Thanks for everyone's input, I appreciate it. I was thinking about purchasing AS2012 (which is compatible with Steam Edition), then upgrading to ASN at a later date. But I was also thinking about the two free weather engines mentioned, FSrealWX or fsxwx. In terms of storms (yes, i'm addicted to storm chasing, haven't gone one year without seeing a supercell) which is better at simulating them, AS2012, FSrealWX or fsxwx? Thanks, once again  :smile:

ASN after the update gets done.

I love ASN.. before that I had Rex with od, but I used to hate the Cloud Popping, or worse the Wind sheers that would damage my aircraft. Since switching to ASN, I haven't had either of those problems..

I bought ASN a couple of days ago and am very impressed. Installation was simple, no significant impact on frame rates plus the user interface is intuitive.

 

I did have an issue with FSX freezing the first time I tried a flight, which hasn't happened to me for a very long time. After setting Affinity mask in fsx.cfg and setting the frame rate to unlimited I haven't had any issues, despite several very long flights in a variety of stock and payware aircraft. Not sure what the issue was, it may have been my internet connection.

 

In terms of realism, the live weather is fantastic, I was getting fed up with the FSX real-time updates not working and the bizarre wind-shifts and shear affects that made flying at altitude a PITA. With ASN this all seems to have been resolved. The turbulence effects are a bit over-done IMO, but I have dialed that back from the default settings, which is easy to do.

 

Great product IMO, all I wanted was working realistic live weather and ASN seems to deliver with bells on.

Yeah, from all that I've heard guys, I'll get ASN after the updates finished