I'm hoping that @filou can chime in here.

After trying FSGRW, ASXP, there was only one weather add-on left to try, the mighty xEnviro. It was a difficult decision do to its heavy price tag, no demo, and mixed reputation.  But, according to my research, free updates are coming. Since I have no idea what will happen with XP12 or even MSFS, I decided to give this a try.

So far my biggest disappointment is the pixelated clouds even with settings at ultra. The performance is terrible on my system if I set cloud quality above medium, so at a medium setting they'll have to stay. Aside from that, it's a must have add-on.

Any ideas on how to make the clouds look soft without the added blurring of the clouds?

Thanks.

Jose

I don't know the details, but it's been a WIP that never worked for years now. To me, it's the classic bait and switch scam, but others will vehemently disagree. Buying it was by far the biggest mistake I ever made with respect to simming. REX Weather Force was mistake number two. I hope you find a way to enjoy it though.

22 minutes ago, captaingoldfish said:

I don't know the details, but it's been a WIP that never worked for years now. To me, it's the classic bait and switch scam, but others will vehemently disagree. Buying it was by far the biggest mistake I ever made with respect to simming. REX Weather Force was mistake number two. I hope you find a way to enjoy it though.

I found something else not talked about, you can't limit the visibility like you can in ASXP. This results in a drop in fps. Today in Tampa (90 miles visibility.)

30 minutes ago, captaingoldfish said:

don't know the details, but it's been a WIP that never worked for years now. To me, it's the classic bait and switch scam

I wouldn't call it a scam, but rather a tech demo that is taking a very long time to implement. It's the most expensive addon I've bought for a sim (outside of PMDG), and it simply is not progressing as I would like it to. Granted, it can be beautiful to look, but given the competition, it is falling short. I have no doubts the team are talented, but it's far from a usable product for me vs the price I paid for it. 

Let's not be over-polite about this. XEnviro has been a massive and expensive debacle to all but the most dedicated and patient. I have been waiting literally years for the promises to be fulfilled. Doubtless, some simmers have gone to the grave wondering how long this was going to take. Meanwhile, over at XAmbience, there is considerable excitement about a competing product, allegedly due for release this month. Don't hold your breath but keep a tight grip on the wallet for the time being...

29 minutes ago, Brian Mackie said:

Let's not be over-polite about this. XEnviro has been a massive and expensive debacle to all but the most dedicated and patient. I have been waiting literally years for the promises to be fulfilled. Doubtless, some simmers have gone to the grave wondering how long this was going to take. Meanwhile, over at XAmbience, there is considerable excitement about a competing product, allegedly due for release this month. Don't hold your breath but keep a tight grip on the wallet for the time being...

It looks like xEnviro also suffers from the sudden wind change bug. Every now and then when I'm flying along the airplane will get a sudden jolt, shakes up the passengers, and the resumes. It happens with every one of the weather add-ons that I tried.

Maybe xAmbience will finally release a add-on that works the way it should. 😀

I came to X-plane from P3D mainly because I was frustrated with the slow pace of improvements to the overall flying environment- weather, lighting, etc. After being led on by REX with the buggy SF and then EF for a long time, I gave up. So, I found that between Orthos and Xambience, the X-plane world was just more enjoyable for me to fly around, with two main exceptions: Weather and night lighting. For the life of me I could never understand why LR decided to never pursue better weather, or in the very least, open weather up to devs. Mind-boggling.

The best we could do was X-enviro. The PROMISE of amazing weather kept a lot of users on the edge of their seats, drooling over every little progress update, and vehemently defending the developer after the underwhelming, long-awaited updates. But, to each their own. If they're happy with supporting development that will never really evolve into much- more power to them. For me, I never flew X-plane after I became an Alpha tester for MSFS despite the fact that I miss the stability and depth of that sim. The lighting and weather are just too-good in MSFS to go back. It could be better, but it's the best we can do now. I miss the Zibo, I miss my Orthos, but I don't miss weather or X-enviro. I do miss my $69 though...

3 hours ago, captaingoldfish said:

night lighting

That's a strange one, I personally find even default Xplane at night pretty breathtaking.

There is also

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/59122-beautiful-xplane-nights/

Night lighting is the one thing X-Plane visually beats all other sims hands down imho. I was blown away by that night time touchdown in KJFK the other day and I wasn't even using Samwise's upgrades (I think - not got round to installing them on this install)

10 hours ago, tonywob said:

but rather a tech demo

Hmm, yeah, maybe, kind of.

We've been through a lot of the options with Enhanced Cloudscapes, 99% of what there is to complain about with EC is simple hardware limitations and the "hacks" required to get it remotely performant even on the latest hardware, some of the early versions were running at seconds per frame.

volumetrics are hard technically, and hard on the hardware, a lot of what I've seen elsewhere in the likes of P3D Trusky, MSFS et al on the same techniques quite frankly look absolutely ridiculous, a choice between insta change on X-Plane or the "nuclear fallout" in MSFS is no choice at all. The only flight sim/game I have ever seen get clouds right is 2019s Ace Combat 7 - They used TruSky similar to P3D, but wow did they do it right. windshield effects, clouds that have that "guess the animal" feel to them - But, afaict they hand crafted the weather for each of the different missions, clouds always seem to be in the same place, same missions always have the same weather. Completely different ballgame converting METAR/TAF data into something that always resembles the real world from 10 feet to 100,000 feet.

