Ive got REX, and Im thinking of getting ASX. Ive seen and read info about each weather engine, and I was wondering what your thoughts are?When you bought ASX, and started using its weather engine, instead of REX, were you glad you did? Big difference, or subtle?thanks~dog

ASA is the king of the town when it comes to not just weather engine, but also user interface and usability in general. ASA is a product thta the developers took some time to think how would the user think, then they designed the product based on how a user would want to use the product.I cant say the same for REX 2.0, if you have the time or are lucky enough to work out how to use the weather engine with your flight plan. And its also very slow to do things in some cases like, starting the weather engine. Personally my recomendation is , dont buy rex for anything but the excellent textures its got, then use those textures with ASA weather. The tool for viewing enroute weather in ASA has given new life to my FSX experience much like rex textures have also.ASA weather and weather viewing tool is great, but no addoon textures.REX textures give you nice aiport and water textures, but i would rather use FSX weather than hASSLE with REX confusing and slow weather stuff. This part of rex i think lets down the whole product. Not vey well thought through in design.If you just after rex textures, then its an execellent tool and easy to use. JUst install the textures you want, and you never have to do it again till you bored of those textures.There is the option to start rex before fsx, and use rex to load textures that match the current weather, then shutdown rex, start fsx and ASA. Then youll will have rex textures to match current weather, with ASA weather. However it takes about 10 to 20 minutes to install rex textures, i dare not do this every flight. I have just installed the REALITY theme textures that come with rex and closed the rex chapter there.I think many if not most are using ASA and REX together, so depends what you want. You can even go check the many REX , ASA, REX+ASA vids on youtube, before you buy.If i could afford just one, i would go for ASA, simply beacuse the enroute weather viewing tool is just excellent and well done product. Cause am more of high jet flyerIf you are a low and slow prop flyer , then rex water textures could be top of your list. i am convinced that REX1 and REX2 weather/ user interface is buggy and too slow, but for textures only, its perfect.

I am inclined to believe the same. Currently using the wonderful REX textures with FSX stock weather and contemplating ASA. However their forum is also full of reported problems: issues with the global weather, cloud popping, you name it.How do you find all that? What is your opinion about visibility depection and visibility smoothing in ASA? Is there a way to tackle the issues with METAR visibility depiction: I am talking about the depiction of US 10sm METAR reading which should not be depicted as 10 sm weather cause the visibility is way better - usually close to the European 9999 depiction. REX attempted a solution for that. Albeit a strange one.

i am not a user of ASA but i am of REX and i have had no issues with the weather engine, the interface, or the speed in which it loads. sure the weather does not load instantly but i find once i have the weather engine in REX find my weather, i pick my plane, location, time and begin to fly, the weather is usually ready. and yes the added textures that you get with REX and not with ASA are great. you do have one other option and that is to use ASA for weather and FEX for textures. having used both i feel that FEX textures are just a bit better but they do not include airport environment textures which stinks. use what ever choice works best for your needs, my opinion is i like having one program do it all for me.Kyle

Thanks, Gents.Im going to get ASX. Wife's coming gatta go.-d

Thanks, Gents.Im going to get ASX. Wife's coming gatta go.-d

dont let the misses confuse you ASA is what you want not ASX, ASX is old product from same company

I am inclined to believe the same. Currently using the wonderful textures with FSX stock weather and contemplating ASA. However their forum is also full of reportted problems: issues with the global weather, cloud popping, you name it.How do you find all that? What is your opinion about visibility depection and visibility smoothing in ASA? Is there a way to tackle the issues with METAR visibility depiction: I am talking about the depiction of US 10sm METAR reading which should not be depicted as 10 sm weather cause the visibility is way better - usually close to the European 9999 depiction. REX attempted a solution for that. Albeit a strange one.

I am not too good on details of weather depiction and visibility issues, but there is a new patch out for ASA its 433Also there is a beta patch being tested at the momment, these might address the issues you mention. If you feeling brave you could download the beta patch.Still ASA is cool product so far.................

Wife's gone :-)Thanks, James. I'll get ASA instead.~dog

Personally, I still think the REX interface comes directly from the Department of Confusing Controls. Having said that, it is not impenetrable, just requires more effort to figure out than one might wish. Once you get it, it is no longer an issue. I have no problem with the weather, and the graphics are great. It takes a few more minutes to get started, but I think it is worth it.The flight planner function is much improved over 1.0 and is actually useful now that you can import FSX flight plans. They still have some work to do on it.The Weather Avoidance System map has gone dark for me. I know this is an issue they are working on, but isn't that big of a deal for me.I would say it is a must for screen shot artists. Weather is such a huge part of flying (duh) and it has really raised my awareness and a sky full of detailed clouds without a large frame hit is great.When it comes to weather alone, I wonder what the point-by-point comparison is between the two products? REX seems to provide weather that is accurate, as far as I know, and I enjoy the 100+ knot tailwind cross the Atlantic going east. What makes ASA weather better weather?

