Been using FSX for the last 5 years and am still amazed at some of the visuals it produces after all these years. I upgraded to AS2016 from Active Sky Next a couple of years ago and never upgraded the cloud textures as generally am very happy with them. I know there are various add ons on such as ASCA and Rex Soft clouds but I have heard that some of these produce a rather cartoony look which i am not keen on. is there a "go to" product i should be looking at or shouyld i just stick with what i have.  ( Run FSX boxed on one pc and FSX SE on another)

Kind regards

Daz

 

 

Cartonish is in the eye of the beholder.

The problem with the lighting- and shader-engine in FSX/P3D, is that it isn't really dynamic and by that cannot reproduce all the different lighting settings, environment and atmospheric colors which are present during time of day and night. 

Basically - a preset and combination of shader, cloud- and sky-texture set, which looks almost 'real-life' in some situations, may look completely unnatural and weird in other situations... It's generally a weigh-off.

At least that's my experience.

There could be some performance drawbacks to higher resolution clouds that may not justify how they look.  

Seems to me there were some freeware replacements available that did look better than the default cloud textures.  I am currently using the set that came with Active Sky 2012.  I can tell you that the higher the cloud resolution, the greater the strain they will put on your computer, so I use the 512x512 Active Sky clouds.

Edited November 25, 20187 yr by stans

Seaching online have found a set called HDEv2 which look pretty good, may give these a try.

 

37 minutes ago, Dazkent said:

Seaching online have found a set called HDEv2 which look pretty good, may give these a try.

 

I used that set as well and they are really good. Just make sure  I use the DXT version.

I still to this day use the HDEv2 Sky textures. I still haven’t found a set I think look better and have tried them all including REX and ASCA.

How do i check they are the DXT version?

1 hour ago, Dazkent said:

How do i check they are the DXT version?

When you downloaded the package, it should have come with two folders, one labeled as a 32bit set and the other folder as a DXT set. You can tell by the file size as well, 32 but are large files compared to the DXT. You could always open one of the texture in DXTBmp or Imageview and it will say what format it is.

If you’re willing to pay for something, I’d say that REX 5 (SkyForce 3D) is definitely worth it. I recently bought it and I’m in love. Sure, you might lose a couple FPS depending on what size you use, but it basically comepletely remakes your textures. If you want real-life textures, I highly recommend RED.