Any Updates from Rex Simulations?

[787flyer 633]

Quick update:

 

It looks like Rex are solidifying their project timing for various updates that includes the next Skyforce technical update that will bring P3Dv5 compatibility. Release expected some time next month.

Info from their Discord channel as of 8th September follows. As usual, all info/timing subject to change.

 

REX 5 Sky Force – Technical Update 2.5 (Prepar3D v5) - Details: general fixes and support for Prepar3D v5 - Testing Completed: September - Projected Release: October

and

REX 5 Sky Force – Creative Update 1.0 (Prepar3D v5) - Details: new content and new weather engine - Testing Completed: October / November - Projected Release: December

REX 5 Worldwide Airports – Creative Update 2.0 (Prepar3D v5) - Details: major updated texture content - Testing Completed: December / January - Projected Release: January 2021

REX 5 Environment Force – Creative Update 1.0 (Prepar3D v5) - On Hold – Requires a complete re-write of the program.

WX Advantage Radar – Prepar3D v5  - Being developed by MILVIZ **NEXT UPDATE: ** Monday, September 21, 2020

 

I wonder what the new weather engine listed for Creative Update 1.0 will bring? I am interested to hear more about this.

 

Regards
Mark

[mpo910 2,112]

I   am done with REX. They have needed way to much time to update their products. Their communication is a desaster. The provided timelines are never realistic.  They need often 2 or 3 times longer compared to what they communicate. They release products with big bugs wich I so often told them to fix, they needed months to fix and most of them never got fixed anyway. A catastrophic process management as it seems to me. 

I also asked them to do something about their product descriptions as many users struggled with the differences between REX SF3D AND REX EF. REX WEATHER FORCE, and and and. 

For me it was clear. But that doesn't count for a lot of users wich I completely understand. 

It even got worse as soon they implemented functions in their products double. Like cloud and sky injections in REXSF3D AND REXEF.....they really made things unacceptable complex. Run APP A but don't run app b....and only run it in following order as otherwise the injections won't work.....run before P3D or close before and and and.....

Creative uodates and technical updates is another example. Why make it so complex? Why not just make updates without these differences between technical and creative updates.  And to install a creative updates you must install technical first....why? It is not necessary to do it so complex. Provide updates with release versions and you are done. Simple as that. I can summarize lots of this things. Why to different apps with both 30% overlapping functionality.? Why not one app and one user interface with an optional part in the ui to place the REX EF functions? Than you avoide 2 apps with 2 UI. A desaster. And than this clumpy mini UI from REXEF in the sim. Much clumpier the save functionality within the mini UI. Some settings would be saved and some not. The list can grow up really long.

As much as I like their visual enhancements within the sim by their products (I have almost all of them) as much I would wish they get things sorted better and improve their product delivery chain. 

It is so worse that I decided to never  use and buy their products again. After I uninstalled them my sim runs stable again. With REXEF I had lots of side effects.

Marcus

Edited September 9, 2020 by mpo910

[Novation 534]

1 hour ago, mpo910 said:

I decided to never use and buy their products again

I sadly have to agree with all you say. REX were amazing in the very early days, but that only went as far as texture replacements, as their weather engine was always dreadful. After that is was one vast texture pack after another, and more complex ways of doing things, that actually didn't bring much to the table and began to feel like money for old rope. I bought that awful thing where you could draw your own weather, which kind of worked, except the clouds you drew were always precipitating (they should have called it Storm Architect ) and there was no control over base and top heights, and despite promises they never improved it - I'd still like my wasted money back for this misdescribed, unsupported product please 🥺

REX and me will almost certainly never come together again, and with MSFS and True Sky in P3D the need is evaporating anyway.

[IanHarrison 521]

Picky, picky.

My REX products produce beautiful cloud effects in P3D 4.5.

Yes, not the best interfaces, maybe, but they work and I have never had any problem with bugs.

