Well with all this hype I am almost a convert to FE. However, there is one issue I would like clarified. Does FE provide a "dark night" option similar to that offered by the freeware FS Sky world and the active environment component of ASV? One of my big peeves with the default FS9 night sky is that it looks like a full moon every night when for at least a couple of weeks in the month it should be as black as the Ace of Spades.Bruceb

Yes. FE has 4 night options, and one is very dark.Keith

>can someone tell me what's the cloud size of fE, in asv i use>64x64 mip mapped, and that's giving me with screen resolution>to 800 x 600 satisfary fps.>Rick,FE uses 512x512x32 (DXT3 also) and 256z256x32 (DXT3 also)We used over 30 beta testers and we tried sizes down to 64x64 and eveyone without exception said the 256x265 were the fastest size. This is because one of the main factors is the alpha channel or grey level that is a cause of frame rate issues being fast or slow.Becuase many of FE textures have a lower grey level than some alternative clouds including the default the fps tends to be a little faster. I've had people jump in on these claims before and say RUBBISH but these people are wrong. Trust me, I know something about alpha channels and how it works in game and how to get a few extra fps once in a while.Back to the size issue.We did a lot of work with testing alpha channels and performace related to size. I even had once tester give me his specially made 56x56 DXT texture (smaller than your 64x64) which looked horrible due to its' size and the preformance he first thought was better than FE 256x256 clodus. So I tested this and found the variation was exactly proprotion to the size difference to the primitive variation files FS9 use in the weather folder.I went on to explain all this to the user of the 64x64 cloud and he re-tested and said sure enough our FE clouds are better on performance than his 64x64 cloud. This user did not own FE but we had given him one FE cloud set to have a play with.I'm not sure if he's since bought FE but he's using or was using the FE cloud since then. I'll have to try and contact him and see how he's getting on. If you sill have this cloud my friend contact me and I'll sort something out for you.Back on subject;In other words; one reason why we armchair experts (myself included) get an impression that smaller textures are faster is because we test as many times as it takes to get or find an improvement. That will happen with any cloud set including FSW or ASV clouds simply because some primitive clouds use more resource than others. Prove this to yourself and try various cloud themes and reboot FS9 at each test and you'll find a plus or minus of up to 30% on some tests when usin the same cloud texture each time.Just to verify this we used our contacts in gaming companies and the feedback was that they felt the alpha channel and primitives were more responsibly for fps performance than anything else, at least for most video cards.So;I found a very fast tiny size 64x64 tile and re-sized the alpha to fit the 512x512x32 bit clouds and found it had exact same performance as the tiny 64x64 cloud.Having confirmed that the alpha has a major impact on fps I then went on to work on all my alphas with due consideration to cloud performance. The primitives also impact frames but FE and ASV do not use special primitives.SO IN SUMMARY; BOLD TO HELP FAST TRACK A READER WTIH LIMITED TIME;WE DO NOT HAVE ANY 64X64 BIT CLOUDS AS WE FOUND THEM NO FASTER AND VISUALLY MUCH LESS IN PEFORMANCE.Regards,

Thanks.One more thing, & I guess this has been canvassed before, but for those of us who already use ASV/AE what further improvement do you get with FE? The FE sceenshots look very compelling but I wonder if I played around with the various options in AE I could achieve similar looking cloudscapes.Bruceb

>but I wonder if I played around with the various>options in AE I could achieve similar looking cloudscapes.In my personal opinion you could. I spent fair amount of time comparing them both. At the moment FE has advantage of DXT3 clouds which offer better performance but DXT3 clouds are coming to AE as well.Michael J.

That's right Michael,It's also down to personal perference.Update 2 the current version has a total of around 36,000 cumulus01.bmp options and there will be a new update 3 soon with lots more goodies and it will be FREE to existing users.The main reason why we can achive this "high number of clouds" is due to making the clouds locally as required. Vast numbers of clouds are not installed on your machine. Infact you only have two cumulus01.bmps installed at any one time.As you can appreciate nobody including myself can test evey combination which is one of the reasons why some users report more of a wow factor than others. Where some users tend to make a cloud set they think is "it" they therefore see A VERY LIMIITED environment compared to what is available. Thinking they have the ulitmate choice they then compare this to a 3rd party cloud and the results can be subjective.Wow factor comes from randomizing a lot and not having fixed ideas as to what is going to look best.What I do is randomize several times a day and make "wow factor" sets. These sets will be included in update 3.Meanwhile; advice to existing users is not to use DXT3 format clouds unless you can get a clear performance issue as I've found no increase in fps that is worth while, maybe plus or minus 5% but the visual quality is dramactically impaired with DXT3 format.So where one person is using visuall reduced clouds to compare FE to ASV another is using high quailty clouds to compare the two products.Clearly the higher quality clouds will show these quality differences more obviously.The advice I would give to existing ASV users is;Don't buy FE if the reason is to try and improve frame rates. That's not to say there won't be an increase but for me it's not the right reason to buy FE.Personally I work very hard to make "Flight Environment" high value and high quality. The most important aspect to me is quality as quality defines the produce and results in value for money.But the real "kick" or "Thrill" for me is getting a wow factor and seeing people appriciate this.Clearly Michael is not getting this wow factor and that greatly dissapoints me and concerns me. Every once in a while we get a poster who dosn't seem too excited about FE.Michael contact me and I'll sort a refund out for you. No problem at all.I really don't want unhappy customers honestly.Fortunately, most cumstomers here have cleraly got the wow factor and I'm thrilled to read this!!! Wow!!! Thanks eveyone.Makes my day.Just some numbers for FE update 3.We expect there to be more than 120,000 cloud options in update 3 giving you a massive choice.There will be a lot more higher quality clouds with new looks to enhance the FE experience.There will be much more controll of making clouds along specific lines. For example; you will be able to make dark and moody sets; trpical sets, winter sets and randomize or use manual selections with an easier feel to this end.There will be themems and situations to help test the clouds and fast track your understanding of how to use FE to maximum.We are also moving in leaps and bounds to make it work with an new integrated weather engine. But that's in the future and a few months away. Maybe weeks?It will of course still be fully compatible with any third party weather engine, FS Metar, FS Meteo, and www.weather-maker.com or "Weather Maker Pro". WE TEST IN DEPTH WILL ALL WEATHER ENGINES TO ENSURE THINGS WORK AS EXPECTED.Thanks to all of your for your overwhelming support.Seeing positive posts like this thread makes me feel confident and assured that it's worth my while to continue to work on more clouds and the water environment.Regards,

>Thanks.>> The FE sceenshots look very>compelling but I wonder if I played around with the various>options in AE I could achieve similar looking cloudscapes.>>BrucebQuestion has already been answered above; please disregard this message

Peter,Here we go again ...You seem to make up things as you please when replying to my posts - just look how short and concise my post was and how long-winded is yours. Where did I say I want a refund? Where did I say I was not satisfied with FE? Where did I say I was comparing high quality clouds of ASV with DXT3 clouds of FE? None of the above is true. And yes, I genuinely believe that FE and ASV offer very similar quality of atmospherics with a huge "wow" factor - and I know that deep down you disagree with this. So lets agree that we disagree but please don't put words in my mouth.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_beta_member.jpg

Thank you Peter for that candid and informative response I'm sure you have deveoped an excellent product. But I guess it is not quite the answer I was looking for in the sense that I suppose I want someone to make fee good about acquiring another FS addon when I already have one that does a similar job. Best wishesBruceb

peter,when the sdk of asv is coming, are you going to have a look how to implement the fe clouds in asv weather. I now have both programs, and love them very much.rickPent 3.2 1024 htasus p4c800hd 200gb 4 partitionsmaxtor 7200 rpmati 9800pro 256 cat 5.8 ATTools21"IIyama crt19" relisys crtwin xp sp2 CH yoke + pedals+ dell laptop for asv ivae etc

The DXT3 visual decrease depends also in what you are using to compress and your board. It could imply only a slight decrease in the visuals.Jos

I'm not sure I understand Bruce gland that you are informed now. You seem to have got the answere you were looking for.Regards,

I'm not sure Rick there is much point as both products do the same?Are you saying that you want to use FE clouds with ASV?Why would you want to do that?I mean I'm getting the impression that maybe the 2 products produce similar results. Nobody is clearly saying one product is better than the other so maybe I should direct my effort elsewhere rather than make the 2 work together?Regards,

Hi Rick,Do you mean the ICS feature of ASV?Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Sales and Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_dev_team.jpg http://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_proud_supporter.jpg

yes, i have both programs, and i like the ics feature, so what should be nice to have ics using asv/fe clouds. Just "mixing" the best of everything. That's wy i asked about the sdk for asv.thanksrickPent 3.2 1024 htasus p4c800hd 200gb 4 partitionsmaxtor 7200 rpmati 9800pro 256 cat 5.8 ATTools21"IIyama crt19" relisys crtwin xp sp2 CH yoke + pedals+ dell laptop for asv ivae etc