I've recently gotten back into flight simming (and for the first time ever into FSX). What do you consider to be the best addon, or combination of addons, for improving the overall experience in-game without sacrificing precious frame rates or performance? Real Environment X looks amazing. Flight Environment X isn't as well advertised or glossy, but it seems there exist many happy users. What about ActiveSky Evolution? Or ActiveSky X? I've seen screenshots from people who own several of these products, but doesn't the one most recently installed override the textures of the others? I will be doing a lot of VATSIM flying with complex aircraft in busy airspace, so performance is important to me. I used ActiveSky 6 in FS9 many years ago and enjoyed it.Specs:Intel i7-875k (3.84 GHz)8GB (4x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3/1333 MHzGTX 470 1.2 GB EVGA Superclocked1 TB SATA-IIWindows 7 64-bitetc...Thanks.Brendan

See my gold stars bellow.

Use ASE for weather generation and REX for textures. Get the EMBmod for lighting/bloom and FS Water Configurator to assist with water effects.

REX is probably the best bang for your bucks as it can improve the look of many aspects of FS. Active Sky is well worth a look if you want some serious weather simulation. The various Ultimate Terrain add-ons do a lot for the appearance of ground textures, roads, traffic and lighting.All three of them can make things look significantly better than they do by default, but they do add to the system overhead.Al

I'd get REX 2 first. FEX is very similar but doesn't offer as much features as REX does (which has more kind of textures and also, amongst others, a weather engine). I wouldn't spend money on both, really. I do own both and also use both but that's only because I bought FEX long before REX existed: that's also why there are many happy FEX users, although it has to be said that some people like certain FEX textures more (I still use FEX water animation and color and others prefer the FEX clouds). However, if I had to choose now, I would go for REX without thinking, also because it's still being developed (BIG update is coming up!) while the original devs of FEX have left the building and even though Flight1 has taken over control of FEX, nothing has happened with it for a few years already.You can use both btw because in both programs you can select which options to install or not. REX also has a weather engine: give it a try and if you think it's not good enough, then start looking at ASE, which is the best weather engine out there. Beware though, it is ONLY a weather engine and it doesn's come with new textures or whatever. That's why I advice to get REX first because ASE without REX (or FEX) is nice but obviously the skies won't look as great with default FSX clouds as it will with REX (or FEX) clouds.With your system specs the mentioned programs won't have much (if any) effect on performance. REX (or FEX) clouds may be a bit more heavy on the system when you choose the higher res options, but even then the impact won't be really big. However, if you are used to flying with a default clear blue FSX sky and then suddenly change to overcast situations (because REX and ASE makes it all look so awesome), fps might get hurt... but that's not due to REX or ASE, because that also will happen when you use heavy weather with default FSX stuff! :(

Use ASE for weather generation and REX for textures. Get the EMBmod for lighting/bloom and FS Water Configurator to assist with water effects.

+ 1 here.