[CW46 101]

REX4 Texture Direct with Soft Clouds Enhanced Edition, World Airports HD, WX Advantage Radar have all worked reliably for me up to and including P3D 4.5. I have to admit the current product line is somewhat confusing as to what each offering does and I would suggest simplifying the line up for V5. Active Sky is all I will ever need for a weather engine but looking forward to using WX Advantage Radar and whatever form of textures addon will be available for V5.

[Indy511 686]

On 9/9/2020 at 10:13 AM, CW46 said:

WX Advantage Radar

Good news regarding WX Advantage Radar. It's back in the hands of Milviz and is in development for P3Dv5.  See their site for more info. As for REX products they've been quiet. I hate that they use Discord for their forum but there might news there.

Edited September 10, 2020 by bills511

[NickBo 102]

On 8/25/2020 at 2:26 PM, simbol said:

Nobody is toast.. people adapt, evolve and shift their business.. and nobody can predict the future.. it is a wait and see game really.

 

S. 

Those who adapt are not toast. Those who don't adapt are toast. Not just in the flight sim world but life in general. With MSFS we could clearly see that most 3rd developers actually adapted in an impressive way, releasing really good addons pretty much from day one.

From REX there was just silence though. And when there was finally an official statement they tried to sound positive but I think we can all agree that what they actually said was that they had absolutely no clue what to do and that there were no real plans. It makes you wonder where they had been all this time. It's pretty clear that Asobo worked closely with a huge number of 3rd party developers for a long time up to the release. Was REX not invited? Did they turn down the offer because they didn't belive in it? Did they realize that their products wasn't really needed in MSFS? Who knows. I hope they at least got a fair chance to join the party.

I've used most REX products in FSX/Prepar3D over the years, I really liked them in the beginning but I have to agree with others that for every new release it became harder and harder to really understand what the product actually did or how it was different than the previous version. There was always this awesome next-gen revolutionary environment product soon to be released, so you hardly got any updates or bug fixes for your current product. And when it was released we always found out that it only replaced parts of the current product, which is now obsolete, so you have to buy some bundle to get the cloud textures or whatever back again, but that cloud product is put on hold because it will soon be replaced with this awesome next-gen revolutionary product, which only party replaces the current  product...  for years it just went on like this.

One day I realized that I sat there with about 10 different products called something like REX 4 skyforce 3d texture direct 5 environment force with softclouds HD enhanced edition worldwide.  Over at the REX forums we've seen many users asking "what does product X actually do and how it is different from product Y". If potential buyers (or even existing customers) are asking that, you are not doing a good job as a software developer.

[severniae 78]

I've managed to get clouds working in v5 for the most part, and they look really good. I'm sure it'll be even better once they are officially released for v5!

[GEKtheReaper 364]

The thing that bothers me a lot is when a DEV releases a product for a platform e.g. P3Dv4 and then struggles over more then 1 YEAR to iron out the bugs when in the meantime, P3Dv5 gets launched. The DEV then moves all the resources in getting the products ready for P3Dv5, can't do it in half a year and suddenly another sim platform gets launched so all the efforts move towards that.

This is in short how I see REX Development Team working these days. Both SF3D and EF have issues, issues that have never been sorten out till this day. Weather Force was NEVER released (not even for P3Dv4) and instead of getting it done and mature so that the products can be enjoyed, they start P3Dv5 implementation for what? To probably release yet another bugged v5 implementation...

I have given up on REX and sadly all those updates REX is posting give nill facts about the progress they make. Just look for all the written updates for Weather Force: in alpha - in beta - back in alpa - in beta - close to final - back in alpha - back in beta - planned release with creative update x - update x back in beta - wrapping up the files - (P3Dv5 launch) - silence - back in alpha.....

Those informations could even come from an automated randomizer...