12 hours ago, DJJose said:

no demo

is probably all that needs saying.

If they don't think you would buy it after you try it, its likely not worth buying, that applies to most things in life save a few very rare exceptions

Such as when their are extensive demonstration videos and reviews.

 

15 minutes ago, mSparks said:

That's a strange one, I personally find even default Xplane at night pretty breathtaking.

There is also

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/59122-beautiful-xplane-nights/

Night lighting is the one thing X-Plane visually beats all other sims hands down imho. I was blown away by that night time touchdown in KJFK the other day and I wasn't even using Samwise's upgrades (I think - not got round to installing them on this install)

 

Those are the lights that I'm using and their are OUTSTANDING! It's hard to believe that there users out there who don't appreciate how amazing the XP11 lights are. I love the night lighting. It's the best of any sim.

5 hours ago, captaingoldfish said:

I came to X-plane from P3D mainly because I was frustrated with the slow pace of improvements to the overall flying environment- weather, lighting, etc. After being led on by REX with the buggy SF and then EF for a long time, I gave up. So, I found that between Orthos and Xambience, the X-plane world was just more enjoyable for me to fly around, with two main exceptions: Weather and night lighting. For the life of me I could never understand why LR decided to never pursue better weather, or in the very least, open weather up to devs. Mind-boggling.

The best we could do was X-enviro. The PROMISE of amazing weather kept a lot of users on the edge of their seats, drooling over every little progress update, and vehemently defending the developer after the underwhelming, long-awaited updates. But, to each their own. If they're happy with supporting development that will never really evolve into much- more power to them. For me, I never flew X-plane after I became an Alpha tester for MSFS despite the fact that I miss the stability and depth of that sim. The lighting and weather are just too-good in MSFS to go back. It could be better, but it's the best we can do now. I miss the Zibo, I miss my Orthos, but I don't miss weather or X-enviro. I do miss my $69 though...

I hear ya!

I spent the last seven months testing MSFS. I have accumulated over 100 payware add-ons and 500 freeware mods. I doubt that many MSFS users have achieved that feat, so it's something that I'm very proud to claim. When the MSFS forum  is not dominated by the latest update that breaks something in the sim, the last two threads that garnered some enthusiasm were the ones on the CRJ & the JF Piper Arrow III. Other than that, it's the same old thing. Two airplanes that I have for both P3D & XP11.

Over the last seven months, MSFS has regressed. After the dev broke my sim (after World Update #3) I decided that I needed a reliable & realistic sim that I did not need to baby sit. I've settled nicely on XP 11.53. I'm just thrilled by what this sim has become. I'm finally enjoying some very realistic and exciting flights on a sim that I cursed and wished it to die.

I even managed to fix the CTDs that I was having with JF Traffic Global with a simple tip provided by a forum member. So, for me, now XPlane 11 is the present and maybe MSFS is still the future.

Stay safe.

Jose

Jose, I feel you pain 😕

MS FLIGHT brought me back to flight simulation, starting with it's announcement in late 2011, to building a PC ( the same I still use ) for simming, and then installing and enjoying until the very end that GREAT flight simulator...

MFS , 8 yrs latter, got me away from flight simulation, probably for good... AT least the kind of use I gave to flightsims... It was such a HUGE disappointment albeit the nice scenery and weather graphics 😞

Edited April 3, 20215 yr by jcomm

8 minutes ago, jcomm said:

Jose, I feel you pain 😕

MS FLIGHT brought me back to flight simulation, starting with it's announcement in late 2011, to building a PC ( the same I still use ) for simming, and then installing and enjoying until the very end that GREAT flight simulator...

MFS , 8 yrs latter, got me away from flight simulation, probably for good... AT least the kind of use I gave to flightsims... It was such a HUGE disappointment albeit the nice scenery and weather graphics 😞

Most simmers have never really experienced a sim unless they went through the BP=0 FSX Tweak. 🙂

We've come a long way but I do have to ask, why with Active Sky being the most successful weather add-on and XP giving excellent performance enhancements with less visibility, why would they not add that feature?

It's mind boggling how little SOME developers know about flight simming.

Hi guys,

I bought xenviro a couple of years ago. I even had a little argument with my wife about it's price tag  but I convinced her I really needed this...

After struggling with low fps for a while I went VR and forgot about this add on because it never worked in vr and after all these years still doesn't.  I bought msfs,  aerofly fs2,  flyinside p3d and fsx, dcs and Il2 bos. I've really had a blast the last 3 years  with all of them.

Currently  I fly xp11 most of the time because it gives me good performance,  is very stable and looks amazing in vr.

I forgot about xenviro until I found this thread. It is quite remarkable that I paid  exactly the same amount of money for msfs as i did 4 years ago for xenviro....enough said.

 

Happy flying you all!!

 

Jozeff

 

So does XEnviro worth a buy now?

18 minutes ago, Anxu00 said:

So does XEnviro worth a buy now?

AIUI

Bit like asking if a Ferrari is "worth" a buy. Its expensive, looks really pretty and you wont want to use it that often.

But yeah, its really pretty, and what good is money in your bank account anyway?

Edited April 4, 20215 yr by mSparks