Weather Engine

[k1fox 1]

I recently installed the REX Essential enhancemet for my FSX. I had REX before but this new version makes FSX takes twice as long to load and I have experienced plenty microstutters when landing. Sigh. Ther weather does look good though. Is there another good weather engine I could try?

[Jason Howell 1]

Active Sky 2012 is simply the best WX engine out there...ive tried REX but it seems they have had issues with their latest release. But ActiveSky is excellent. And they just released a service pack that fixed a lot of little bugs and made it all the better.

[Paul J 349]

Using only the weather engines of either HiFiSim's ActiveSky Enhanced or the new AS2012 are your choices, Fox. hundreds (thousands?) of us have been using ASE along with REX's fine textures for a long time, but both are now so bulky - I mean, a nine gig download??? - that many folks are likely making the choice - one or the other.

[CharliesP51 0]

Using the REX 2.0 Overdrive HD Texture pack and the FSX weather engine...have not tried AS but it's worth a try I understand. I have REX Essentials but no HD pack yet and an upcomiung SP1 is still vaporware (IMHO) so I chose to install a REX 2.0 Overdrive HD theme of my choosing and have not launched REX 2.0 since..No need unless I desire to edit all or part of my HD theme. I also found REX 2.0 and REX Essentials way too S L O W waiting and waitng for weather and texture loads/ texture conversions for my liking. With this band-aid approach I use I get normal FSX load times and FSX Jeppensen real weather with REX 2.0 Overdrive HD clouds..man, they are sure sweet skies this way. See you 'up there' somewhere.. ^_^

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Used both REXEssentials and AS2012, and by far prefer AS2012 as a pure weather generator program, plus it loads super quick.

 

Maybe after REXE matures I will like it more, but for accuracy, flight planning, importing flight plans from FSBuild, and quickness, AS2012 is hard to beat.

[rstough 523]

First, everyone is entitled to their own opinions - I am fully supportive of that.

 

However, I would like to address the comment about SP1 being vaporware. We are focused on the final stages of Service Pack 1 for REX Essentials, and we will be lifting the cover off of it soon.

 

Service Pack 1 will be a FREE update to all current users and all current upgrade and full versions will include Service Pack 1 within it.

 

Service Pack 1 for REX Essentials will not just fix some of the database and slow download issue, but will include many new features. Like we have have always said REX is every a growing product line. We are currently in the beta test aspect of Service Pack 1 and should soon be releasing it to the masses.

 

To those that mentioned here issues with slowness with downloads...I WOULD strongly recommend you go to our forums and look at the PINNED posts we have made about increasing download speeds. (BTW - this has been fixed in SP1).

 

http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/forums/index.php?/topic/20277-increase-performance-of-rex-essential-rtm/

 

 

You may also contact me personally at: r_stough@realenvironmentxtreme.com

[rototom 198]

I moved REX-E onto my FSX PC. It used to run it on a secondary PC that was much slower and it took forever to load. The interface was a nightmare to use because every time I clicked on something, it froze for a minute or so. On my FSX machine it runs very nice. It loads up/downloads just as fast as AS2012 does on my slow secondary computer, but at least it works well now. I still limit using REX weather engine for GA short and low flying. I prefer the environments it creates, but I still have some severe wind shifting issues when flying high and far. AS2012 gets used for high altitude long range flights when I'm not really in the weather anyway. AS is a great weather engine but visually REX wins in my opinion. I also like AS because FSBuild and Topcat can pull weather data from it. AS has a better interface and the information is more complete. I use REX textures exclusively but the REX engine still has a positive impact on visual quality over AS. So I do like both, but both need improving.

[SoloTwo 0]

Meanwhile owners of Rex OD just wait....

 

I have both and really enjoy AS2012 so much more. Live I've said before the historic weather is perfect and works flawlessly and with the direct weather control feature you never notice sudden wind changes and you don't have to worry about constantly changing weather when you are near your destination. I use some of REX's textures but I use those free high res cloud textures which IMO blow any payware clouds out of the water. Once FSX is running I just open up AS2012 and within a minute I have my weather.

 

Soon this thread will be filled with excuse after excuse and saying its just you that has to deal with the long waits associated with REX.

[jzimmermann 238]

I recently installed the REX Essential enhancemet for my FSX. I had REX before but this new version makes FSX takes twice as long to load and I have experienced plenty microstutters when landing. Sigh. Ther weather does look good though. Is there another good weather engine I could try?

 

Good morning,

 

I agree with Jason about Active Sky 2012 being the superior weather engine! I purchased REX Essential for Prepar3D soon after it was released and am rather disappointed by the product's weather engine. I have run various test scenarios, and I found that not only does Active Sky 2012 download and compute weather way faster, it also appears to do a much more realistic job at depicting real weather conditions. See for yourself:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first 5 screenshots show the weather using Active Sky 2012 somewhere close to El Paso, Texas, the last screenshot shows exactly the same location with the identical textures loaded, but with the REX Essential weather engine running. I think the result speaks for itself.

 

REX Essential just takes forever to compute all the downloaded data, and somehow the weather engine always blankets the entire world surrounding the aircraft with some sort of haze. I have tried various settings and currently think that Active Sky 2012 still has the better weather engine.

 

Cheers,

 

Jerome

[Swofford 155]

I don't own REX but I believe you can disable the haze by in ticking realistic haze option.

[B777ER 2,474]

Say what you will about REX (no, I don't own it) but at least the dev is actively involved in the various forums. AS2012 (which I do own) do not even have an official forum anymore.

[jzimmermann 238]

Say what you will about REX (no, I don't own it) but at least the dev is actively involved in the various forums. AS2012 (which I do own) do not even have an official forum anymore.

 

Hi Eric,

 

looks like I joined AVSIM just 2 days prior to you...10 years...wow.

 

I don't really care about official or unofficial, as long as the product is supported...and Active Sky 2012 SP1 was just recently "officially released" ;-)

 

Cheers,

 

Jerome

 

I don't own REX but I believe you can disable the haze by in ticking realistic haze option.

 

That haze seen in my screenshot is always there...ticked or unticked...and that's a problem.

 

Cheers,

 

Jerome

[Kaly 22]

I still use ASE (with the latest Sp), and I am very happy with it.

 

 

See for yourself:

 

Great shots!

[Bartbear 10]

Just for the record: did you ever try FSrealWX from HanseCoders?

It's completely free and very light and i like it very much, but i don't know how it performs compared to REX or Active Sky since i don't use them.

 

http://www.hanse-coders.net/

[k1fox 1]

Thanks guys for all your responses. I recently installed ASE and its service pack 3. Load times are quicker and the weather does seem equally realistic. This engine will do the job for now. However, I'm still using my REX textures :smile: