DISCLAIMER: The above image is not of any of Orbx’s announced products, it is a screengrab from a real life video provided by John Venema in his announcement to show how things might look with Orbx’s new photoreal regions. With that out of the way, onto what you’ve all come here for!
After announcing and previewing their upcoming photoreal FTX EU Netherlands region a while back, Orbx are back yet again with more news on their upcoming photoreal regions! First up, Orbx CEO John Venema announced that Orbx had secured aerial photography for all of the UK and Ireland which paves the way for new projects to come. Also stated is that Jarrad Marshal will be announcing the name of these series of addons this weekend, and that this upcoming line of products will be made entirely from aerial photography orthoimagery instead of landclass as used from previous Orbx regions.
As stated in the title, the Netherlands region for FSX/P3D will be releasing in a matter of weeks, and following this Orbx will be releasing photoreal regions for England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, the Pacific Northwest, and all of Germany in 2018 and 2019. These upcoming regions will be released separately, in line with previous Orbx regions, as to allow you to manage the file sizes easier. Speaking of file sizes, due to the immense projected size of Germany photoreal, expected to be around 120gb, Germany may be split into halves in order to contain the installation size but this isn’t set in stone at this time.
You may be wondering if these new regions will be coming to platforms other than FSX/P3D, and you’ll be happy to know that answer is a resounding yes! The first platform these new regions will release on first is X-Plane 11, then Aerofly FS2, and finally FSX/P3D following at a later date due to the immense work required to produce 5 season variations of the regions. These new photoreal regions will be, like all other products from Orbx, install-and-fly and will be managed by OrbxDirect and FTX Central and Orbx aim to include every house, building, tree, and structure in all of the UK/Ireland including night lighting, traffic, powerlines, water masking, light houses, cityscapes, POIs, marinas, ships, and many thousands more 3D objects. Airports will also be upgraded in the FSX/P3D version but Orbx has not completely decided on airports for XP/AFS2 at this stage in time.
That was all that was said for now, but John did mention that there is “more information to come in due course!” so it seems like there are very exciting times ahead over at Orbx! Any new information on these new regions and we’ll share!