Really like the ORBX version.
When it was first announced I cautioned against jumping right on to scenery addons.
I was downvoted to hell.
I did not think the quality of the addon would be poor. I was concerned about the effects of Immediately deviating from the default ecosystem when it was a vast improvement already. To have people immediately reverting back to massive offline assets and paying out of pocket for every few square km you want to look decent. It really sends the wrong message to the original team.
But people said āIt doesnāt matter who does it.ā - a completely ridiculous point of view. The dedicated developer is always going to do better. If we actually express our needs clearly and give them a chance to respond.
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I take it back. Updates have not fixed things, it appears Landmarks was not being loaded. Itās now loaded and default scenery such as O2 and London bridge have been replaced by the lower-quality Orbx objects 
Content Manager shows itās version 1.0.0. If you look at the scenery description you also see < BR >< BR >HTML tags in the text. This is all just very sloppy. Unless this gets updated in the next two days Iām going for a refund. I donāt know if Orbx hasnāt updated the product or, they have updated the product and sent it to the Marketplace for publishing but thereās an acceptance delay for checking packages before the Marketplace makes the update go live. All I can say is at this point in time itās a very poor customer experience.
EDIT:
I have Orbx Central installed for my X-Plane and FSX:SE installs and decided to check the FS 2020 version of Landmarks listed on the Orbx site. It appears the version there is 1.0.1. So it seems Orbx has updated the package and the problem is Microsoftās Marketplace has yet to publish this update.
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ORBX has announced that there is a problem with the MS Store and the files wont be updated until Sept 1st (or later)
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So Asobo created these masterpieces of objects with super high res textures, offices you can zoom into, etc. While itās wonderful eye candy if you pause the sim and slew around or pan while close, I didnāt notice any of that complexity while actually FLYING. What I did notice without the London City Pack installed was flying past Parliament which looked marvelous but the bridge leading to it was missing. In fact, knowing how complex 3D objects are rendered in real time, it would highly surprise me if there arenāt real frame rate issues when flying close to those pieces of art. If the entire city was as complex, it could be a slide show. Be careful what you demand. I think thereās a ton of us out there that saw a $7 add on that restored the cityscape of what we know London to be, as a real bargain. To Orbxās credit they immediately went for a fix and itās not them that are holding us back from getting the patch.
Have a go sometime at creating a complex building, finding the true outside textures for it from photos that always have shadows across the sides of the buildings or the shots are not from straight on. Itās a royal pain and even if you find a perfect photo for your texture, the manipulations to wrap it on your object can be daunting. You can fake it of course and create pretend textures that resemble the real ones and it looks high res and great but compare them then to an actual photo.
The guys at Orbx seem very customer oriented. I donāt think they deserve the shade people are throwing at them. Nobody knows the pressure that may have been coming from the great and mighty Microsoft to hurry up and monetize the product.
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I love Orbx products and while some of their assets for the London Landmarks product were below average at the launch of the product, it is still a GREAT addition to the sim. I never get that close to the buildings anyway.
And from what I have seen so far, the Orbx Airports available for the sim look fantastic. I am so glad we have so many products from such a great company this early in the simās lifespan.
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For Ā£6 Iām actually perfectly happy with it, Ā£60 would be another story. Iāve spent more on lunch in London that took me less time to eat than to boot MSFS.
Iām sure weāve all spent Ā£6 or equivalent on things that provided far less value than this, or far more on FSX addons that made, say, clouds fractionally nicer.
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The EGLC airport is good. I say this very thing in this threadās original post. Landmarks should not have gotten past rudimentary QA either at Orbx or whatever scrutiny it gets in whatever process is going on with Marketplace HQ that seems to be slowing down the 1.0.1 update release. QA should have clearly seen the problem of higher quality default scenery being replaced and taken steps to exclude those object replacements.
When Iām not heads down in the instruments enjoying the IMC side of flight simming, I sometimes grab a sporty plane and just buzz around interesting places. Landmarksā replacement of higher detail objects like London Bridge and O2 made that experience a little bit sucky.
The purpose of addon scenery is to both add objects that are missing as well as improve on detail. Thatās where Orbxās EGLC Airport does so well. Itās a perfect example of things added that were missing and the things actually added looking better quality than the default.
