Is REX Sky Force 3D worth it (for me, personally)?

[threexgreen 3,139]

10 hours ago, himmelhorse said:

As a direct result of my inexperience with WX Clouds being in the right place and in proper company etc mean little to me. What I have found annoying with SF3D is instances like this morning.  I fired up SF3D, noted YBCS had rain and then fired up P3Dv4 selected my beloved iFly 737 BBJ3 at Cairns gate 13 ... waited emmm, waited some more and eventually everything came up but YBCS had no rain. This sort of thing really annoys me as one part is correct but the next is not.  This is also my main reason for my decision to eventually go to Active SKY as it is happening constantly.

I'd say you made the right choice to go for AS. REX have never really had a good weather engine. That's why I wouldn't use Sky Force's weather engine anyway. Also, I think you're right about their business model. It's sort of releasing products that all compliment one another but they're not going to release on that does it all for good. I'm curious about Environment Force but hearing that it's partly supposed to be yet another weather engine makes me roll my eyes a bit. I don't even spend any time within ASP4, I just fire it up before my flight and it does its thing flawlessly. The 3D clouds got me curious about SF but with Environment Force in the pipeline it seems like a waste of money.

Thanks all!

[fppilot 4,371]

Well after having lashed out yesterday, today I completed an 800+NM flight from Nassau,Bahamas, to Huntsville, AL, USA, in my RA Turbine Duke v2 at 16,000 and the weather, winds aloft, and textures were spot on.  Caveat is that it was pretty much a fair weather day.  Winds aloft are most important to me as they directly affect flight performance and thus fuel consumption, and thus need to be judged versus the real world flight planning site that I use, Fltplan.com.

Today was a real plus in that regard. 

Fltplan.com flight plan
AS16 weather engine
Rex SF textures
and the wonderful TDv2

😎

Edited December 25, 2018 by fppilot

[TextRich 88]

On 12/24/2018 at 11:29 AM, threegreen said:

The 3D clouds got me curious about SF but with Environment Force in the pipeline it seems like a waste of money.

I am 99% sure Environment Force will have nothing to do with any cloud textures.  That is only for Sky Force.  Environment Force is supposed to replace all non-cloud and non-airport textures of Texture Direct 4.  So for the "new generation" of REX add-ons you will only need Sky Force, Environment Force, and Worldwide Airports.  No more Texture Direct and Soft Clouds.

I am not holding my breath for a better weather engine in EF, either.  Textures seem to be REX's strength and weather engine seems to be HiFi's strength, and not the other way around.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I think that this has been explained several times before but Weather Force and Environment Force will be included as a free update to Sky Force. As someone who owns RSF and uses ASP4, I have to disagree that there is a major gap in the abilities of the two weather engines. ASP4 is better, but RSF is still in its initial phase, whereas ASP4 is a mature product. Even some of the older weather engines like Opus and FSGRW are still good enough for most users. The weather injector add-on field overall is high quality and the differences often amount to personal preference. For example, I prefer ASP4 for its smooth weather transitions and its in-cloud 3D particle effect. But I also think RSF has a cleaner and more  intuitive interface. And if one wants a weather add-on that works in both P3d4 and XP11 (for one price) , FSGRW is the best choice.

[threexgreen 3,139]

2 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Weather Force and Environment Force will be included as a free update to Sky Force.

Seems I completely missed that. This changes things a lot.

Do you think the clouds, especially 3D clouds, and the other textures in SF are a substantial improvement over REX4?

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

No weather add-on has true 3D clouds...yet. ASCA and RSF combine both vertical and horizontal layering of the 2D texture sprites for certain cloud types (for example CB). To me, RSF has the most realistic looking clouds.

[himmelhorse 1,276]

Hello all,

A quickie and just wanting clarification.

Jay you said "RSF is still in its initial phase, whereas ASP4 is a mature product." ASP is very much a mature and alledgedly, brilliant product. However I have been using REX since FS2004 days(and still do albeit with ActiveSky as the WX engine) and they claimed to be a WX engine then. I would venture to say that it may not be quite as mature as I am but it has been around for a long time and as such, I would suggest that it should, repeat should, be a better WX engine. It is NOT a slouch by any manner of means, but it has some odd problems which have existed since way back when. Please note that this is only my experience and I am quite happy to be proven wrong if applicable.

Anyway, I hope all had a great Xmas and I wish everyone a great and better New Year than the last one, however good or bad it was.

Regards

Tony

 

[HawkDsl 50]

AS16 is by far the best WX program for weather... I've tried all the REX stuff, and the only combo that was any good was Overdrive. I've dumped all REX and use AS16 with their ASCA (cloud art), paired with Envtex. I think this combo achieves what RSF3D was trying to get at, without the performance hit that REX has. With Global Dynamic weather selected in AS16, everything is completely automatic, and is pretty darn close to actual weather and sky colors. The clouds that ASN and Envtex produce are as good, or better then what I've seen from REX.

Edited January 3, 2019 by HawkDsl

[pracines 823]

On 12/27/2018 at 6:30 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

To me, RSF has the most realistic looking clouds.

How do they look in the higher latitudes w/o AS?

Edited January 3, 2019 by pracines

[fsusem36 2]

FYI: I have Skyforce and yes the textures are great, but at altitude your right about bad cloud formations.  My solution to this was to set the clouds at minimum (FSX+ACCEL) this makes all the clouds look as they should, and you even get the flattening that a person would see in real world (usually above 2,000).  And truth if you don't want to fork out more money for a good weather engine.  Just use the default FSX engine still works albeit not accurate but close enough.

[TextRich 88]

1 hour ago, fsusem36 said:

Just use the default FSX engine still works albeit not accurate but close enough.

The real-time weather doesn't work anymore.

[fsusem36 2]

Well in truth none of them do work really, because real time accurate weather is hard to do, but a least I don't get the ubrupt wind change in REX.  When they at finally get that fixed then I use them as a weather engine again:)

 

[fsusem36 2]

Oh yeah and mine still works in the sense that it will load, not sure about Steam because I have FSX/ACEL

version

[Rocky_53 1,579]

Well, I am going to stand out from the crowd, sadly... as I really dislike some of the SF textures, particularly thunder clouds which IMO look awful. When SF was released I jumped onto YouTube, hoping to see some stunning visuals, but what I saw were simply very cartoonish clouds, that look very unrealistic to me, unlike what I have with Rex Soft Clouds. I'll agree, some of the screen shots look amazing, but overall I have been extremely disappointed. I also think that some of the clouds are far more transparent than Soft Clouds, almost jumping back in time to when so many were complaining about this issue. I was also very agitated, even after debating with the dev on the forum, that the term 3D clouds should not be used in marketing the product, as they are clearly anything but 3D! I would like to be converted, but I would take a lot of convincing. 😃

Edited January 15, 2019 by Rockliffe

[timest 472]

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

... that the term 3D clouds should not be used in marketing the product, as they are clearly anything but 3D! I would like to be converted, but I would take a lot of convincing. 😃

Howard, all cloud models in Sky Force ARE actually modeled in a 3D program, hence '3D'.