Looking for advice on addons for weather, textures, and terrain.

[glenm 3]

Leafhopper, sorry to hear about the snafu. I'm sure it's just growing pains and Tom and team will sort it out.

 

Glen

[pinlifter 502]

OPUS for weather.  I actually think their interface has gotten easier to use.  You won't find better support for an FSX add-on product anywhere should you need it.

[Leafhopper 0]

Tom came through quick!  All is good. Downloading as I type!

 

Leafhopper

[ZKOKQ 984]

 

 

Opus and the dynamic camera in Opus is not very dynamic at all and you end up in the opus setup menu more than flying the plane!

Not sure what you were doing in the set up, but I set up all my planes, and have not been back in the set up interface since.

10 times better and easier than Ezydok, and does not run in a DLL in fsx. Maybe you did not follow the manual properly.

[glenm 3]

Tom came through quick! All is good. Downloading as I type!

 

Leafhopper

Great to here. Tom is evidently on the ball today. I hope you enjoy Rex as much as I do.

[Leafhopper 0]

Oh, *@#*&@@!  Well, it took 14 1/2 hours to download REXES...and the readme is unreadable and the windows installer is unrecognized and nothing happens when I click on setup...It appears that the download is corrupt! 

I'm not buying any software of that size (7.4GB) unless I can get it on disc.  My DSL is only 54mbps (I live in the sticks), so I'm off to find something I can use that comes on a disc.

 

Leafhopper

[dtmicro 1]

The best scenery I've seen so far in FSX is the new Bozeman Airport in the Central Rockies from Orbx, but I don't have all the Orbx stuff yet (will soon though, just haven't installed it all). Honestly I think the Bozeman, Montana and some other parts of Idaho in Central Rockies and immediate surrounding area are better than the PNW, but I haven't flown everywhere in PNW. The only problem with PNW is some of the tree textures get too repetetive and the over-use of that black checkerboard ground texture. I've been to the Pacific Northwest in REAL LIFE many times, and I do realize the real ground has that black checkerboard look to it sometimes, but just not everywhere like Orbx uses. Mostly those areas exist only in certain areas. The Bozeman airport also has less blocky looking trees, I think OrbX should replace some of the trees in their other airports with the Bozeman ones by a MASS find and replace.

 

For a good near-payware quality aircraft that isn't buggy, try the JustFlight Freemium 757 (free at their site). That is a pretty fun one to fly, and the ILS is easy to use to make automated landings, whereas some planes you have to deal with those complex flight computer issues before the ILS works. Be careful about some freeware aircraft, a lot of it causes crashes in the game or doesn't fly correctly.

 

There may be better "FREEMIUM" add-ons available in the aircraft category, but you can literally spend your entire life installing and removing them and testing / crashing them. Most of the problem is you end up downloaded 1000 different ones and don't have time to find the best ones, then it's just easier to go to payware from a proven company.

 

Rex is a good deal in the sale for $25, but I don't like its textures for anything other than clouds, though maybe I did not refresh / apply the textures over FSX correctly as I was still in the process of tweaking my new video card when I was messing with it. Rex weather engine is fine for general uses, but the way it updates clouds can take away from the immersion experience on occasion, but the cloud textures it uses are good.

 

I think the FREE FSX Water Configurators, like FSX: Flight Simulator Water Configurator v3.15 have better water than REX, but that said I haven't flown over Tropical Water areas or places that Rex does have better water in a very long time. I am about to get rid of the water REX uses for rivers, it looks way too plain.

 

For Clouds

There is also a free download called HDE v2.0 sky textures and Oscar Clouds, combined those two fr free can sometimes produce clouds that look as good or better than REX, though Rex has much much more variety and more realistic layering. Whereas HDE just has more a few variations and no live weather updates.

[rstough 528]

Oh, *@#*&@@!  Well, it took 14 1/2 hours to download REXES...and the readme is unreadable and the windows installer is unrecognized and nothing happens when I click on setup...It appears that the download is corrupt! 

I'm not buying any software of that size (7.4GB) unless I can get it on disc.  My DSL is only 54mbps (I live in the sticks), so I'm off to find something I can use that comes on a disc.

 

Leafhopper

@Leafhopper

 

Please email me directly at: r_stough@realenvironmentxtreme.com

 

Please provide a link to this post with your email and I can get you setup.  I am very sorry about the download issues you are having.

[dtmicro 1]

Here is another thing many people may not realize about this stuff, one very important aspect to how these textures look is the color calibration on your monitor. I don't mean you need to do a D65 calibration, but I actually use a non-standard "by eye" calibration that bumps the GREEN gray-scale levels up above normal that gives the grass and trees a MUCH richer look to them. Sometimes you lose a little realism on some trees, but the grass looks more like it just rained outside (how the desert looks after a summer rain). Realism is a somewhat debatable topic for scenery, because some times of the year scenery looks better than others in the same place. The color adjustments on your monitor makes a BIG difference at improving the richness and saturation of the textures, and a default calibration or what looks good in most games does not look as good in FSX, FSX needs a bit more HSL bump and Green + Blue Gray-scale.

Also make sure to do the FSX.cfg tweaks and NVIDIA Tweaks as this can greatly affect the way textures look, by default most NVIDIA video drivers down-scale texture quality. In FPS games you want it to do that, but not in FSX because 3 more FPS isn't worth a hit to the quality, anything at 20-30 fps usually works, though some would say its smoother at 40-50 fps (may be true, but I'm used to 25-30 and works for me).

[Leafhopper 0]

rstough: Thanks for the offer e-mail sent!

 

Leafhopper

[timest 472]

I think the FREE FSX Water Configurators, like FSX: Flight Simulator Water Configurator v3.15 have better water than REX,

You don't understand, FSWC doesn't contain any textures, it's a shader program... however, REX and FSWC together work wonders for water.

[Leafhopper 0]

GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! Thank you rstough from REX! It is surly a wonder in this day to find a company that offers such wonderful customer service...and, I didn't even ask for it! But, I want everyone to know, REX is taking care of my problem!       

 

Leafhopper

[timest 472]

GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE!!! Thank you rstough from REX! It is surly a wonder in this day to find a company that offers such wonderful customer service...and, I didn't even ask for it! But, I want everyone to know, REX is taking care of my problem!       

 

Leafhopper

That's great to hear!

 

Please take advantage of our support forum located here: http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/forums/

[ronnie.d 4]

Good suggestions for you Leafhopper, but I would replace FSGRW with OpusFSX as your new weather engine, because it offers just as good (if not better) weather in my opinion, but also gives some other fantastic features, such as 'dynamic camera shaking' during aircraft movements (excellent), camera utilities, etc.     Whereas for the same (maybe even more?) money, FSGRW only gives the weather engine.

There's not many REX fan here....is there any specific reason? I am about to buy a weather add-on and I am confused by people telling different things about different weather engines. 

[LeeL 272]

There's not many REX fan here....is there any specific reason? I am about to buy a weather add-on and I am confused by people telling different things about different weather engines.

Theres any REX fans but most like to use weather engines and REX for texture's... Nothing wrong with Rex's weather engine its quite good actually its just personal preference.

 

I know many people including myself would not fly without REX

 

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