Hi all,

 

I'm running an older machine and would like to add something like Active Sky or REX.

 

However, I'm not quite sure of the pull on the system of either...

 

Any advice appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Andrew

The actual weather engine may not affect your performance that much. The weather display (the clouds and things) may do. So for just having some weather, any engine will work. The graphical impact happens with the textures in use and your AA settings. There also is some freeware with FSRealWx.

All of those feed the FSX weather system, with its ups and downs, literally.

 

If you avoid a too high count of cloud layers and also stay away from the high 3D cloud detail, a weak system should be fine.

Hi all,

 

I'm running an older machine and would like to add something like Active Sky or REX.

 

However, I'm not quite sure of the pull on the system of either...

 

Any advice appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Andrew

 

Hi Andrew,

 

It's perhaps a little premature since I've only used it a brief time, REX Essentials looks very good so far, even for lower end machines. They seem to have resolved the existing issues w/ REX2. I was using REX2's weather previously after ditching ActiveSky (a few versions ago of HiFi's weather program) because REX2's engine generally painted less complex weather that still looked very realistic and with excellent reach and coverage between stations. In all fairness, perhaps more reduction of cloud layers in ActiveSky may have improved this. I do prefer the way clouds are distributed in Essentials. I generally use cumulus clouds at 1024x resolution versus the 'HD' versions. Plus, I think they look better too.

 

Noel

The actual weather engine may not affect your performance that much.

 

Actually it does matter.

I've been testing both AS2012 and the newer REXE weather engines to get the pros and cons of both.

 

One thing I've found that's consistent is the REXE weather program considerably slows down whatever system is running it compared to the AS2012 program.

So as far as just running the engines themselves either on your FSX machine or over a network, one will slow down and eat up CPU resources more then the other.

Actually it does matter.

I've been testing both AS2012 and the newer REXE weather engines to get the pros and cons of both.

 

One thing I've found that's consistent is the REXE weather program considerably slows down whatever system is running it compared to the AS2012 program.

So as far as just running the engines themselves either on your FSX machine or over a network, one will slow down and eat up CPU resources more then the other.

 

Wow, that's surprising to me as I'm on a 4y/o machine now, and run FSX w/ very high settings, yet have decent performance. You said, '... considerably slows down whatever system is running it...' How is it that you can generalize to 'whatever system'? Are you installing these two on multiple types of platforms for a formal review?

 

Essentials is having less impact over ActiveSky for me, however the conclusion is a wee bit early to take entirely seriously. So far though, quite good ;o)

FSRealwx, and it's free

Actually it does matter.

I've been testing both AS2012 and the newer REXE weather engines to get the pros and cons of both.

 

One thing I've found that's consistent is the REXE weather program considerably slows down whatever system is running it compared to the AS2012 program.

So as far as just running the engines themselves either on your FSX machine or over a network, one will slow down and eat up CPU resources more then the other.

 

This is my consistent with my experience using REX Essential and ASE. The REXE weather engine causes me noticeable slow down during weather injections. REXE also takes a long time to download and process weather from the database on startup. On the other hand, I do not notice any performance cost using ASE.

 

As a result, I use ASE for my weather engine and REXE for my textures.

Wow, that's surprising to me as I'm on a 4y/o machine now, and run FSX w/ very high settings, yet have decent performance. You said, '... considerably slows down whatever system is running it...' How is it that you can generalize to 'whatever system'? Are you installing these two on multiple types of platforms for a formal review?

 

I don't mean it slows down FSX performance, it slows down performance of the system in general, i.e. longer to switch tasks, open up new windows, change REXE settings, etc.

I run REXE on a networked laptop over simconnect, and when the wx engine runs I have noticeable lag when using the other programs I run on it (FSINN, FSCommander, FSBuild, ACARS, etc.)

With AS2012, I don't get that system lag.

 

So far I haven't really found the weather injection into FSX to slow it down at all, but at high altitudes the winds aloft rapidly change which throws my mach number up and down constantly.

