HiI am on the lookout for the best weather addon for mainly FSX but if it can also work with fs9 that would be great.My choices seem to be1. REX - Real Environment Xtreme v2.02. Active Sky EvolutionNow while having nice cloulds is great my main requirment is that if I want to fly in thundershowers I find after a few miles I am out of it or I cannot pre-program landing in such conditions before starting my flight in default FSX weather, so that is really what I am looking for.Your help and suggestions will be most welcome.thankskrishan

Well, I can't compare the weather engine of REX with activesky because I haven't really used activesky. What I can say is that the rex weather is good and even when activesky was a little bit better, i'd still go for REX because of the water/clouds

I actually use both! ASE for the Weather generator, and REX 2.0 for the textures. Hi-Fi's XGraphic textures are nice too, but I prefer REX's more. ASE's weather is more detailed, and gives you more options, like the number of cloud layers. turbulence etc.. REX's weather engine is more simplex, but does give a good representation of the weather. It's method of incremental loading could be annoying though, ie: Flashing sky textures during load and depiction.

Iv;e only noticed flashing textures when Rex is loading weather at the start of the flight, it seems to update smoothly when updating the weather during the flight.

I also have both. I bought ASE because of issues I had during flight with REX. For example, I'd be flying along in cloudy weather, then REX would start updating and all the clouds vanished. Then 10 seconds later, they all returned. I had the flashing issue also. LOVE the REX textures for clouds, water, airports, etc. ASE does not come with textures.Anyway, I've only had ASE a few days now, but it's been great. My only minor complaint is that ASE seems to put too many coulds where the weather reports says none are. I've turned some of my cloud sliders down to reduce this and also turned the cloud density down in FSX from Max to High (even though ASE says not to). I'm getting it to look like I want, and some of this is personal preference because METAR doesn't report all clouds. -Don

Thanks for the responses guysSo it sounds like ASE is better for the weather engine which is what I am really looking for.Now with textures, does ASE proide any real difference in cloud appearence compared to default FSX clouds?And, does either of these s/w cause a reduction in FPS?I say this because I have traffic X and even though I find it hardly adds much traffic at 69% it causes about a 20% reduction in FPS at heathrow, while traffic 2005 in FS9 is excellent and no real impact on FPS. I almost always end up flying FS9 becuase of this.regardskrishan

I use Active Sky Evolution w/ Graphics X. I heard that REX textures are really good nice, but can be a bit heavy on performance, so I went with Graphics X and I am very happy with the results.

I use Active Sky Evolution w/ Graphics X. I heard that REX textures are really good nice, but can be a bit heavy on performance, so I went with Graphics X and I am very happy with the results.

HiSo in the web site is says ASX + X Graphics, so it also works with ASE then?Whats the differenece between ASE and ASX?

Things will look different with ASE even if you just use the default FS clouds, because it will employ them in a better fashion owing to the fact that it interprets METARS in a far more sophisticated manner than any other weather engine. Having said that, if you add REX, even the default weather engine's interpretation of METARS is improved by the fact your cloud set is prettier, and it is improved further still by the REX weather engine if you use that too.Ultimately, if you want the best, then that would be the REX cloud set and the ASE engine manipulating them, which is what many people go for (including myself). ASE will work with both FS9 and FSX, so that's good too. Where cloud tweaks are concerned, I use REX for FSX and FS Elemental for FS9 because I happen to like the things FS Elemental does to FS9.REX is indeed a bit of a hit on performance by the way, but there are a lot of options in relation to it, so it can be fine tuned a bit in that regard.Al

Give Open Clouds a shot before you plop down money anything. http://www.fsopen.co.uk/software/openclouds/ Otherwise if you have the money to spend, REX textures + ASE weather will give you the most features.

The best combination of payware or freeware is ASE for weather and either REX or FEX for clouds. I personally prefer the FEX 1024 textures but a LOT of people prefer REX. Some prefer Xgraphics. It's really what looks good to you. If you can afford to try difgferent ones, go for it.Vic

Give Open Clouds a shot before you plop down money anything. http://www.fsopen.co.uk/software/openclouds/ Otherwise if you have the money to spend, REX textures + ASE weather will give you the most features.

+1 .... I am using FEX with the FREE Open Clouds weather generator. Here is a little vid I made and you can see the clouds in action

Thanks to everyone that responded, I now can decide, will go first with just ASE but not sure if to buy it as a package with X graphics or just by itself and later buy REX, at the moment given that I get about 18fps at heathrow with traffic X at 69% not sure I want to take on a a drop in fps.regardskrishan

Good decision, you can see if ASE alone floats your boat. Since it does indeed do a much better job than the default weather engine, that will probably be the case.Be aware though, that ASE has the potential to bring FS to a standstill if you go mad with cloud layer depiction on it! By default it keeps things reasonable, so it's not a problem in normal use, but if you go mad and have fifty layers of cloud depicted up to 60,000 feet, it will make even the best PC have a nervous breakdown LOLI don't think you'll be disappointed with ASE though, it is an awesome bit of software and it's easy to use too.Al

hi,Based on my experience as a new ASE user, ASE + REX textures is easier on frame rate than REX weather engine + Rex textures as far as weather updates are concerned. I don't notice them with ASE. It was not the case with REX: I had stutters and and strange clouds depiction during that phase.