Real World Weather - again

[WarHorse47]

For the last few weeks I've been reading different packages (and individual opinions) on getting real world weather in FSX. Up to now I typically fly with the stock Fair Weather theme, but its becoming real boring.

The majority of my flights are local, Washington State with ORBX PNW scenery so whatever I choose has to be compatible. Also, I don't want something that is memory intensive (like during a thunderstorm) that would generate an OOM.

I've been looking at FSXWX (freeware) as well as the various top payware packages such as Opus, Active Sky Next and FS Global. Lots of nice YouTube videos. Still, each of these recommends replacing cloud textures. So I guess I also need to look at Rex 4. My impression is that the payware approach can get costly, especially if things don't work out.

Considering that my flights are short and local, I've also considered various packages on weather themes. This seems the simplest approach by just selecting the weather them that most represents what I see outside my window.

I know there have been several threads in the forum and many different opinions, but I'm still undecided. If I do make a decision, I'm hoping to catch one of the upcoming holiday sales. Anyways, all the choices have caused me to procrastinate on making a decision. So any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[papab]

You will find that REX Essential Plus OD is now on sale at several places 1/2 off..
Do not miss the sale.......You will be blown away with the cloud textures/weather on your local VFR flights

Yes I am a BETA tester for REX and have been working with this product since it came out, it is the best in my un-biased opinion


Rick

[henrystreet]

For the last few weeks I've been reading different packages (and individual opinions) on getting real world weather in FSX. ... If I do make a decision, I'm hoping to catch one of the upcoming holiday sales. Anyways, all the choices have caused me to procrastinate on making a decision. So any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

I use OpusFSX and use RW weather on almost every flight. That said, I will move to different airports (in my case, naval air stations) if the type of flying I want to do does not match the weather where I am. That's the thing about RW weather for me. It is what it is.

If you are going to remain in one geographic location, you might be better with weather themes rather than emulation of current weather. Not sure how some of the other packages integrate themes, Opus has that capability but it is not the software's strength.

Hope this helps, definitely get something with weather! It makes the flying MUCH more interesting and fun.

[JimmyRFR]

I personally use Active Sky Next with Rex 4 for the textures; I've been very pleased with both the Rex 4 textures as well as the real weather offered by ASN.

ASN does a brilliant job, in my opinion. Seamless weather loading, transitions to different weather without sudden changes or flashing, and one of my favorites is the local precipitation, where you are able to fly in and out of rain showers relative to the clouds.

Also, I just saw Rex 4 on sale right now for 30% off, I think at FSS.

However, if you have concerns about performance, it might be worthwhile to play with FSXWX & some free textures to see if it works for you first!

[lownslo]

I have been happy with ASN and HDEv2 textures (freeware). ASN has been bulletproof for me since its release... and always good weather depiction. Easy set-up and fly.

Greg

[DaveB]

I have REX'E +O/D and while I don't use the weather engine, I do use it for the textures. For real weather, I use ASN. I've had little or no problems with it and it's lightning fast.. even on my 2500k. I don't like the REX WX engine.. nothing particularly wrong with it.. I just don't like it.:)

ATB
DaveB:)

[Roger]

I have REX'E +O/D and while I don't use the weather engine, I do use it for the textures. For real weather, I use ASN. I've had little or no problems with it and it's lightning fast.. even on my 2500k. I don't like the REX WX engine.. nothing particularly wrong with it.. I just don't like it.:)

ATB
DaveB:)

Hi Dave,

How do you turn weather off in Rex E and o/d?

[vortex]

FSXWX is a very good weather generator, especially as it's free. I tried FSrealWX but did not find it as good or as stable as FSXWX. Before you go for payware textures, try the free cloud textures which are available online: Oscar-Clouds V4, Open Clouds (free if you live in the UK) or HDE v2.0. All of these are probably not as good as ASN and REX4 but cost nothing so have got to be worth a try!

[Dimus]

I personally use Active Sky Next with Rex 4 for the textures; I've been very pleased with both the Rex 4 textures as well as the real weather offered by ASN.

ASN does a brilliant job, in my opinion. Seamless weather loading, transitions to different weather without sudden changes or flashing, and one of my favorites is the local precipitation, where you are able to fly in and out of rain showers relative to the clouds.

Also, I just saw Rex 4 on sale right now for 30% off, I think at FSS.

However, if you have concerns about performance, it might be worthwhile to play with FSXWX & some free textures to see if it works for you first!

I'm on the same page and love both packages, plus I use them in both FSX and P3D v2.4. Performance can be controlled by the many ASN preferences, the most important being the maximum number of cloud layers. Even setting these to 2 creates amazing results.

[DaveB]

Hi Dave,

How do you turn weather off in Rex E and o/d?

Hi Roger:wavey: You turn the options on/off in the main config pages (weather in this case.. if I remember right). There are a few for the weather engine.. I have them all unticked. Make sure that you untick 'download real weather at startup' (or words to that effect) too. REX.. for all it's positives.. is just too darned big. You could spend an entire lifetime going through all the various settings! I selected the textures I want to use then load them and that's it. I've not opened REX in ages;)

ATB
DaveB:)

[Bjoern]

Save your money and go for FSXWX and any freeware cloud textures you can find.

