Merry Christmas And I'm Confused A Little

[Dondo 0]

First off, Merry Christmas everyone (or, if you don't celebrate, Season Greetings.. :) ) Wife and I are not opening our presents until tonight when the rest of the family can get here, so, I'm drinking coffee, thinking about flight simming...There seems to have been a rash of scenery, environment and weather addons lately and I'm confused.UTXASAFEXFTXGEXREXI believe that I bought GEX (Ground Environ Extreme?) for FS9 years ago.When I moved onto FSX, I purchased UTX (Ultimate Environ Extreme?), it changed my textures and looks really good. I think that is the one I have, I simpily don't remember. Am I confused, is the GEX for FSX as well? I dunno.Now, I'm looking at all this fancy photoscenery stuff and messing up my acronyms even more.Since I'm happy with my textures and terrain, I'm kicking around the idea of fixing up the weather simulation part of FSX. (if you've read any of my other posts dealing with my hardware issues, you'll probably think I'm nuts to add ANOTHER variable to my flight sim experience..., but I can't help myself.Anyway, could someone break down the differences between the addons I listed above and any others? Maybe if the list gets detailed enough, we could pin this post to help new sim folks figure out the difference between all these things.Have a good morning everyone!Dondo

[Guest firehawk44]

First off, Merry Christmas everyone (or, if you don't celebrate, Season Greetings.. :) ) Wife and I are not opening our presents until tonight when the rest of the family can get here, so, I'm drinking coffee, thinking about flight simming...There seems to have been a rash of scenery, environment and weather addons lately and I'm confused.UTXASAFEXFTXGEXREXI believe that I bought GEX (Ground Environ Extreme?) for FS9 years ago.When I moved onto FSX, I purchased UTX (Ultimate Environ Extreme?), it changed my textures and looks really good. I think that is the one I have, I simpily don't remember. Am I confused, is the GEX for FSX as well? I dunno.Now, I'm looking at all this fancy photoscenery stuff and messing up my acronyms even more.Since I'm happy with my textures and terrain, I'm kicking around the idea of fixing up the weather simulation part of FSX. (if you've read any of my other posts dealing with my hardware issues, you'll probably think I'm nuts to add ANOTHER variable to my flight sim experience..., but I can't help myself.Anyway, could someone break down the differences between the addons I listed above and any others? Maybe if the list gets detailed enough, we could pin this post to help new sim folks figure out the difference between all these things.Have a good morning everyone!Dondo

NickN (Nick Needham) from GEX and some others had an excellent discussion regarding the types of scenery enhancement programs and landclass here: http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=24965. Hope this helps!Best regards,Jim

[Art_P 6]

And and Merry Christmas to you also Dondo.Nick's good advice doesn't cover all of the applications you listed so:UTX is for landclass, mostly urban, as explained. I find it to be an essential addon.ASA is the latest version of HiFI Sim's weather engine to download and display actual weather conditions. Previous versions for FSX were ASV6.5 and ASX. FSX has this capability, but I never could get it to work right. I used ASV6.5 and now ASA with success.FEX provides new textures for clouds, water, etc. For the time being I am getting along with the default so have no opinion.FTX is rather nice scenery for Australia only. I tried the free Tasmania scenery and it caused my video card to crash.GEX is improved ground textures as explained. For the time being I am getting along with the default so have no opinion.REX is a replacement for FEX that has upgraded textures and a weather engine. REX or FEX can also be used with ASA.Mesh scenery, not on your list, provides more detailed earth contours (elevation changes). For now, I'm getting along with the default in FSX. It was essential in FS9.

[Guest PPSFA]

Just to clarify, REX is not a replacement for FEX, they are 2 seperate, competing, addons. FEX is the original and has been out for years.