I purchased ASE for my FSX program and love it, what I am questioning is whether I should purchase REX to improve upon the weather simulation within FSX. As I understand it, ASE only uses the weather graphics (ie clouds) that are built into the FSX weather generator. I have seen youtube videos where others have added REX and the cloud rendering is phenominal. How do the two interact. I understand the REX is it's own weather generator and I don't need that since I have ASE, but I also know there is a function to turn off weather generation and utilize the graphics only from REX to augment FSX and ASE.I have been using FSX since its early days, but it is only recently that I have ventured into addons such as FSUIPC, IF, ASE and payware aircraft. So I consider myself rather inept at trying to gain the best weather generation that I can. I would appreciate it if some of the seasoned Flight Simmers could help me tweak my use of the current ASE program and let me know wheather it is worth the investment in REX or some other program to enhance how weather looks in FSX.I have a I3 CPU with a GT250 graphics card along with 4 GB of Ram, my system seems to handle everything I have asked it to date. I really would love to increase the look of clouds and thunderstorms being generated when flying.I appreciate any and all help that can be provided.J KiefferGreenville NC

Hi,There is also our X Graphics that you could look at, that directly interacts with ASE. Or REX will work with ASE. There is an option in REX to turn off it's weather so there would be no conflicts.

Hello All,I gotta tell you, I am a dummy when it comes to this weather generation/texture display stuff. I just fly on VATSIM and want the most realistic experience enroute from point A to point B. I have ASE for FS9 and previously had the cloud textures from HD Environment installed in the main texture folder of FS9. I never have to reinstall the textures and ASE always seemed to pick out the right texture for the weather I was experiencing at the time. But, all the talk on the forums about how awesome it was to use ASE with the textures from REX caught my interest so I finally bought and installed REX for the textures only. My problem is I don't know if what I'm seeing is a texture ASE pulled from REX, HDE, or default. In the REX Configuration settings I have the weather engine turned off...diehard ASE fan! I do have under the WX tab (1) Enable METAR Real Visibilty, but since I have the Wx Engine stopped from loading does leaving this enabled do anything? (2) Also enabled are Realistic Storm Shear, Realistic Icing, Thunderstorm Dominance, and Realistic CAVOK. But again, without running the weather engine running, do these may any difference in my flight sim? Should I leave them off? For the Options Tab I have it set to install everything except Pitch Black and Cloud DXT3 Optimized. Resolutions are set at 512x512 Single Core. I do not have a "Theme" installed. Not sure what themes do. I want ASE to be able to pull from all textures to match the conditions I experience enroute from A to B. Basically I want ASE to pull whatever REX texture it "needs" to display my current conditions. If I fly from LAX in sunny skies to JFK in the rain, I don't want to have to "reload" textures or "Themes". Am I being too dense about this? Is there anything in ASE I need to do for this same scenario. I see "Snapshots" everytime I load the map, but I never have used that function. Not sure what it does and to be honest, the disclaimer about not "owning" the snapshot so do not share them has me scared because I like to post screenshots on various forums when I see a good one. Really kinda nervous about posting this in the Hi Fi forum, but I felt even more ackward posting in the REX forum since I do not under any circumstances want to use their weather engine. On my poor old Single Core running just REX with everything running when I first got it my system stammered and stuttered like crazy close the the ground. Got better the higher I got. Thanks,Randy

Hi Randy, You'll need to use the Snapshot system to use as you intend, with your other graphics add-ons setup as you have now, you just install a "theme" and then create a snapshot, and assign it a wx-influenced category. Do this for a few snapshots, maybe 2 in each category, so you have decent variation, and you'll never really have to change anything in your graphics addons again unless you want to create new snapshots. Then after loading a flight plan say yes and allow your snapshot to be chosen, it will select from the appropriate category based on the average route weather conditions, and automatically install it. The warning about sharing Snapshots does not refer to Screenshots. It refers only to the actual graphics files (the whole of these are called Snapshots) which you can't just copy off and send away to your friends, for example. Please always feel free to post anything here in our forum if as long as it's within our guidelines! Our goal is to help our customers get the most out of our products, including usage with other add-ons.

Basically if you have REX installed rite all the clouds depictions are from ASE and the clouds textures from REX

Thanks for your reply, Damien. I have created a couple of themes within REX and if I understand what you wrote, I now nee to go into ASE and create "Snapshots" of those themes in a few weather scenarios listed on the left side of the Graphics Tab, correct? I will do that. After creating a theme and without using "Snapshot" I flew from Haines, Alaska to Juneau in a C182. The view was tremendous. I can honestly say the use of REX textures by Active Sky was fantastic. What a great weather engine!

Thanks! Yes, you have the right idea.... The more snapshots you have the better the variation of course. I like having about 15 of them, about 5 in the universal category and the rest spread out in others. Of course it takes time to build these, but if you do a few every now and then you can build up a nice library pretty quickly.

