Having towering demands and expectations from X-Plane's weather, given the current underlying code / SDK limitations, probably means you'll never be satisfied.

+1 That´s true - I´m happy that some people doing a job to "resolve" this or to "get around" - for me the best Weather Addon at the moment for XP in the matter of performance and increased cloud visibility range - only thing is - my cloud shadow are gone - do I overlooking some features ?

Cheers !

I kind of regret buying it. The winds are calm all the time which is my biggest gripe. The clouds, while they can look great, are really low res and can be repeating.

 

EDIT: It's essential for XP10 but for XP11, where clouds redrawing constantly has been improved, not so much.

 

 

To answer your question more directly (referencing ASN, but I have used the AS16 demo and feel that this still applies), xEnviro is not as nice as Active Sky. The main thing missing is the ability to set your own weather or use historical data, and the overall superior 'look' of the weather we see in MSFS. Still, xEnviro is much, much closer to the level of AS than SMP v3 is (and I think v4 will be).

 

Perfect summary. This product is a great step forward for XP but AS is still ahead in a direct comparison. Limitations of the beta apply though. Anyone seen the moon yet?

Check this out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5qXZEboc1M&feature=youtu.be

Perfect summary. This product is a great step forward for XP but AS is still ahead in a direct comparison. Limitations of the beta apply though. Anyone seen the moon yet?

I think it would be too much to ask if one would expect X-Enviro to be on par with Active Sky. AS has come such a long way. However, X-Enviro looks promising. But it still has some weaknesses as can also be seen in this video:

 

https://youtu.be/r5qXZEboc1M

 

PS: Manny was quicker in posting the video... ;-)

The weather in X-Plane is in some respects way ahead of everything we've got in ESP sims.

The way how a simulated a/c reacts dynamically to its environment, the fact that clouds in XP are true dynamic 3D objects and not sprites as in ESP, is a clear advantage.

One should not compare the plain look of things. I've yet to buy and test xEnviro, I'll do that as soon as I get back home on tuesday, but what I've seen so far looks very promising.

I know that it uses 2D clouds as well, but it seems as if the developers found a way to integrate these clouds very smoothly into the sim.

And remember, XP11 is still in an early beta stage. So, I'll test it in XPX as well!

You guy's are FAST!!!!!!  :smile: Love Q8 Video's 

So, I'll test it in XPX as well!

 

I'm very much looking forward to your results. Sometimes I have the impression that most people are living in areas where the sky is mostly blue with puffy cumulus clouds. In middle Europe the weather only rarely looks like that and is mostly stratus clouds. Will be nice to hear from someone who knows that kind of weather... ;-)

I'm very much looking forward to your results. Sometimes I have the impression that most people are living in areas where the sky is mostly blue with puffy cumulus clouds. In middle Europe the weather only rarely looks like that and is mostly stratus clouds. Will be nice to hear from someone who knows that kind of weather... ;-)

Yeah, I'll definitely do a stream/video of my first impressions, maybe some of you might want to have a look. ;-)

The weather in X-Plane is in some respects way ahead of everything we've got in ESP sims.

The way how a simulated a/c reacts dynamically to its environment, the fact that clouds in XP are true dynamic 3D objects and not sprites as in ESP, is a clear advantage.

One should not compare the plain look of things. I've yet to buy and test xEnviro, I'll do that as soon as I get back home on tuesday, but what I've seen so far looks very promising.

I know that it uses 2D clouds as well, but it seems as if the developers found a way to integrate these clouds very smoothly into the sim.

And remember, XP11 is still in an early beta stage. So, I'll test it in XPX as well!

 

Are you sure they are true 3D clouds and not sprites? Because if you fly plane in VR and you rotate your head, you see those cloud sprites rotating too..Why would they need to rotate true 3D clouds unless they are simulating 3D by rotating the sprites..

This note from the authors is really important!!!  It has considerably rised my interest in X-Enviro!

 

 

"[...]"why we dont use only observation reports for weather depiction" ))).

Just to make the story short - yes, xEnviro server uses various sets of data from different sources (observational and prognostic) to make analysys and predictions but keep in mind so far some of the outcome is yet to be fine tuned as we speak."

Only current weather, that is a big bummer... That means I would be flying with winter weather in Norway while the scenery looks like it's summer all year.

 

Only current weather injection means no sale for me too, up here in the Pacific Northwest. I hope they can add some manual adjustments that lock out part of the weather injection.

 

I wouldn't be flying X-Plane's light GA planes and helicopters at all otherwise, during this time of year (November/December). We have the big storms whirling in from the Pacific ocean with sustained 40kt winds and gusts to 60kts here. Conditions are gorgeous in the summer, not so nice right now.

 

I like using weather injection to get at least a visual sense of current conditions and IFR flight at times, but I need to be able to manually dial down those winds. Since I fly in the FSEconomy game, I also sometimes need to raise the lowest cloud deck altitude to complete the assignment. The planes I fly don't autoland on a completely socked-in runway.

 

I hope the developers of X-Enviro realize there is a market for people like me, who want great weather injection effects, but with a degree of manual adjustment and filtering.

 

Edit to add: Historical data wouldn't be good enough. What I want (and can get from XP10's current weather injection/filtering) is the current METAR so it gets reasonably close to what I see out the window of my house, with hand-adjustment of wind velocity and cloud layer altitude. If I can do that in stock XP10, I want to do it in an add-on weather package too.

Spend some more money today and took off or a 70$ flight. Departed on Peter's A320 from DDesign's KEWR. Enjoyed the NYC scenery until I hit the clouds and it felt just right. I'm not the guy for a technical report but I liked my flight a lot. At 18 local time I landed at DDesign's Miami. Great views at the scenery, it was almost dark. It was one of the best flights of a 20+ years summing career. Run to get it, it's worth the money.

I don't usually complain about prices at all but $70 for a weather engine? They can keep it!

After testing xEnviro on my first flight I think it works very well for jet planes, but because of the ugliness the clouds look up close not so much for GA plane. And they also need to increase the resolution of cloud textures.