PS: I also bought all REX5 products till this day and also lots of REX4 or other REX products before. The changes that REX has undorgone since REX5 is simply bad: rewamping the forums (so that information are not found), closing the forums, moving to discord where all the answers are mostly the same: "Open a ticket...", closing Discord and moving to Teams....and the mess with product naming / functionality...it's just bad (and sad).

Edited September 11, 2020 by GEKtheReaper

[Kilo60 660]

On 8/4/2020 at 10:33 AM, Balint Szarka said:

What I don’t understand is that why would anyone even need any REX products as all the issues or low res textures, clouds etc that REX (any of their products) meant to solve is great in P3D5. And as far as I know none of the products available right now could change cloud textures as they are no longer just 2D textures looking like 3D clouds - hence it’s a completely new system I don’t see what product they would want to make P3D5 compatible.

This ^^^^

[GEKtheReaper 364]

3 hours ago, severniae said:

I've managed to get clouds working in v5 for the most part, and they look really good. I'm sure it'll be even better once they are officially released for v5!

Something to remember is that up to this day, no 3rd party cloud enhancer (REX / ASCA / etc) are compatible with truSKY (Enhanced Atmospheric setting in P3Dv5). So if you want to see REX clouds you would have to turn off EA which would then mean that you either have DEFAULT cloud textures or a 3rd party one. You see where I'm getting? Every single 3rd party cloud texture replacement will look better then P3D default ones so yeah...I bet that REX clouds don't only "look really good" but great ;).

I don't think that there will ever be another cloud texture replacement for v5. truSKY is already doing a great job and they are completely focused on clouds. The multi layer implementation would have to come at some point within a point update of v5.

I would love to see (and use) REX'es new weather engine (Weather Force) since they realy promoted it a lot. Since SF3D did offer some new visual features like rain shafts etc. I do believe that the weather engine will have some new features implemented.

[rstough 527]

There are several things we that I would like to address in this post:

1.) Product understandability:

To make sure everyone knows WHAT our products are about, let me define them here by their names for those that are NEW to REX.  Those of you who are not new, but continue to struggle with this, maybe this will help.  However, I think our names are pretty straight forward.  When you think of the term APPLE or WINDOWS you would naturally think a fruit or a something you look through out of your house, but yet we ALL know those terms.  SO I think some of the arguments here are more personally than truly legit.

But for clarity here we go:

REX 5 - Sky Force - The term "SKY" is being used here to focus on fact that product has to do with SKY.  The core of Sky Force is about clouds, sun, sky textures, and effects.  In addition we include a weather engine.

REX 5 - Worldwide Airports - Here the term "AIRPORT" defines that the core of the product is about AIRPORTS.  The core of this is about improving the textures with the default airports.

REX 5 - Environment Force - Here the term "ENVIRONMENT" defines that the core of the product is about the ENVIORNMENT.  The core of this product gives the user the ability to dynamically change and control the environmental elements of the simulator.

2.) Development process:

It is easy to sit on the outside and make comments about what they think someone else should do. We all are guilty of that.  I do it myself.  However, the reality is you do not know what is involved in our products except what you see in the simulator.  The time and effort that goes into creating and testing each texture within the simulator is extremely tedious.  I have explained this numerous times; especially, when it came to the upgrade of Worldwide Airports from P3D v3 to P3Dv4.  Every texture had to be completely redone.  Worldwide Airports took 2 years to initially create. So it took us 9 months to update it. We are NOT a company with millions and millions of dollars laying around with 30 developers.  Like most 3rd party developers we are about 3 to 4 developers handling multiple tasks.  I am not asking for sympathy here, I am just stating the facts.  There is only so much you can do.  I think for a small company servicing 5 major products at once we haven't done so bad.

3.) Business decisions:

When the new simulator was announced it was a shock to everyone and it was clear our complete business had to change.  Tim and I met soon after the announcement and began putting a business model together to keep REX moving forward.  

