I PAID OVER $40 FOR THIS!?!?!?!

[NGXfanatic 85]

Well, I just tried out the demo, and I will say this about the visual aspect of the weather: IT IS THE BEST I'VE EVER SEEN!!!

Real variation in the shape and placement of clouds, the ability to see fronts and changing conditions far away, just like in real life. I'm very impressed.

 

 

 

However, there are some features I need to see to fully convince me to move away from ActiveSky, as they are a must for my NGX flights. I have already touched upon most of them earlier in this thread, but they are:

 

- Better winds aloft, as I was getting a headwind in cruise altitudes flying from West to East where I should have been getting a tailwind.

- A table of winds aloft speed, direction and temperature at various altitudes that match a user inputted flight plan (which both REX and Active Sky offer). I need this data for each waypoint to input the expected winds into the NGX FMC's legs page to get time and fuel remaining predictions, this is very important for us heavy metal flyers!

- Historical time feature so I am not forced to use live weather if I don't want to. Many folks like myself like to fly real routes mimicking real flights and want the same weather they experienced, or they may want to practice special scenarios like approaches that are tied to a saved flight.

 

I understand that the historical time and winds aloft features are expected to be incorporated in future builds, and for that reason I am thrilled. I was thinking that we are at a dead end when it comes to FSX weather, and to see that it may be possible to have a rich visual weather environment AND accurate winds could breathe some new life into our aging platform. This is really a revolutionary new product, and evidenced by the heaps of praise from the community, and the developers deserve it.

 

Please don't take any of my critiques the wrong way, I am just a stickler for weather as it relates to aircraft performance in the cruise regime, and favor the behind the scenes accuracy of the invisible winds as opposed to the aesthetics of the clouds, as unfortunately, clouds and precipitation have no bearing on aircraft physics in the FSX world. But that does not mean I don't wish for a nicer visual representation of one of the most important ingredients in the challenge of flight. I look forward to future updates to your product and hope to make it a permanent addition to my flight simulator world.

 

EDIT: sorry for the double post, I had made a last minute edit to the duplicate post above and messed up.

[Opus Software 84]

Thanks for your comments, we are currently working on the points you mentioned so you won't have to wait too long now! See our Flight1 Coming Soon topic.

 

Have you tried our Relax Wind Smoothing option, if you don't suffer from the FSX wind shift problem then this option will give you more accurate winds aloft but true winds aloft will be implemented soon, we have already made a start on the software together with historic data and alternate weather servers.

 

Regards

Cheryl

[ray hughes 165]

After reading such enthusiastic praise for this new weather programme I decided to download the demo and give it a try. Initially I thought what the heck? Running the Server in the background I could not get FSX to give me daytime textures anymore. It was all dark or dim. I relaunched FSX same problem. I started to think Uhh oh... So rebooted my PC and relaunched FSX without the OPUS Server running and things went back to normal. SO then I launched OPUS Server and it worked fine - showing the correct weather out the window. 5 minutes later it timed out just as I was shifting to another location - same problem occurred - loss of daytime textures while the weather cleared to Blue sky. I had to wait 2 minutes to restart but this didn't help with the loss of daytime texturing so had to quit and reboot again.

Third time was going well and I was looking at the camera views and testing them, when the program quit after the Demo 5 mins and back to washed out texutres again!

I know this is only the Demo, but 5 mins wasn't long enough to check it out and to have these texture corruptions is a bit of worry - has anyone else experienced these ?

[Opus Software 84]

Hi

 

The demo runs for 10 mins but you can run FSX first then OpusFSX. We don't alter the textures so.I don't know why your sim went dark, was it the sim time setting? Not heard this before.

 

Regards

Cheryl

[ray hughes 165]

10 Mins, Ok seemed quicker than that - my mistake.

I have the Flight One Weather program (FLight Environment X). (This has got to be a least 3-4 years old or more)

I tried changing the Sim times but this made absolutely no difference to the Night (or ealry dawn)textures for some unknown reason.

 

It seems it was "stuck" on a early dawn setting and would not update to any other time for the textures to change even though FSX quite happily accepted my 12 noon time change.

 

All I can tell you is that quitting FSX and rebooting and downloading WX weather using a freeware application - there were no problems. also using the inhouse real time weather worked ok. The moment I relaunched OPUS weather Server the same thing happened again.

 

I am at a loss to explain this but thank you for your quick response

[Opus Software 84]

Have you got more than one program altering the weather? Have you disabled FSX weather updating?

[MMartinov 48]

 

 

Definitely a class act, from the developers,Stephen and Cheryl.

 

It was the best money I have spent in recent memory!

 

Regards. :hi:

 

Absolutely agree!

 

Now I look for bad weather METARs at my add on airports and I go and enjoy the true IFR flying. Say hello to the winter in Europe with Opus!

[ray hughes 165]

When you say disable weather updating do you mean selecting "User weather" in FSX rather than "realtime weather" updating ?

[TheDanger 182]

Now I look for bad weather METARs at my add on airports and I go and enjoy the true IFR flying. Say hello to the winter in Europe with Opus!

 

Funny I was thinking same thing today. Best time of year for bad weather in Europe is beginning now and over the next 6 months. When summer arrives next year I will be replacing the real time weather with historical weather from winter. Can't think of anything worse now for flying in than clear winds and blue skies :lol:

[Opus Software 84]

Just do not select real weather updating in FSX, any other option will do, perhaps a clear Sky theme so you notice when the real weather loads.

 

Regards

Cheryl

[ray hughes 165]

OK will check what my settings are tomorrow (my time) - thank you for your quick reponses Cheryl

 

Hopefully this will work as I am keen to get this working

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Just do not select real weather updating in FSX, any other option will do, perhaps a clear Sky theme so you notice when the real weather loads.

 

Regards

Cheryl

 

Hi Cheryl, don't wish to go off on a tangent, but are you guys considering releasing Opus lite, with just a weather engine? It seems there are quite a few guys, including myself, who have Ezdok and only wish to use Opus for weather, otherwise it's effectively paying for something you have no need for, and so makes it rather an expensive addon. :smile:

[OmniAtlas 93]

The dynamic head movements in OPUS are more realistic then Ezdok IMHO -- I would suggest you replace EZCA which is muddled in options and complicated to setup.

 

Yes, $40 might be a lot to spend, but you get an excellent weather program, remote cameras, camera oscillations based on real aircraft, and the best part -- support from the guys at Opus who are continuously implementing changes to the program and taking feedback.

[Capt Richardo 12]

As i said before i think being able to buy the options you want may be the way to go. EZCA, REX and all the other offerings are big hitters ... Devide and conquer springs to mind and may bring more overall sales.

 

Howard ... Must go for that beer!

 

Rich

[Opus Software 84]

Hi,

 

The answer to your question is no. Just disable the features you don't want, but i'm sure you will like the cameras if you use them. There is no performance issue with having the extra options. The camera features are linked with the weather engine to give realistic intelligent effects.

 

We couldn't produce the software for less cost, think of it as weather plus free addons! Other weather engines are about the same price as our package and you can use HDE freeware textures.

 

If you are using all of our features it will cost you a third of the price of buying other software.

 

Most people comment that the cost is well worth it for the weather alone, it is more than competitively priced. Consider how many hours of enjoyment you will get for the price!

 

We could always charge 40 dollars per option as per others, that would be better for us!

 

Regards

Cheryl