I think this has been answered before but which one is better for flying in FS9.I'm debating which one to buy and both seem like excellent products.Any help from would be much appreciated.Thanks Kim

Buy Active Sky for the realistic and stable weather system, buy REX for the outstanding textures it provides. In my opinion both are a excellent combination for FS9.Regards

Buy Active Sky for the realistic and stable weather system, buy REX for the outstanding textures it provides. In my opinion both are a excellent combination for FS9.Regards

Yep, Couldn't agree more.

Yep, Couldn't agree more.

Buy both. Use Rex for the textures. They are out of this world. ActiveSky 6.5 is the stable weather program.Carl perry 7+ year sim pilot

May I interject I've been more than happy with Active Sky Advanced (Evolution)?

Better yet...ASE for WeatherREX for Water textures/runways/sun/etc.The Free HD Environment textures by Pablo Diaz (here in the Avsim Library) for sky and clouds

Could anyone give me some info on active sky advanced, I use AS6.5 running on a networked machine and have spent a lot of time tweaking the settings to get it working well. Is ASE a major improvement? Thanks

I use Evolution which is the replacement for Active Sky in conjunction with Ground Environment Pro (GEP). I like the results although evolution can take a minute or so to load when starting up FS9.I'd be interested to hear more about REX.Is REX better than GEP....Iain

Is REX better than GEP

No, no, it is something different:REX - environment textures (clouds, sun, water, runways, aprons) + WX enginehttp://www.realenvir...me.com/fs9.htmlGE - just ground textures

No, no, it is something different:REX - environment textures (clouds, sun, water, runways, aprons) + WX enginehttp://www.realenvir...me.com/fs9.htmlGE - just ground textures

Hi Rafal;Thanks for the correction.In your opinion, do you find the textures offered by REX to be problematic with regard to frame rates?As I mentioned, I'm using Evolution and GEP (evolution is new to me but GEP I've had for years).How would evolution, GEP and REX work together? Is it wise to mix all three together?Thanks. BTW, I don;t want to hijack the thread subject too much, Iain

do you find the textures offered by REX to be problematic with regard to frame rates?

No, not really. The compromise between quality and FPS is fine. However, I found Pablo DIaz freeware HD clouds more FPS friendly (while looking superb).Anyway, while in the REX menu, you can choose the resolution of the cloud textures, including the dxt3 format, so frames will not be a problem anyway.

How would evolution, GEP and REX work together? Is it wise to mix all three together?

I hope someone else will join this discussion, as I am using only the standard version of GE. I have not upgraded to GEP as although I appreciate the WX integration feature, I find it unrealistic for my needs, as the weather is rarely the same at both departure and arrival airports.But I believe there would be no problems of using the three addons together and results could be very pleasing. :(

No, not really. The compromise between quality and FPS is fine. However, I found Pablo DIaz freeware HD clouds more FPS friendly (while looking superb).Anyway, while in the REX menu, you can choose the resolution of the cloud textures, including the dxt3 format, so frames will not be a problem anyway.I hope someone else will join this discussion, as I am using only the standard version of GE. I have not upgraded to GEP as although I appreciate the WX integration feature, I find it unrealistic for my needs, as the weather is rarely the same at both departure and arrival airports.But I believe there would be no problems of using the three addons together and results could be very pleasing. :(

Wouldn't REX and Evolution do the same thing - both are weather generators? From my reading, REX is only textures with flight planning and weather generation (not live). Evolution on the other hand is everything, BUT no textures., Iain

Wouldn't REX and Evolution do the same thing - both are weather generators?

Unlike ASV65/ASE I don't know of the REX weather engine being able to integrate with GEP textures on FS startup.I may be wrong though, as I don't use GEP, so sorry in case I'm wrong. I'm sure someone using GEP will come in here soon and drop a line to clarify.

ActiveSky, Ground Encironment Pro and REX all work fine together. I use them as detailed above, REX for textures, AS for weather generation and GE Pro for ground textures (and autogen alignment!). I don't ever use the feature that lets you copy new ground textures in based on the weather, I don't really like that kind of thing, if we did all these things for every flight it would be bed time before we get off the ground. I just use the default middle of the road textures all the time, and the difference between the sets isn't that much anyway.One thing about these addons, seems like they are unnecessarily complex and slow. I run them once, install the textures, and never really touch them again (apart from AS obviously, which needs to run every time, but not for copying textures, it just hovers in the background feeding weather to FS). All the other features are fantastic but take up so much flying time :)

Thanks everyone for getting back to me with their suggestions and this morning I went and bought Active Sky v6.5 .I think this will do fine for now and when I get more experience on it I'll upgrade to something else.So thankyou very much and it's nice to know that you can count on people to come to your rescue and hear what they have to say about the product they have bought.Kimmer