[Daube]

Save your money and go for FSXWX and any freeware cloud textures you can find.


FSXWX is a very good weather generator, especially as it's free. I tried FSrealWX but did not find it as good or as stable as FSXWX. Before you go for payware textures, try the free cloud textures which are available online: Oscar-Clouds V4, Open Clouds (free if you live in the UK) or HDE v2.0. All of these are probably not as good as ASN and REX4 but cost nothing so have got to be worth a try!

I completely agree with these two.
Before going for payware products, you should take some time to try the freeware ones, that won't cost you a penny.
I personnally use FSRealWX lite, but I rarely trigger it when I fly over the PNW region... because I always get the same boring grey sky (which is, from what I read on the internet, actually quite realistic). When I wanted some interesting, non-real weather in FSX, I was simply choosing the theme "building storms", and I would set the weather change frequency to its maximum in the weather options of the sim. That weather theme looks much better than the "fair weather" theme and it's not taxing on the FPS. Teh weather evolution is also nice, as your weather will change to either better or worse, ramdomly but very progressively. These random changes usually produce some very intersesting patterns, and sometimes, some very "screenshot-able" weather too :)

For the cloud textures, I would definitely recommend you to start with the freeware HDEv2 package, and I would even recommend you to keep with the 512x512 textures instead of the high-res ones. These 512x512 textures will look much better than the default FSX clouds already (and I mean, MUCH better), and their impact on the FPS in heavy weather is quite limited too. Then, depening on how your computer reacts, you can always try the higher resolution ones.

As written in some other topics, keep in mind that the HDEv2 pack was made for FS9. The cloud textures inside are fully compatible with FSX, but the sky textures (sky colors) are NOT compatible at all. However, these sky textures have been converted to FSX format and reuploaded into a distinct package that can be dowloaded from the main download sites. The description of the package is quite explicit. I really recommend you to install these textures, the dusk, day and down skies won't be the same again.

All the things above will allow you to understand if you need more or not. If you need more (different textures, more features etc...) then you can switch to payware without regrets :)

[OleBoy]

Edit: Daube got in before I was finished typing. :dizzy:

I'm up for some real weather myself. Something that connects to a weather station possibly and stay updated in real time. I don't want anything bloated with a lot of features. A simple Click and GO. HD not a necessity.

What say the hive? Suggestions?

[WarHorse47]

As written in some other topics, keep in mind that the HDEv2 pack was made for FS9. The cloud textures inside are fully compatible with FSX, but the sky textures (sky colors) are NOT compatible at all. However, these sky textures have been converted to FSX format and reuploaded into a distinct package that can be dowloaded from the main download sites. The description of the package is quite explicit. I really recommend you to install these textures, the dusk, day and down skies won't be the same again.Hmmm... Got a file name or link for the FSX compatible sky textures??

I downloaded HDEv2 the other day and was just examining the zip file contents and noticed the sky textures. Before I start playing around, its best I have all the information.

I thought I would start by changing the various cloud and sky textures first, before moving on to a weather engine. Orbx provided some nice weather themes which I occasionally use and would be a good test bed to see if there are any performance hits, etc.

Thanks. :very_drunk:

[Daube]

The package that you currently have is HDEv2. That pack is made for FS9. From this pack, you can safely use the cloud textures, you can copy-paste them in the corresponding folder in your FSX install right now.
Also, while I recommended to use 512x512 textures, this is especially valid for cumulus and stratus textures, because these textures will be displayed on a lot of individual cloud objects in the sky. However, for cirrus textures, you can go for the high res one directly, because that texture appears just a few times and covers a huge sky area, so the impact is very low.

The sky textures are in this package: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/18029/fsx-hde-sky-textures-v20/

But please, two things FIRST:
1- make a copy of the original textures before replacing them. Just in case.
2- read that topic which talks about the HDE textures, it might contain some usefull tips: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?35013-HDE-High-Definition-Environment-V2-0

[flyinion]

I've been using REX Essentials Plus OD for weather, though I'm waiting for their new weather engine REX 4 Weather Direct to come out hopefully soon so I can make a decision between that and ASN for an upgrade (tried the ASN trial and liked it). I have REX4 Texture Direct already but that's just textures and supposedly the new REX4 weather engine will be able to use it to inject textures on the fly to keep them matching the weather. However the older REX3 (Essentials plus OD) is about to get a patch that will also update its weather engine a bit so if it's on sale right now for a good price it might be worth it.

I think you'll actually see an improvement (depending on how any new textures affect your performance) with real weather vs. the "fair weather" theme. I use the fair weather theme for general FPS tuning since you want some clouds around for that, and noticed that when I later on loaded up real weather in the same area I had gained a slight bit of performance. I'm thinking the large amounts of small clouds Fair Weather generates must somehow be a bigger load on the system. I was definitely surprised by that.

[Roger]

Hi Roger:wavey: You turn the options on/off in the main config pages (weather in this case.. if I remember right). There are a few for the weather engine.. I have them all unticked. Make sure that you untick 'download real weather at startup' (or words to that effect) too. REX.. for all it's positives.. is just too darned big. You could spend an entire lifetime going through all the various settings! I selected the textures I want to use then load them and that's it. I've not opened REX in ages;)

ATB
DaveB:)

Thanks Dave:ernaehrung004:.