Just now, Milton Waddams said:

Mostly so other companies don’t get the jump on their new tech and beat them out of the gate with a better, faster tech that would’ve been proprietary to them if they had an NDA. Same reason PMDG is keeping a lot of their stuff close to the vest until the get closer to release.

Well to be honest in this case its already exist AS+ASCA

Just now, roi1862 said:

Well to be honest in this case its already exist AS+ASCA

I’m talking about tech that doesn’t exist yet, or was deemed impossible by other devs, the groundbreaking stuff Dave was talking about.

Just now, Milton Waddams said:

I’m talking about tech that doesn’t exist yet, or was deemed impossible by other devs, the groundbreaking stuff Dave was talking about.

Gotcha. Well, ill guess well see wont we ?

7 minutes ago, roi1862 said:

Gotcha. Well, ill guess well see wont we ?

Indeed we will. The dev is aiming for a launch before or around Christmas!

Every new addon has ‘ groundbreaking’ and ‘breathtaking’ new ‘never seen before’ features.....

1 minute ago, GSalden said:

Every new addon has ‘ groundbreaking’ and ‘breathtaking’ new ‘never seen before’ features.....

 

Well, I understand you humor, but we know this isn't true.  Besides, it's really important to consider the source when evaluating statements.

Some folks know that I've been around our hobby for 30+ years, I'm blessed by being able to work with many leading developers, and I have and I'm experienced with the vast majority of mainstream flight sim products.  I use terms like "ground breaking" very sparingly, and hope that people would find it meaningful that I made such a statement.  If not, then it's okay.

I'm merely trying to clue my friends and fellow flight simmers into something I believe is VERY important coming down the pike to us.

And brothers, I really wish I could tell you more.  Maybe REX will allow me to do a live product release stream, I'd love that!

Christmas this year?.

Cheers, Ed

13 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Every new addon has ‘ groundbreaking’ and ‘breathtaking’ new ‘never seen before’ features.....

And every once in a while, the hype turns out to be true.  Look at what ASN accomplished when it first released.  It solved issues that had existed in EVERY wx engine to date (and yes, I've used pretty much all of 'em - wx is important to me).  To my mind it actually DID end up being a gamechanger.

I like to keep an open mind and wait and see what actually comes out before getting too carried away either pro or con.

Scott

If it is that big and amazing I'm ready to move to REX for the new clouds and weather engine. On the other hand it will hurt to throw ASP4/ASCA, which was a pricy package and certainly with great value. I'd say that ASCA visuals was not the most realistic I've seen but certainly not bad at all. Finger crossed to evaluate what REX will deliver.

I'm really excited by this. 

Let's split the discussion into aesthetics and accuracy/authenticity/realism (AAR?).  REX has done some really nice texturing and cloud modeling on the aesthetics side, but it's disputably on par with ASCA's aesthetics, and both are certainly augmented by other 3rd party enhancements (EnvTex, PTA) and free texture packs. 

I'm defining AAR to include temporal and geographical accuracy along with in-sim depiction of the real-world reports, which include temps, cloud layers and overcast density, wind layers, and precipitation.  The best value of active sky has been the extremely reliable and accurate online weather data and interpolation between stations. Combined with methods to minimize dramatic changes upon injecting into the sim, as well as accurate depiction of reported weather, no weather engine has come close to their offering.  If I look out the window and see storms 50 miles west, I know I can fire up the sim and fly into a realistically depicted front using ASP4. If I climb through a wind shear layer, I know I'll feel it, but it won't crash my addon aircraft on autopilot. There's a lot of critical elements to a weather engine besides of the look of the clouds and cloud diversity.

If REX can do all of what they're claiming, which, as I read their excellent marketing materials, includes better aesthetics (in fact novel depiction in-sim), new types of weather depiction that are dynamically updated (tornados for example), along with with accurate real-world data on reliable servers, it's an innovation. If it includes other atmospheric elements such as wind layers at altitude with smoothing, that will make it a must-have IMO.

Before Coke and Pepsi, few people drank soda.  As soon as consumers had to choose a preference, the market exploded.  Having choices is what drives innovation.  We're all in a great spot as consumers in the flight sim space right now.

Looking forward to this, I know it's been in the making for sometime now.

Cheers, Rob.

I'm interested to see how things work without the REX textures. I know they say it's compatible with other software, but if they're doing more cloud types and different cloud models it seems like you'd need to use their textures. 

20 minutes ago, Chaos81 said:

I'm interested to see how things work without the REX textures. I know they say it's compatible with other software, but if they're doing more cloud types and different cloud models it seems like you'd need to use their textures. 

From what I’ve read, it seems that you will be able to use another weather engine with their cloud models and textures. If that’s the case, then you’d be able to use Active Sky with the cloud models coming from Rex. Just a best guess, though.

8 hours ago, Afterburner said:

Yes, it sounds really amazing. The most appealing feature to me is the following:

However, I am wondering if this feature unfolds itself only when you use REX' internal weather engine without Active Sky, or whether the improved FPS comes to fruition even if you do use other weather add-ons. In the latter case, how will SF3D interact with the weather add-on?  I mean, if Active Sky injects new clouds every 15 minutes, which hurts the FPS (because that's the way it has been programmed), it must surely do it with the SF cloud textures, too...

Thank you for your question.  Sky Force - even though it would be best to use with its own weather engine, we did build it so it could be used with any 3rd party weather add-on.  The cloud models (not textures - though it does have textures) work with any system.

I'm a fan of REX so I'm confident that this p3d v4 weather addon will be fantastico!