At this point I think I'm done testing and will stick with AS2012 on a networked laptop to run my weather, and just use REXE for the textures.

One thing I've found that's consistent is the REXE weather program considerably slows down whatever system is running it compared to the AS2012 program.

 

I don't mean it slows down FSX performance, it slows down performance of the system in general, i.e. longer to switch tasks, open up new windows, change REXE settings, etc.

I run REXE on a networked laptop over simconnect, and when the wx engine runs I have noticeable lag when using the other programs I run on it (FSINN, FSCommander, FSBuild, ACARS, etc.)

With AS2012, I don't get that system lag.

Like others, I'm a bit surprised reading about a slowdown and the general warning on REX-E. It doesn't match the reports from other users so far and I really wonder which tricks REX-E had to pull to impact an i7 system that much, even more so on a networked setup.

 

Did you measure some CPU load in the performance monitor? Or are there any other values which could relate to the severe subjective impact you are describing and generalizing? Just to rule out setup problems on your side.

Wow - thanks all, this is very informative.

 

I'll post my specs tonight in case it helps out.

I really wonder which tricks REX-E had to pull to impact an i7 system that much

 

Sorry I misled, the performance impact wasn't on my i7 system, but my laptop which is going on 5 years old as a Core Duo T2450 @ 2.00 GHz with 1 GB of RAM.

 

It's just strange that I can run Active Sky, FSINN, FSCommander (connected through WideFS as a moving map), my virtual airline ACARS (also connected through WideFS to my FSX machine), FSBuild, VatSpy (on automatic updates), plus one or two chrome browser windows open to check charts/winds aloft/browse forums etc and not have a single slowdown when using any of those applications.

If I swap Active Sky for the REXE wx engine, I can see in the task manager that it takes more CPU % usage on my laptop.

 

Really that was the minor issue, the bigger issue is the constant wind changes at cruise. Last night I had to completely disable turbulance because my NGX was doing wide S-turns....that never happens with Active Sky.

 

Everyone's machine is different though. I encourage everyone to try out both programs (if you have both) to determine which one works better for you.

Sorry I misled, the performance impact wasn't on my i7 system, but my laptop which is going on 5 years old as a Core Duo T2450 @ 2.00 GHz with 1 GB of RAM.

 

It's just strange that I can run Active Sky, FSINN, FSCommander (connected through WideFS as a moving map), my virtual airline ACARS (also connected through WideFS to my FSX machine), FSBuild, VatSpy (on automatic updates), plus one or two chrome browser windows open to check charts/winds aloft/browse forums etc and not have a single slowdown when using any of those applications.

If I swap Active Sky for the REXE wx engine, I can see in the task manager that it takes more CPU % usage on my laptop.

 

 

Then I think you have answered the OP's question regarding an "older" system.

Ok -

 

My system:

 

Dell Optiplex 330

Core 2 Duo E4500 2.2 GHz

2 gigs ram @ 2.19 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT

 

Nothing fancy but gets the job done for now.

 

Of course, my OTHER system is a 27" iMac i7 which happens to run FSX smoking fast in Boot Camp ;) but that's not really my simming computer.

I'd head for the freeware, Andrew. No costs involved (you can donate if you like) and the cloud coverage looks best to me, even over my current payware weather addons. You can use any cloud textures with it of course.

 

When I had ASE, REX and FSRealWx running on a small networked system with an old dual core Pentium, none of them had more than single digit CPU percentages in use. I saw anything between 0 and 4 with all of them while feeding FSX. The amount of RAM used was some 120mb for ASE, slightly lower with REX and some 80 with the freeware.

 

For the main system, it didn't matter which engine filled FSX, only the actual cloud drawing could have made a difference. From reading on REX-E, the RAM usage went up but the CPU usage didn't. I'm waiting for REX-E OD, so that's the point where I could report actual readings.

Thanks, I'll check it out.