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1. I think France VFR products are very high quality, but do not plan to purchase anymore until they complete an agreement with ORBX to provide autogen compatibility between the two developers. Currently you are not able to fly from an ORBX England location to a France VFR location in the same flight because of autogen incompatibility.

   1. As FranceVFR produce their software within the guidelines of the Microsoft SDKs, where Orbx don’t, and as FranceVFR have been producing scenery for a lot longer than Orbx have, what makes you say that it should be FranceVFR that have the problem, rather than Orbx? 😉

2. My understanding is that ORBX have offered a solution to the problem (to FranceVFR, to VFRGermany and others), and are awaiting FranceVFR’s agreement to complete it. The problem is not the making of either company, but it is a limitation of FSX and how autogen is processed. In any case, who has the problem will be decided by the marketplace, and whilst I would have been happy to have gone with FranceVFR as the basis, they have not been very active with new products the last few years, whereas ORBX have.

3. On the other hand, though, this proves exactly why the SDK exists – if you operate outside it (Orbx) then you can achieve some spectacular results, but your scenery doesn’t work with anyone else’s.

   If you do stick to the SDK, the results may not look as good, but almost everyone else’s scenery will work with it.

   From what I read on Orbx’s forum, researching this, it was basically the usual response from the boss of “turn Orbx off when flying outside the area”, but he relented in the face of pressure and offered to provide FranceVFR with information to make their scenery work. I wonder how long that offer will last once FTX Global is released?

4. My understanding is that the problem is not with the SDK standard (or lack of adherence to it) but simply that FSX is able to store and call only the last update to the autogen library. Every new scenery program with autogen replaces the previous library. France VFR has the same issue, not just ORBX. The only solution seems to be to combine the two autogen libraries. What I believe ORBX has offered is to accept France VFR’s autogen objects (generally buildings and trees) and add them to its own autogen library so that users can run the two sceneries at the same time. If France VFR did this everyone could be happy.

5. It’ll happen whenever you get custom autogen libraries, but that’s the entire point of a standard. When companies break the standard, things don’t work.

   I have FranceVFR files (although not installed right now, just because my rebuild has not got that far) and their scenery does NOT break surrounding or overlaid sceneries – Orbx does. The reason being that they deliberately alter default files, which in turn break sceneries for those surrounding. FranceVFR’s autogen works with other surrounding custom autogen’s, Orbx’s doesn’t (it’s not just FranceVFR’s that is broken – check the compatibility forum at Orbx).

   The fact remains, though, that breaking standards breaks other parties’ sceneries… Take your pick between looking as good as the sim can achieve and compatibility!

   Please note that I am not “attacking” Orbx (although certain members of their team automatically assume that anything other than glowing praise is a direct attack). I’m pointing out that in order to achieve omlettes, they break a few eggs. Should everyone else make their sceneries work with Orbx, at the other parties’ (and ultimately customers’) expense? That’s more open to discussion.

6. I do not understand why OrbX is making all existing sceneries in the world not compatible just for a set of texture and next a “basic” landclass generated from osm data !
   I’d accept some compatibility issues if the scenery implements many amazing and new things, but the landclass openlc is really not accurate, so many straight coast lines and poor landscape… I’d like Orbx to create large photo sceneries with all the autogen and 3D objects on it 🙂