If you select a snapshot, is that the one you get for the whole of that simulation session, or will it change automatically as you fly into other weather conditions? for example..If your location airfield is in IMC I suppose it picks an IMC theme. If you then fly somewhere with nice weather, will ASE automatically update to a sunny snapshot or keep you on the IMC theme? Sorry if this is really basic stuff!

FSX has to be closed to update graphics textures and have FSX properly reload them... so they cannot be updated throughout a flight. This is why the route average wx conditions are used when doing wx-influenced selections. There will be variation provided by the conditions and depictions by ASE. But the graphics "theme" does not change.

Thanks, that is what I thought.

I purchased ASE for my FSX program and love it, what I am questioning is whether I should purchase REX to improve upon the weather simulation within FSX. As I understand it, ASE only uses the weather graphics (ie clouds) that are built into the FSX weather generator. I have seen youtube videos where others have added REX and the cloud rendering is phenominal. How do the two interact. I understand the REX is it's own weather generator and I don't need that since I have ASE, but I also know there is a function to turn off weather generation and utilize the graphics only from REX to augment FSX and ASE. I have been using FSX since its early days, but it is only recently that I have ventured into addons such as FSUIPC, IF, ASE and payware aircraft. So I consider myself rather inept at trying to gain the best weather generation that I can. I would appreciate it if some of the seasoned Flight Simmers could help me tweak my use of the current ASE program and let me know wheather it is worth the investment in REX or some other program to enhance how weather looks in FSX. I have a I3 CPU with a GT250 graphics card along with 4 GB of Ram, my system seems to handle everything I have asked it to date. I really would love to increase the look of clouds and thunderstorms being generated when flying. I appreciate any and all help that can be provided. J KiefferGreenville NC

Is This also the case with v6.5 and fs9? Does Active Sky use the default fs9 clouds or does it load new ones? Should I use rex clouds?. Thanks

I purchased ASE just yesterday and I've been a user of REX for some time now and it's a killer combo ! I made just one single flight yet and i've been blown away (maybe also because I was flying accross a thunderstorm ). So i'm in the learning process now, but this seems to be a very simple to use interface but also very complete !

Is This also the case with v6.5 and fs9? Does Active Sky use the default fs9 clouds or does it load new ones? Should I use rex clouds?. Thanks

Active Sky v6.5 includes "Active Sky Graphics", an FS9 graphics expansion. If you're using those then you get the texture upgrades, while the weather engine portion provides the weather/data. You can also use ASv6 with other graphics add-ons. REX or FE for FS9 are well enjoyed by many users and we can also recommend them. ASv6 does not have a "snapshot" system, so outside add-ons must install the textures into FS9. ASE on the other hand (also FS9 compatible) does include the Snapshot system, so you can get automatic wx-influenced selections with outside add-ons after creating a snapshot library.

I purchased ASE just yesterday and I've been a user of REX for some time now and it's a killer combo ! I made just one single flight yet and i've been blown away (maybe also because I was flying accross a thunderstorm ). So i'm in the learning process now, but this seems to be a very simple to use interface but also very complete !

Thanks for the comments Nicolas! Glad you are enjoying our product!

Active Sky v6.5 includes "Active Sky Graphics", an FS9 graphics expansion. If you're using those then you get the texture upgrades, while the weather engine portion provides the weather/data. You can also use ASv6 with other graphics add-ons. REX or FE for FS9 are well enjoyed by many users and we can also recommend them. ASv6 does not have a "snapshot" system, so outside add-ons must install the textures into FS9. ASE on the other hand (also FS9 compatible) does include the Snapshot system, so you can get automatic wx-influenced selections with outside add-ons after creating a snapshot library. Thanks for the comments Nicolas! Glad you are enjoying our product!

If I can add to this... Both ASE and ASV6.5 can use REX, and ASV6.5 will auto-submit GEP ground textures as well. The procedure I've worked out is as follows: Disable ASG in ASV6.5Open ASV6.5 and load your flight plan and and if you have GEPro, submit the GEPro textures OROpen ASE and let it get the weather and update then load your flight plan.Open REX and choose the "I want to follow a flight plan" button, then let it use real-time weather (it will then download the latest weather metars, tafs, pireps, etc). When it's done, load your flight plan and fill out the empty boxes in the flight planner (you must furnish an alternate whether you have one or not) and press "submit"; it will then generate a plan (don't worry - you won't be using it) and when it's done you'll get a picture (crude, but a picture) and at the bottom of the screen you'll see a "texures" button. Press that button and REX will pick textures based on your flight plan and the weather. When REX is done, CLOSE IT.That's it - you now have your textures and can fly and use the ASE or ASV weather as usual. DJ