As someone stated said earlier in a post if you don't adapt you will not survive.  Well we knew many have invested into our company with the purchase of our products and our number one goal was to protect their investment.  That is why we implemented a very smart plan.  The final phase of that plan went into effect after the release of the simulator.  So from mid July through August we had to implement those plans. That involved putting a hold on all development until it was complete.

Now we are able to regroup and focus on finishing the REX 5 products for Prepar3D v5.  Of course we also wanted to see what kind of SDK Asobo would provide.  The SDK is incomplete and still growing.  We wanted to be in a position to be able to develop for the new simulator.  Our core has always been weather and environmental textures.  Therefore, we needed to be able to adapt to the new environment.

In the meantime, as we continue to test ideas for the new simulator we have plans to finish off the REX 5 series of products for P3Dv5.  Environment Force is a different beast.  It will involve a complete re-write which is NOT easy. So we will come to that AFTER we finish Sky Force and Worldwide Airports which should be done and released by the end of year.

4.) Support:

There are 3 reasons for the changes to our support and getting rid of our forum:

a.) Tim and I spent more time organizing the support forum than being able to help people. This took our time away from development and testing and daily operations.  Also, it didn't really help people get their issues resolved within a timely manner.  Anytime we would hire someone to help they would get overwhelmed and just couldn't handle it.  So we felt it was best to move to a ticketing system.  This will continue to evolve especially soon.

b.) We are NOT using TEAMS as our support despite what someone wrote, we did a survey on that, and most did not want that so we canned that idea.  But we will continue to use Discord.  Discord is growing whether you like it or not. The Discord for the new simulator is way more vibrant than their forum is.  However, we use this more for community than for support.  Plus we don't have to PAY a ton of money to maintain a server and license fee for forum software that just doesn't work well.  In addition, Discord allows us to reach a new generations of Flyers as well.  Most companies are moving away from Forum software as it is often bloated and requires constant maintenance.

c.) Our support is top notched.  Yes we are not going to be able to help everyone perfectly, but our current rating from our surveys averages at 4.8 out of 5. Having that one on one contact with the customer allows us to adapt at a much faster rate and service the customers need within a timely manner.

If you have any questions or complaints about this you can email me directly at: rstough@rexgamestudios.com.

[mpo910 2,112]

It seems that REX is keeping their way to go without changing anything to match the requirements customers have. A pitty in my eyes. I was a big REX Fan. But you lost me half the track. I wish you all the best.

Regards Marcus

Edited September 14, 2020 by w6kd
removed excessive quote

[jfrex 36]

For those Rex WX Advantage Radar users, MilViz  released the P3d v5 radar yesterday. It is not a free upgrade, but MilViz is offering the upgrade for $10.00 to Reowners of the previous version.

Only catch is that you must request the discount prior to purchase (via e-mail), as it is not retroactive. Make sure to include your version and current serial number.

They were very quick in responding with a discount code (30 minutes in my case).

 

[severniae 78]

On 9/11/2020 at 2:45 PM, GEKtheReaper said:

Something to remember is that up to this day, no 3rd party cloud enhancer (REX / ASCA / etc) are compatible with truSKY (Enhanced Atmospheric setting in P3Dv5). So if you want to see REX clouds you would have to turn off EA which would then mean that you either have DEFAULT cloud textures or a 3rd party one. You see where I'm getting? Every single 3rd party cloud texture replacement will look better then P3D default ones so yeah...I bet that REX clouds don't only "look really good" but great ;).

I don't think that there will ever be another cloud texture replacement for v5. truSKY is already doing a great job and they are completely focused on clouds. The multi layer implementation would have to come at some point within a point update of v5.

I would love to see (and use) REX'es new weather engine (Weather Force) since they realy promoted it a lot. Since SF3D did offer some new visual features like rain shafts etc. I do believe that the weather engine will have some new features implemented.

I don't really like trueSKY clouds are they are, and personally think the REX sprites look better. Hope this to change in future.