I have been surprised to read comments by many flightsimmers who say they own multiple weather engines. This makes no sense to me. Its like buying 4 different vendors version of the same B737. Waste of money *in my opinion if I did this*. There are much better areas of FSX to spend money on including textures, airplanes and more! Therefore here is my guide to which weather engine cuts the mustard. I hope you find it useful.

 

Note: these are MY OPINIONS based on the weather engines I have tried, reviews I have read and comments made by other users about them. Others may have different views. I have no affiliation with any of them nor do I care who comes out on top (I just want to make sure I am using it )

 

 

Excluding the next-gen weather engine (Active Sky Next as its not fair on the other vendors i.e FSGW, REX etc. who are still in the process of releasing theirs) here is a ranking of the best weather engines:

 

1. FS Global Real Weather

2. Opus

3. Active Sky

4. REX

 

FS Global Real Weather is the best engine because its simple to use and works accurately with minimal performance impact! The weather displays correctly in the sim where ever you go and there are no wind shifts, visiblity issues or other common weather engine problems. Its the last to join the party but it seems the best was saved for last.

 

Opus is highly rated but seems to adopt the 'Global' weather approach which means clouds disappearing and reappearing. It was in the No.1 spot until FSGW turned up.

 

Rex is bottom of the pile. Highly recommended for purchase anyway just for the textures but the weather engine is not as good as the others.

 

So where does Active Sky Next fit in? I haven't tried it as I am on P3D but based on public opinion it would be joint first with FS Global Real Weather? Or maybe top on its own? What do you think?

I have to completely disagree with you on a couple of fronts. First, I don't believe it's a waste of money to buy from multiple vendors. While it might be the same plane, each developer adds their own flair to the development. Both iFly and pmdg designed a 737. Sure they are the same plane, but they are quite different in the way that they are presented. Secondly, activesky next can be compared to fsgrw and opus because it is the same thing...It just does it better.

 

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I have been surprised to read comments by many flightsimmers who say they own multiple weather engines. This makes no sense to me. Its like buying 4 different vendors version of the same B737. Waste of money *in my opinion if I did this*.

 

The reason for this is that weather engines have changed a lot over time. Most people don't buy several weather engines to use them all, like you could with a plane (wouldn't be odd, as Matt already said), but because something better came along. Or in the case of REX: I own it because I wanted their textures. I never used their weather engine. I own ASE (my first weather engine), REX (which I never used as a weather engine) and OpusFSX (not to use also but as a replacement for ASE). And pretty soon I will probably own ASN (for P3D 2.0) simply because it's better!

 

You could say the same for flightsims: why do a lot of people own various flightsims? Because they want the latest and the greatest! Or why do so many people own 5 or more versions of Photoshop? Because version 6 was so much better than 5 and certainly a LOT better than version 1! ^_^