds. It’s made up of a majority 60cm ground textures, while around the Southport Flying Club area this has been increased to 7cm ultra-HD textures.
The product covers a massive 600 square kilometre area with custom mesh, 3D lighting, road traffic and vector components. Additionally, it also includes a bonus airport scenery of the Southport Flying Club, along with the Gold Coast University Hospital and Marina helipads for those who enjoy taking rotorcraft tours around scenic locations.
Speaking of sightseeing, you can expect the major landmarks such as Q1, and The Star casino (formerly Jupiters Casino), along with more than 69,000 custom objects. Some more stats include; 119,000 accurately placed objects and a whopping 1.12 million trees.
Orbx says that the price for this beautiful CityScene will be AUD $24.95 (approx. USD$19.50 / €16 / £14 ), however, no date has been announced for the release as yet. They do mention though that we should expect the accompanying YBCG Gold Coast Airport soon, in glorious HD.
We’ve added some of the preview shots to the bottom of this article, but for the full gallery, head over to the Orbx forum.
