The datarefeditor is an add-on, get it here. https://developer.x-plane.com/tools/datarefeditor/
As mSparks said, it's under the Art Controls, Just type "fog" in the lower left search box to find it.
I have all three. FSX, P3D and XPX. They are all fine with me in their own way. But since Carenado, the FlightFactor 757 and the JARDesign A330 came to XPX, I find the only one I ever use is X-Plane.
After first installing the AXE in 2.2 it wouldn't work at all. What fixed it for me was to delete the prepar3d.cfg file and let the program make a new one. No problems at all since then.
Just personal opinion but I think the 737 NGX is the best aircraft period. It's a hard-core sim though. FS2Crew (an add-on) adds a co-pilot that makes the plane much easier to operate. The Aerosoft A320/A321 are also very good and probably better for a beginner.
P3D does the same thing. It's your high quality textures. The program and/or graphics card just can't keep up. In P3D you can mess with the affinity mask and it allegedly helps the problem.
Nvidia is about to introduce their new Kepler based cards that will support new features of DirectX 12 in hardware. Prepar3D is likely to always be at the leading edge of graphics. So to future-proof I'm going to wait until late 2014 to replace my GTX 580.