BBQSteve, you are basically correct at least for now. I don't think the demise of P3D scenery from ORBX is on the horizon at this point.
The Aerofly FS 2 Flight Simulator (due to its origins) is currently a visually focused simulator. It uses photoreal terrain which means very large files but is quite beautiful from a few thousand feet. It is STEAM based and recently ORBX announced a partnership with IPACS (the developer of the Aerofly FS 2 Flight Simulator) to provide enhanced scenery. FS 2 supports 3D models but, as always, the 3D objects have to be developed manually as there is no magical way of instantly populating the word with photorealistic 3D objects. So, initially, except for a few selected cities/airports and one state, the FS 2 world is pretty flat in relation to the 3D populated areas we fly in. FS 2 does use high resolution mesh so the topography is quite good. FS 2 also features excellent integral support for VR headsets. With the rising popularity of VR, the visual experience of FS 2 is really exciting the rapidly increasing number of VR headset users. New York City is one of their 3D cities and it looks great and frame rate is smooth as glass.
I imagine ORBX will initially focus on airport addons bringing their enormous 3D object library and vegetation replication expertise to this visual sim engine. John Venema has said this sim is more about the visual experience (though it does have some basic navigation capabilities) and ORBX remains committed to Prepar3D as its primary target flightsim. ORBX does envision doing scenery regions for FS 2 but not till sometime in 2018 and beyond due to the new technologies and techniques required to interface with FS 2, a totally different engine than the FSX world.
One might ask, where did IPACS come from? For many years IKARUS has been a successful RC Airplane company in Germany. IKARUS' founder was a world champion in RC Aircraft competitions. Somewhere around 1998 IKARUS worked with a another German company called IPACS to create an RC flying simulator for the computer that interfaced with actual RC controllers for training RC flyers. In 2011, Aerofly Flight Simulator was the next evolution from a very successful RC Flying simulation. It is interesting looking at a sim that evolved from RC flying. As a result of this evolution, it does not yet feature many of the realities of piloting an aircraft like ATC, integrated avionics, real time weather, AI etc. but it does have all of the visual capability that you would expect in a high end simulator. It is stunning in its hi res fluidity.
Because FS 2 features photoreal terrain and is auto updated by STEAM, there are a few problems if you don't have high speed, unlimited data networking. Users have experienced updates that could take multiple days to download in a lower speed network environment while disabling your ability to use FS 2 at the same time. A new download of the whole state of Utah has just been made available for free and it is about a 20G download.
So, other than actually flying the plane and looking out the window, Aerofly FS 2 is not yet a competitor to FSX, P3D, X-Plane etc. when it comes to all the things a human pilot does and the facilities a pilot might interact with. But, in terms of a visual flying experience, it now seems to be the simulation engine of choice especially for VR headset users who may never have been flight simulator enthusiasts and just want to fly around in an incredibly immersive 3D world. It will be interesting to watch whether this simulator is able to incorporate all of the other components of a fully featured flight simulator and still maintain its speed and fluidity.
Here is a link if anybody wants to take a look for themselves:
https://www.aerofly.com/aerofly_fs_2/index.htmlRod
