Phew. Good to know!

A couple more points...FSUIPC together with its companion program WideFS is also uniquely useful with some add-ons like PilotEdge/Squawkbox, Radar Contact and PFE3 if you want to run them remotely off the main simulator PC.  There are many other useful features like by-aircraft custom button/key/axis assignments as well.  For troubleshooting, access to and visibility on the sim's internals via the logging capabilities is invaluable.

I use OpusFSI v5 for camera control instead of EZDoc2 or ChasePlane.  I do not use the weather engine in Opus, though...for me ASP4 and ASCA are the only game in town for weather.

Regards

 

54 minutes ago, w6kd said:

I use OpusFSI v5 for camera control instead of EZDoc2 or ChasePlane.

+1 Having tried Ezy and Chase, I found Opus is the most realistic. Like you Bob, I turned off weather engine. Pity the dev did not seperate the app to a camera only,

Just thought I'd share with you the choices I ended up making and my thoughts about them.

• FSUIPC5: I did buy this eventually, and just like before I'm using it to set up my controllers differently for different aircraft. It's the same thing I've always used it for, and it's still great, what more can I say?
• Ezdok/Chaseplane: Holding off on this until much later.
• PTA: It was fairly cheap, so decided to just get it and try it out. I admit, I like the simplicity of it, and it did make my sim look better. Definitely have to tweak things more, though...
• ASP4: Got it and love it. Nuff said. Perhaps should have waited a week though, as it's now 30% off...
• REX4: Didn't upgrade my original FSX license, instead I got Envtex...
• Envtex: So got this instead of REX4 as people seemed very enthusiastic about it. I also liked the fact that it would integrate with ASCA for the sky texture swapping thingy. It's very customizablke and straight forward, and the textures are quite nice. I like the grass texture especially, as well as the dark runway texture. Though, I feel the UI looks a little amateurish, and I think REX4 has more texture sets to choose from. The breadth of textures in Envtex seemed a little underwhelming to me, but overall I got a look I liked, so in the end I'm happy.
• ASCA/Skyforce: I ended up getting ASCA and sticking with it. I honestly have not seen its effect at all yet, but I'm guessing I'd need to do some longer flights between more far-away destinations to properly see the effect of it. Right now I've mostly just flown VFR around the Seattle area and did some short tets flights in and out of big hubs with the PMDG 737NGX to test out the performance of the sim (it's pretty great!). To those that dislike ASCA's cloud tetxures, I agree to some extent. I found that in overcast conditions, I see the exact same cloud sometimes duplicated over and over again, which looks ridiculous. So, in the future, I might just add in Skyforce3D. It sounds like the chain of ASP4 -> ASCA -> Skyforce3D should add the best realism, with ASP4 supplying weather, ASCA swapping textures, and Skyforce3D injecting the "right clouds" to go with the weather. But, that's a while away. For now I just want to enjoy what I have, and stop spending money...
• LittleNavMap: I ADORE this program! It's incredible that this flight planner is even free! Besides the very comprehensive flight planning tools (for my needs, at least), I love how fluid the program functions. Zoom in all the way and choose the specific parking stand graphically! Genius! No more having to get charts that may be outdated with the scenery in the sim, and spend time digging through menus in Prepar3D to find the correct spot. I just zoom in in LNM and click the exact gate or parking spot, done! Another thing I appreciate is the aircraft track and AI aircraft displayed on LNM once you connect to the sim. Truly, this is one of favorite addons currently... To whomever it was that suggested this, a heartfelt THANK YOU!

Thanks to everybody aiding in my decision making. I lvoe how most of these programs, after an initial tour of discovery, have been reduced to a "start the app and forget about it" approach. I start LNM, plan the flight, then start ASP4 (ASP4 starts ASCA automatically), start P3Dv4, choose the plane, load the flight plan, and start the flight. Next thing I know I'm at the right parking spot, with real-time weather (that's beautifully rendered, very lifelike), textures to match the sim, and UTLive provides the AI. And all of it, formally, performs really well on my new rig. For the time being, I'm one happy camper!

3 hours ago, Benjamin J said:

AI aircraft displayed on LNM

And AI boats as well. I am in love with the Global Ship Traffic and seeing what boats are around is so nice.

I am a great fan of LNM and just waiting the next enhancements to come

Gérard