I'd welcome any views on these products. Searches here don't address my questions.I've flown with FEX (happily - shame the weather engine looks like vapourware) and default weather, to date.I use Horizon's photoscenery for England, and like it.I've tried UTX, but didn't get on with it - framerates were an issue, but more to the point, I didn't see much benefit from accurate road placement etc in e.g. France, when I didn't have a clue whether it was accurate (cf Horizon, where I can follow the M62 across the Pennines).But now that I'm a PNW FTX addict, I'm thinking, I need to improve looks elsewhere. REX & GEX seem the obvious contenders. Should I invest?I see that REX has weather, too. I have to say I've not been unhappy with the default weather, so I'm a bit reluctant to part with 25 quid to get ASE, but then I see many reviews that rate ASE well above REX - and of course experience says that a dedicated addon is likely to offer more than the "extra" included in e.g. REX.I can imagine there might be a few "get 'em all" responses :) If anyone can break it down a bit more, that would be great.I've a new 4ghz watercooled rig on order, so I have a little overhead with framerates (for the next 2 weeks, anyway!)All and any comments much appreciated. I fly GA birds, but also love the payware heavies, so my interest is "all aviation" I suppose.

Ok, here's my 2c:Since you have FEX, you have beautiful cloud replacers. Can't remember if FEX also replaces water and runway/taxiway textures, but FEX and ASE are a good match.GEX is very nice as well. I would recommend it, it complements the changes FEX or REX and ASE bring.I'd reconsider the usage of UTX. It's not just about roads, it's about rivers and lakes, coastlines and landclass as well. If UTX eats framerates, turn traffic off or night lighting off. Without them, the performance impact is minimal. I am using GEX, UTX, REX and ASE together and I am very happy with this combination.I would NOT recommend REX for the weather engine - ASE is a lot better and faster.

Thanks darem - that's exactly the sort of view I wanted.FEX does water/sky/clouds - all lovely, I have to say. So REX would add runways and weather, I guess. Part of me says, dispense with the runways, keep FEX clouds etc, and go ASE for weather. Then GEX for ground textures.More thoughts would be good.

I'd welcome any views on these products. Searches here don't address my questions.I've flown with FEX (happily - shame the weather engine looks like vapourware) and default weather, to date.I use Horizon's photoscenery for England, and like it.I've tried UTX, but didn't get on with it - framerates were an issue, but more to the point, I didn't see much benefit from accurate road placement etc in e.g. France, when I didn't have a clue whether it was accurate (cf Horizon, where I can follow the M62 across the Pennines).But now that I'm a PNW FTX addict, I'm thinking, I need to improve looks elsewhere. REX & GEX seem the obvious contenders. Should I invest?I see that REX has weather, too. I have to say I've not been unhappy with the default weather, so I'm a bit reluctant to part with 25 quid to get ASE, but then I see many reviews that rate ASE well above REX - and of course experience says that a dedicated addon is likely to offer more than the "extra" included in e.g. REX.I can imagine there might be a few "get 'em all" responses :) If anyone can break it down a bit more, that would be great.I've a new 4ghz watercooled rig on order, so I have a little overhead with framerates (for the next 2 weeks, anyway!)All and any comments much appreciated. I fly GA birds, but also love the payware heavies, so my interest is "all aviation" I suppose.

You'll get more enjoyment with FSX and addons with an updated state of the art system so happy to see you have a new system on the way. Yet, even with the latest hardware, FSX can bring a system to its knees if not configured properly. I'm not going to say good or bad things about the products you mentioned other than they are all excellent products. You say you like the default weather but then, if you look at some of the posts when FSX was first released and all the complaints about the weather engine, the "ugly" clouds, the bad frame rates, etc., you'd understand the need for a commercial weather program addon. One of the great things about ASE is the fact you can go back to an historical date and fly in that weather (maybe a hurricane? a tornado?). But, to run any weather program, photo scenery, or commercial aircraft effectively and with the most enjoyment, you need to tweak your FSX settings to give you the best performance for YOUR system and moving all the sliders to the right is not the best performance and, in most cases, not the best graphics. Instead of wondering whether you should get a product or not, you should look at distributors like Flight One who have a 30 day money back guarantee if you're not satisfied. Or FS Dreamteam that allows you to install the airports and demo them for 5 or 10 minutes at a time and then you can either purchase the product or remove it. Then you can see the affect of the product on YOUR system as most systems are not equal. And, I know this link has been bantered around a lot but the author is the developer of GEX and it provides worthwhile tips on setting up and tuning FSX plus addons like UTX: http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=29041. Hope this helps!Best regards,Jim

The new version of REX is very much better than the old one, it loads a lot quicker and has a lot of nice touches in there, such as replacement textures for pretty much every aspect of FS, from better runway and taxiway surfaces, to a large range of choices in the light shading of the sky and water, although the water is not its strong point in my opinion, unless you want the 'Caribbean Blue' stuff, which certainly is good in REX, however, inland water for Europe is not that great.In its original version 1 form, REX was good, but painfully slow to load up, however, the new version 2 incarnation has done away with the load times it used to suffer and optimised things a lot. The weather and flight planning stuff in REX is very useful too, but perhaps more importantly, REX is good in the sense that you can just 'set and forget it' if you like, or, if you prefer, really indulge yourself in controlling every aspect of things with the use of that weather map, metar and flight planning stuff. That aspect gives it a good deal of flexibility for a wide range of users. Definitely worth a look in my opinion.Al

Al, do you use REX for weather in the sim, then?

Yup, although I do use some of what FSUIPC can do with regard to icing and turbulence, but I use REX for the weather based on real world stuff via the web. I've found that if you don't go overboard with the eye candy that REX can manage, then it usually looks quite like what you see outside the window if I ever use FS to fly near my home.That's really the test for me, if it made weather that did not look like what I can see out of the window, then I wouldn't use it, and the test is usually pretty good since EGCC (a major source of UK aviation weather data) is less than six miles away from me and EGCD, which also provides weather info, is even closer than that - literally just up the road from me. So if an FS weather program can't get it close to what I see out of my window, then I would know - I can see airliners on finals to EGCC from my house, so what they are flying through should be emulated by REX if I use real world weather, and as I say, I've found it does okay on that score.Being that I mostly fly gliders in real life, I'm pretty picky about getting realistic weather.Al