REX Sky Force Very First look

[Nyxx 6,993]

21 minutes ago, Anders Bermann said:

It's simply impossible, to give a fair picture from 3 screenshots - and it simply doesn't do it justice. Experience and see it first hand

Perfect sum up.

[steve howlett 137]

Bruce i absolutely respect what your saying and don't doubt that all of what you say is true.i just think that less than 24hrs after release is too soon to start swinging the axe.not you,but a lot of posters in this thread.who it seems couldn't wait to rip into Skyforce.

 

best wishes

 steve

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, sbs9 said:

Gents, the truth is that this product is not meant to be a substitute for AS16. It is a potential replacement and a direct competition to ASCA. The core functionality of SF is to (1) provide textures and (2) change these textures during the flight.

I was just about to post the same. I think we can conclude one thing by now already: you should NOT buy SkyForce for the weather engine! It;s all about the textures. I think REX made a huge mistake by adding mediocre outdated weather engine. Specially since they are now working on Weather Force...!

So the simple question is: do you like the textures that SF is offering more than other offerings? If you do, buy it, if you don't, don't buy it. Simple as that. By now there already are some user video's of SkyForce online which tell us a LOT more than ANY picture would ever do, so watch them all and decide for yourself. Discussing the quality of textures is a bit problematic because it is very personal and subjective. As it is now I don't think the clouds of SF are worth my hard earned money but this may change in the near future if I see some impressive video's of the 'new 3D models'. Which I have yet to see. And I am also still waiting for visual prove of textures (skies and clouds) being changed on the fly (and with a realistic result).

[pracines 823]

4 hours ago, olibarke said:

You do understand there aren't even 1000 cloud types in the real world. 

Finally somebody understands what I mean by hype that cannot be true. Now go tell this to rex.

Here is the QUOTE from page 4 in the manual :

. In addition, we have developed close to 3,000 new
cloud model structures and cloud types
 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Alexx Pilot said:

Another LIVE Flight test right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qyhdIjGjHY

LOL The guy is flying at night... That doesn't help to see if SkyForce looks any good!

[Bruce Nicholson KMFR 20]

20 minutes ago, aktorsyl said:

After that, the weather changed to overcast:

The big issue though was that the clouds stopped at the draw distance until SkyForce redraws them on the next injection update (I believe every 15mins?). Here is an example:

 

Thanks for your report. It confirms what I was asking in my previous post. The clouds are generated in a large grid pattern just like ActiveSky. You can clearly see the linear edge of the overcast, especially in the first photo above where the overcast makes a 90 degree turn at the intersection of the grid in the distance. The closest grid section showing a scattered stratus layer, but still bounded by the grid boundary.

Another confirmation would be to show CB cells and if they are all placed equally distant from each other.

[aamontoy 1]

1 minute ago, J van E said:

LOL The guy is flying at night... That doesn't help to see if SkyForce looks any good!

you are not understanding what Skyforce does...the night ambience, lighting and moon has changed dramatically..plus what PTA brings to the table it changes the environment.

[roi1862 602]

Thats the thing with over-advertising, when you use words such as : "revolutionary" and "reconstructing the entire flight simulator 3D clouds and weather system"... thats what people expect not more not less. So next time i think more previews and less big words would be better outcome for everyone.

[magnetite 38]

1 minute ago, roi1862 said:

Thats the thing with over-advertising, when you use words such as : "revolutionary" and "reconstructing the entire flight simulator 3D clouds and weather system"... thats what people expect not more not less. So next time i think more previews and less big words would be better outcome for everyone.

It's referred to as puffery. Perfectly okay to do.

[roi1862 602]

4 minutes ago, magnetite said:

It's referred to as puffery. Perfectly okay to do.

Sure its ok to do but there is always the part where it will be put to the test. 

[B777ER 2,486]

Do the sky textures change dynamically with SF like they do with ASCA? I like how ASCA not only changes the clouds but the sky color as well.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, B777ER said:

Do the sky textures change dynamically with SF like they do with ASCA? I like how ASCA not only changes the clouds but the sky color as well.

I've asked this a few times already but haven't received an answer yet. I also wonder how this works with all the those themes you can manually pick and install: you'd think it's either one or the other. And if it works, will it also work with ActiveSky. It still isn't clear to me.

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

I did a second flight today.  This time the weather engine updated to real world weather without a problem.  I was flying in Florida from Jacksonville down to Fort Lauderdale so the weather was rough.  My observations:

• Clouds looked extremely nice.  Nicely put together and very realistic looking.
• Weather was accurate except for the visibility at KFLL.  It should have been 1.5 NM but I could see 10 NM.
• Performance:  I got about 1 more FPS than AS and REX Essentials.  In those programs I've been using very low resolution clouds.  With Skyforce I could run HD DXT5 clouds and still get 1 more FPS.  Setting it to lower resolution didn't seem to help performance.  There were two fairly thick overcast layers, one over the other and my frames with a GTX970 were around 17.  I had to turn off cloud shadows to get upper 20s.  Not a big deal to do that since couldn't see the ground after about 1 minute.
• I did get some redraws...most were minor, two were abrupt.  Honestly, I was enjoying the realistic clouds so much it didn't bother me much...been up in them when I was flying RW pipers and they looked pretty much the same.  Certainly, I'd like to see that fixed but having those clouds was good.

TLDR: I do really like the clouds!  Performance is a challenge on my system with bad weather.  Had some redraws.

I'd bet that flying with these clouds and AS16 would work out really well.  I'd be very curious how a GTX1080 would handle the situation.  Two solid overcasts is tough.

Gregg

[aktorsyl 93]

I agree, an optimal solution would be to use ActiveSky for the wx engine, and SkyForce only for the cloud textures. The question is how exactly (stupid question maybe). Do you have to choose which cloud theme to install and only do it once? Does ActiveSky communicate with SkyForce at all? How would one go about using a combination of both?

 

[Flic1 977]

21 minutes ago, J van E said:

I've asked this a few times already but haven't received an answer yet. I also wonder how this works with all the those themes you can manually pick and install: you'd think it's either one or the other. And if it works, will it also work with ActiveSky. It still isn't clear to me.

The sky textures can be set to the 10-day cycle which will give you different textures based on the day but not on the fly and based on the WX conditions like ASCA does.  You could still utilize ASCA sky textures by checking off ONLY 'Sky Textures' in the ASCA settings.