Hello Team!

 

I used to be a big FSX user before I switched to X-Plane X and now wanting to head back to FSX. In the past I used to use Active Sky X for FSX as my weather engine. Is that still the best option or have new, better, more improved weather addons appeared?

 

Seeking suggestions.

 

Thanks

 

Dennis

Is that still the best option or have new, better, more improved weather addons appeared?

 

All quiet on the Wx Engine front.

All quiet on the Wx Engine front.

 

What are you talking about?

 

@ DMullert: Check out OpusFSX:

http://www.opussoftware.co.uk/opusfsi/products.htm.

Undoubtedly the best WX engine out there,

What are you talking about?

 

:Sigh:

Are you talking about textures or a weather engine? If you are interested in a very good weather engine, I suggest you look at OPUSFSX. It is the best performing weather engine for my flying. I have used REX and one of the freeware ones and OPUSFSX has presented the most realistic weather in my opinion. The developers provide excellent support as well.

There is no best yet. Ideal Flight has the most fun weather engine to fly in, while OPUS is most creative looking.

Dennis,

 

ASX is very old now. You should look to purchase AS 2012. if all you fly is FSX and not FS 2004.

opus fsx is the best imho, I've used them all

Right now I'd say AS2012. When Opus sorts out true winds aloft then I'm going to check it out as well.

OpusFSX for weather

OpusFSX, no doubt about it. The speed at which it works is worth it already, compared to ASE... ASE takes ages to launch and ages to download and decypher the weather. OpusFSX starts up and does its job in seconds (literally). Amazing. I still am unsure what ASE is doing all the time and when it does what it should do... What I also really like about OpusFSX is that the weather is steady: if you see an opening in the clouds in the far away distance, it still will be there when you get there. ASE only changes the weather around you and it moves along with you (or something like that) so you never get to see a specific kind of different weather in the distance which you can actually reach.

 

Another great feature: save the weather and use it anywhere else. Works flawlessly. This evening I flew above PNW but the weather sucked so I saved the flight in mid air and I moved my plane to the airport I live nearby in real life because the weather over here was more to my liking. As always (quite important, of course ) the weather was quite correct: I saved the weather as a them, loaded the flight I just saved and applied the weather theme to that flight. After that I finished my flight with the great looking weather I wanted. (The weather you save has ALL the variations it has in real life at the moment you saved it, so you don't save one kind of weather at a specific location but you save the entire weather scene around your plane (a few 100 nm's, I think) with all kinds of variations. Awesome stuff.

 

After some two flights with OpusFSX ASE was uninstalled and it will never be installed again. (I am SO happy that I don't have to wait for ASE to start anymore...) And btw OpusFSX is still a work in progress that also gives you a complete camera system for setting up views with added realistic motion effects which is worth quite some money on its own.

OpusFSX . I have all of them and this is he best in my view

The 'latest' engines are AS2012, REX-E, and OpusFSX.

I have all three and prefer Opus. Once winds aloft are added it will be the perfect wx engine imo.

Active Sky has improved considerably since ASX. The latest version is AS2012. It comes with textures included, so you won't need to buy a separate texture package (GraphicsX? I forget what that was called.) Check to see if there's an upgrade price from ASX, and if in doubt, ask.

 

I have no experience with REX, but many people prefer their textures while using another weather engine.

 

OpusFSX is a newcomer and as such is not as full featured as AS2012. There's no weather map, for example, no flight planning, no included textures (they recommend the freeware HDE textures). Not all features are currently implemented, but should be implemented in the next few weeks. OpusFSX does have built-in camera controls that people seem to prefer over EZDok. Some users have reported problems using TrackIR (I highly recommend this $150 addon), but these may have been worked out by now. OpusFSX support is exceptional, just check the Avsim forum for them.

 

If you go with AS2012, use DWC (Direct Weather Control) for the weather depiction mode (for the wind/baro/temp smoothing) and enable Prevent Cloud Redraws (to prevent cloud popping) and Local Station Writes (which will get good depiction of changing weather at other stations). Use the default 10 minute weather updates. FSUIPC is not required, but may be useful if you go with either Standard depiction or Smooth Cloud Transitions depiction for the smoothing effects. Damian has a good post on the Avsim AS2012 forum describing the differences between the three depiction modes.

 

Note that DWC weather depiction uses "global" winds, so normal ATIS does not report correctly. AS2012 gives two radio frequencies, 122.00 for the closest weather station (which still reports your current winds aloft) and 122.02 which reports correct weather on the ground for your destination assuming a flight plan has been loaded into AS2012. Other depiction methods do not have this issue.

 

Active sky has mentioned a new version, but no time frame has been given.

 

Hook

The best quote yet on the subject from Damien at Active Sky.

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/389873-disable-automatic-injection-on-start/#entry2508101

 

"In fact, if you recall, several years ago, our customers demanded that we focused on winds aloft accuracy at all costs.  It took us thousands of man hours and 5 years to finally achieve it.  Not to mention the hundreds and hundreds of things we've added based on user feedback.  The dozens of free upgrades, over 12 product generations.  Now it appears customers are demanding what we had about 7 years ago, old theme-based weather depiction with no cloud transitions or winds aloft stability.  We're working on it, digging out our old legacy code and moving it to the newer programming languages.  But we're also working on something brand new that works even better to give people the best of both worlds (accurate winds, full smoothing of all conditions, AND proper cloud coverage depiction in all cases along with smooth cloud transitioning effects)."

 

This discussion about AS2012 and Opus is starting to sound like the old FSX vs FS9 debates. I'll take what what AS2012 gives using either Smooth Cloud transitions or DWC and all of its other options any dayof the week compared to what Opus currently offers at this time. AS2012 has always been spot on for depiction as long as you have it configured properly, but I think that is the root of most users problems is improper configuration of the program.

 

With Hifi still working on thier program and even on a new version it probably wont be long after that, that everyone wants to jump ship from Opus and go back toa Hifi version.