I lean toward ASA weather for smoothing (no sudden transitions) and the handling of low-level visiblity. Accuracy seems better in my area (DC suburbs) too.There may be similar controls for smoothing in REX but I haven't found them yet.Alan

As for weather depiction, i dont really care as long as it rains when it says rain , and windy when it says windy.However i prefer ASA cause it took me 5 mins to work out how to get my flight plan to show up on the weather view tool.With REX it took about 5 hours of trying and still could not work out how to get flight plan to show on weather view, also very sad is tha fact that rex seems to want to reload weather everytime you click to open a new window in its GUI. To me rex felt like trying to eat melting ice cream while driving at the same time, JUST A BIG MESS.With ASA weather view overliad on my flight plan i can see what winds am facing, what weather is upper ahead, visibility at arrival airport, the colourfull graphics and legends used in ASA weather moving map is 1000 x better than the rex moving map and then some.Its only since i got ASA that i cared about how the weather affects the flight, and you can see it all in colourfull depiction in real-time. Lets just say Rex is a failed attempt at ASA system.Rex is really lucky that we like the textures, cause to me, that about all its good for.And i take your point about the fact that if you bang your head up the rex waLL long enough you will figure it out, but I JUST DONT HAVE THE TIME. ASA knows we dont have the time, so its 100X simpler to use, works, and its by far much more colourfull.Since using ASA weather view, i have dropped my weather radar tool that shows you lame grpahics weather view, for the ASA weather tool, which i think is excellent, and then some.

Every negative point that James touches on here in regards to REX is aimed at version 1, all of which has been fixed OR upgraded in version 2.

For weather I prefer ASA (or ASX), simply for the fact that it interfaces with some of my essential 3rd party add-ons, like FSBuild, for accurate route planning and has the ability to download historical weather data for more realistic airliner flights.As far as visuals, REX, GEX and UTX is probably the best combo that you can currently get.-Pat

Every negative point that James touches on here in regards to REX is aimed at version 1, all of which has been fixed OR upgraded in version 2.

Not quite. I believe even after REX 2.0, ASA has a better, much faster, much more logical interface. From a software interface design standpoint, REX confuses categories from level to level. The flightplan creation is tedious to say the least, even after the update. I am undecided as to actual weather depiction, because I don't have time to compare, but ASA also seems to do a more realistic job. That said, the textures are worth the price, even if the latest weathermaker incarnation still isn't.

OK, I'll take the "Devil's Advocate" side here.I have both ASA and REX2. I like them both...depending on what I plan on doing in FSX. For me, they both have their pros and cons.ASA (and it's predecessor ASX) has been around a lot longer than REX. So I expect their developers to have more experience in things such as "user interface design", etc. But if you look back historically, the ASA\X developers received all the same "wrath complaints" during their early days from FS users, just like the REX guys are receiving now. ASA is a very solid weather engine now...but they went through their "growing pains" also (how soon we all seem to forget those things once a product has gone through several versions and updates).REX has only been around a relatively short time, with ONE revision (update to v2). The transition from v1 to v2 was very dramatic, and improved the product immensly. Yeah...it may still have "flight plan problems", etc, but only if you are trying to compare it "item for item" with ASA. Both products do things a little differently...and that is fine with me. One of the things I do like about REX is the ability for me to let it choose and load textures that are supposed to complement the current weather it downloads. I must admit I was rather surprised the first time I did this. It obviously chose texture sets for clouds, sky, etc, that I would never have chosen myself. And the results in FSX were really darn good! There are tons of sky and cloud texture combinations you could manually make using REX, and there were many of them I had never even tried before. Foolish me! I've discovered a whole new "world" of sky and cloud displays by letting REX choose for me, depending on the weather it downloads. There are combinations it chooses that I would have never tried myself before...and they all look very impressive in FSX.I like 'em both. I use 'em both, depending on what I want at the time. One thing to keep in mind...ASA contains NO textures...it is a weather engine ONLY. So if you want to use ASA, you really need a second addon for textures. Today, that basically leaves you two other chioices...REX or FEX. For me, I'd choose REX. The textures included with it are great, AND you can use the other aspects of the program if you want to...or not. I also have FEX...bought it a long time ago. But I simply don't use it anymore. With both ASA and REX, I have everything I need now, with TWO weather engines to choose from. I can do things with ASA that I can't do with REX. But I can also do things with REX that I can't do with ASA. Hmmm....that sounds a LOT like the same thing that happens with OTHER FSX addons I have that perform the same type of things...aircraft, scenery, etc, etc.Rick