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Their working on a fix for high res versions I believe
Sounds like things are a little more complex. Maybe there are technical issues with being able to apply small areas for exclusion in a scenery pack. Iāve never dabbled with those tools.
Well, for me that was not an issue. I updated my OrbX Central and installed from there. I also bought from there to get the Discount for owning packs from previous versions (Discount on the LOWI package). In Central, the update became available last week. I didnāt fly it yet, but the install is done.
The update is not available on the SimMarket yet, but directly via OrbX Central.
Due to the delay in updating the marketplace, I went ahead and bought both the updated London Landmarks pack and EGLC.
I obviously canāt compare with before but overall I am generally happy with both for the price. I agree that some of the buildings are very low quality such as Buckingham Palace but most are decent and could just do with a higher resolution texture set and improved modelling (especially now not as noticeable with the default Asobo models back in following the update). Hopefully improvements will come.
There are issues with cars driving under bridges but overall its fairly decent. The night lighting looks better now (compared with V1.00 screenshots I saw).
EGLC is mostly well made but has an issue with a weird building intersecting with the main terminal and which bizarrely cuts through the railway line. Also the entrance to the airport is poorly modeled. There are no footpaths or details we come to expect outside such as a parking lot, hand placed objects etc. Hopefully this improves but if you fly regularly out of EGLC its really not bad and still worth it. The issue is more that we have come expect higher quality products from Orbx with all the details that make their addons stand out from the rest, and not basic ports with missing details that even the originals had.
In the past Iāve given ORBX plenty of my hard-earned to improve earlier versions of FS. I bought EGLC and London Landmarks on the basis of their previous quality output, before seeing this thread. They still have a 4* review on the in-game marketplace.
I do rather regret it. I donāt think Iāll be a repeat customer.
I bought it without any further look (cause ORBX)ā¦And well, I thinks this sim sets all new standarts in terms of visuals and third party developers have to adapt and rise the bar considerably. What has looked stunning in previous sims, be it X-plane or P3D, will look outdated in msfs 2020. Just do a new conversion wont work well. It will also mean a lot more hours to develop. So higher prices in average for new stuff I guess.
To whom it may concern
Jeez ! nowadays community takes everything for granted as opposed to what we started with on FS8 and FS9 ! be grateful that some developers actually take the time to design an actual realistic city for you to enjoy !
ORBX has a great history with the FS Community and many proven records that they get the job done and they exceed our expectations in terms of realism. if youāre not satisfied with their latest London Scenery and are unable to wait for them to fix it, then just do something else and stop ranting please!
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āEverything for grantedā
ābe grateful that some developers actually take the time to design an actual realistic cityā
Itās a paid addon, they sell 10$ and make money with it. Itās not a freeware made to please the community. And they dare to sell this āthingā for 10$ full of old low quality buildings they probably imported from old FS version. Itās not free, itās a business so we donāt have to be grateful for anything.
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I think a lot of people were just a bit surprised or disappointed by the low-res textures and other inaccuracies (myself included). Orbx has a name for quality scenery and people expected the handcrafted buildings to be on par with Asoboās, which clearly wasnāt the case. It felt a bit cheap and rushed. They should have known that the first addon for a hyped next-gen sim would be scrutinized extra carefully. Nonetheless, I think it is worth the 8$, as it clearly improves the scenery. If you fly ānormallyā and not kamikaze style it actually looks pretty good. I certainly donāt regret the purchase, even though Iād expected a bit more. And letās not forget they reacted immediately and patched it. I havenāt been able to update it yet but Iām sure it looks better now.
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I posted a video of the excessive brightness of night time textures of the Landmarks package in my video below. You can clearly see all the areas where Orbx objects stand out against the general brightness of default scenery. Colour correction is clearly needed. Not impressed with the speed of Marketplace addon updates so far. Especially when thereās no way to disable an addon, only to delete it and have to download everything again
Is this the updated version or the first one?
I thought Marketplace had updated but apparently not, so this is 1.0.0. There was a weird glitch where Landmarks wasnāt showing version number in Content Manager. Now it does and weāre still stuck with 1.0.0
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