I just wanted to pass along that after recently rebuilding my FSX-server rig and some minor tweaks to my FSX-client rig (hosting ASX & XGrpahics), that I've never had such a good looking cloud and sky environment in FSX, period (currenlty using 1159-beta). Now, serveral thoughts come to mind as to what may have truely been the point of improvment.1) Upgraded FSX-server OS from WinXP 32-bit to WinXPx64 64-bit. Better use of a quad-core?2) Followed NickN tweaks to clean the FSX-server to a pristine state after a fresh build. More CPU cycles mean stable sky & clouds. Link in sig below.3) My best guess, since I'm in a simconnect network environment, is the fact that I removed my "ESET NOD32 Security Suite" package from both by FSX-server and my FSX-client. This suite contained a software-firewall along with every other imaginable antivirus product known to man. I simply downgraded to just the ESET NOD32 Antivirus Installer on both boxes and disable NOD32 on the FSX-server when actually running a simulation. I now think that some of the ASX hiccups I have seen recenlty may have been influanced by a software-based firewall. If you have such a similar software firewall installed and run a similar network configuration as I do, uninstall it (renable & configure the default Windows firewall) and see if it doesn't make a difference. I too had all the proper ports open and simmconnect running and so on, but this still takes time and CPU cycles to process all this extremely fast network traffic and it may have at least contributed to the improvments.Too bad I changed so much all at once, failing to nail down the most significant point of improvement.Regards,

I would like to be able to select a flight plan, download the weather, update the textures, and then be able to start FSX.. rather than having to wait for all the weather downloads and updates from everywhere first...What I mean is if I select a flight plan I don't really need to get the weather from anywhere but for stations along my flight plan.. all the rest are just fluff that takes a long time to download and parse.Also if a select a flight plan the chart / report that appears always shows no wind and wind speed at my departure location.. the map shows wind direction and speed.. is this normal?

Hi,Suggestions for the future can be made to tell-us(AT)hifisim.com. We do appreciate all ideas.For your FP situation, please start a new thread and give us as much information as you can.Thanks, Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/