I've been out of the flightsim loop for awhile now and have recently started getting back, so much has changed. I was previously using Active Sky+ASCA for my weather engine and cloud textures. I see that Rex Skyforce has been out. Will it work alongside with Active Sky+Asca or is it a complete replacement?

I'm looking for beautiful cloud textures, but if Rex Skyforce replaces and does everything better than what Active Sky+ASCA currently does, I may switch over. I'm not sure if Rex Skyforce is a weather engine or a cloud texture package or both. Can someone clear this up for me.

You can use Rex for just the clouds and AS for weather.  That is a great combo in my opinion.  Rex has a weather engine but I don't find it as good as AS so I just turn it off and run AS and Rex at the same time.  There should be a thread that shows detailed installation instructions for setting this up. 

It will work with AS, replacing ASCA clouds and you have to disable the SF3 weather engine. Quite a lot has been written in this forum. - google it.

Thanks, just curious what do you guys think about REX Skyforce textures versus ASCA?

Some of us use ASP4 + Skyforce .

Others use ASP4 + ASCA.

Use Search and you will find it all. Myself I use the last combo. 

1 hour ago, captain420 said:

Thanks, just curious what do you guys think about REX Skyforce textures versus ASCA?

I myself prefer AS with REX SkyForce clouds. Take note that you can't use the dynamic texture loading feature of AS+ASCA when you use REX SkyForce, so the textures you load before starting a flight (or the once you loaded months ago: you do not have to load new textures every time) are the once that are being used and that's it until you manually load new textures. I myself prefer the look of the SF clouds over the dynamic clouds of ASCA though: never quite liked the look of the ASCA clouds and never really noticed an obvious difference with the dynamic texture changes. As with every texture addon it's a very personal choice. Neither is better: they are all good and all a bit different. However, 95% of the users here will agree that the AS weather engine is a lot better than the SF one...!

Check out a few possible combinations of these addons here:

 

So the textures in REX Skyforce 3D are just clouds, or sky related textures only? Do they replace the textures from REX Texture Direct+Soft Clouds package? I know those included more than just sky and cloud textures but also airport, water, land, lightning and much more.

I'm getting confused with all these overlapping add-ons. Do I keep my REX Texture Direct+SC or get rid of it completely if I'm going to be using the textures from REX Skyforce 3D?

Skyforce is sky and clouds texture, lightning, moon, sun, and maybe more. 

@GSalden nailed it on the head with his comment, it's personal preference. I use AS- Skyforce. I have REX Texture Direct but only use that to change out runway textures. I do not use the sky or clouds on that product anymore. All these products do is replace the textures in the simulator. The last product to  "push" to the simulator wins. 

3 hours ago, captain420 said:

Thanks, just curious what do you guys think about REX Skyforce textures versus ASCA?

Having used both, I definitely prefer Sky Force. It's not a huge gap between the two but overall, Sky Force just blends better and looks more natural overall, in my opinion.

In my 2c opinion, Skyforce provides a more natural looking Sky environment.  As with the others, I use the AS weather engine and SF for the textures and additional features (visible rain shafts, higher cloud tops etc)

I've been using Skyforce since day one and I'll never go back.  The weather engine sucks, but there's no problem with using Active sky.  I don't use ASCA anymore as Skyforce provides excellent clouds and skies.  Pair AS with Skyforce, and your flying will be transformed, particularly around thunderstorms.  Amazing stuff, and it will only get better as improvements are made over time. 

Just my opinion,

John

Wow, looks like a lot of you are using the AS+Skyforce combo. I can see why. I also have ASCA and never did find the sky/cloud textures decent. 

Could you guys post some screenshots of your skies with Skyforce textures using AS as the weather engine. I would love to see how they look. I was trying to watch youtube videos of skyforce but couldn't find much.

I've never really been happy with Sky Force, and progress from REX comes excruciatingly slow and I'm not sure I'll ever use SkyForce again.  I do keep checking the updates, and then going back to what I've listed below.

To unconfuse.... ActiveSky with ASCA and EVENTEX is absolutely a winner in my book and every high-end simmer i know.

Moreover, I believe HiFi will have some more things coming down the road, and the discounts they provide to existing customers makes placing my money on HiFi.

 

My very best wishes.

 

4 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

To unconfuse.... ActiveSky with ASCA and EVENTEX is absolutely a winner in my book and every high-end simmer i know.

 

That's a bit of an odd and remark imho. As if everyone who doesn't use your preferred combination of addons probably is a low-end simmer...? What's a high-end simmer anyway? You probably didn't mean it like that but it sounds a bit condescending.

ENVTEX is one of the absolute worse purchases I made. I regret ever getting that. But anyways getting back on track. I would love to see some screenshots of Rex Skyforce if anyone has some examples they'd like to share.