Lurk

I suggest you try ASN's trial period as well, with full functionality for 7 days. I doubt you'll be disappointed. I was a REX weather engine user, but ASN is miles ahead in term of, well... everything. Weather Direct seems to be quite far from being released anyway.

thanks folks, good suggestions there! :smile:

I noticed that fsx:se defaults TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT at 160 (!) on my system.

I'm sitting at my desk flying a virtual plane. 80% of my virtual cockpit switches are non-functional. My skimpy butt is firmly glued to my computer chair. The air around is still, the ground is steady. I'm one of those simmers who doesn't need every cumulus whiff or breath of wind to be exactly in the right place, at the right time and in the right intensity. GIve me a hydraulic professional training simulator and I'll start being more picky. In the meantime and in my particulatr situation, the weather injector with the best compromise between visuals, fidelity and performance is my obligatory choice. That's ASN.

damn, the week before I got my trial license!

I'd really like to purchase ASN after an extremely succesful trial period, but the price is very steep for me atm, considering it's only weather injection (although pretty damn good at it). Does this product ever go on sale? I might have to wait...

you need to install textures only once, before starting the sim. Due to the infinity of combinations, I doubt there is a 'best theme'. The program allows you to download themes shared by the community, or create your own based on the current weather at your location. This feature actually works quite nicely, although I personally only change sky and cloud textures (rarely sun and water) and leave all others alone once I've found the ones which are most appropriate for the area and airport I fly from.

you can freely mix textures from Direct and Essential Plus OD.

have you tried BOB from ORBX? scroll down: https://fullterrain.com/freeware

fsx.cfg has this tweak to make vc and gauge text more crisp: [PANELS] VIRTUAL_COCKPIT_TEXTURES_SCALE=2.0 Dunno about P3D

while we're at it, question for you, SteveFx :wink: Is there anything worth experimenting with among these lines in FSX\ShadersHLSL\Common\Common.fxh? #define D3DCMP_LESSEQUAL 4 #define D3DTADDRESS_WRAP 1 #define MAX_BONES 22 #define MAX_POINT_LIGHTS 5 #define D3DTEXF_NONE 0 #define D3DTEXF_POINT 1 #define D3DTEXF_LINEAR 2 #define D3DTEXF_ANISOTROPIC 3 #define D3DTEXF_PYRAMIDALQUAD 6 #define D3DTEXF_GAUSSIANQUAD 7 bool State_AlphaBlendEnable : STATE_ALPHABLENDENABLE = false; bool State_ShadowAlphaBlendEnable : STATE_SHADOWALPHABLENDENABLE = false; bool State_TextureAlphaBlendEnable : STATE_TEXTUREALPHABLENDENABLE = false; bool State_FallbackAlphaBlendEnable : STATE_FALLBACKALPHABLENDENABLE = false; bool State_FogEnable : STATE_FOGENABLE = true; bool State_ZWriteEnable : STATE_ZWRITEENABLE = true; dword State_ColorWriteEnable : STATE_COLORWRITEENABLE; dword State_ZFunc : STATE_ZFUNC = D3DCMP_LESSEQUAL; bool State_SpecularEnable : STATE_SPECULARENABLE = false; bool State_StencilEnable : STATE_STENCILENABLE = false; dword State_TextureWrap : STATE_TEXTUREWRAP = D3DTADDRESS_WRAP; dword State_MinFilter : STATE_MINFILTER = D3DTEXF_LINEAR; dword State_MagFilter : STATE_MAGFILTER = D3DTEXF_LINEAR; dword State_MipFilter : STATE_MIPFILTER = D3DTEXF_LINEAR; dword State_MipMapLodBias : STATE_MIPMAPLODBIAS = 0; dword State_SrcBlend : STATE_SRCBLEND = 2; dword State_DstBlend : STATE_DSTBLEND = 1; dword State_CullMode : STATE_CULLMODE = 3; bool State_AlphaTestEnable : STATE_ALPHATESTENABLE = false; dword State_AlphaTestFunction : STATE_ALPHATESTFUNCTION = D3DCMP_LESSEQUAL; dword State_AlphaTestThreshold : STATE_ALPHATESTTHRESHOLDBYTE = 255; float State_FinalAlphaBlendFactor : STATE_FINALALPHABLENDFACTOR = 1.0; float State_BlendedEmissiveFactor : STATE_BLENDEDEMISSIVEFACTOR = 1.0; float4 State_BlendConstant : STATE_BLENDCONSTANT;

damn, was hoping accu-feel had a trial version

yeah, I noticed. Will I can definitely vouch for their textures (Soft Clouds is almost a breakthrough imo), their weather engine hasn't worked as advertised, my experience having been less than satisfactory. I'm interested in seeing if they truly have an ace up their sleeve with their upcoming Weather Direct. In the meantime it's ASN all the way.

can't miss another chance myself to thank SteveFX for doing the job of a thousand developers and bringing it all together in his NO.1 FSX TOOL.

indeed!

Been using REX weather engine since... two days ago. Reason: I re-discovered Active Sky. I'm eager to see what REX team's upcoming (knowing their timing, might as well be another 6+ months) Weather Direct program will bring to the table, since they claim it to be a revolution. So far it's a brutal pros and cons battle between REX and ASN for me: REX Essential Weather Engine cons compared to ASN: - slow interface (very slow, as a matter of fact) - painstakingly long weather injection at sim startup, often with brief hangs in the sim, with the weather not loading more often than not, requiring to close and re-launch REX weather radar - massive frame rate drop (!!!) - sudden visibility and coverage changes; application settings seem to have no effect here whatsoever - flashing high-level skies, stutters and frame rate drops at weather injection, both in Standard and WXPlus mode ASN pros compared to REX Essential Weather Engine: - light-weight fast interface - instant weather conditions at flight startup with no pre-injection pause, stutter or hang - plane finally flyable, smoother frames probably due to reduced CPU cycles - seamless weather conditions - under-the-hood weather injection, with no visible effects on sim performance. I've tried pretty much all payware and freeware weather injectors, and nothing comes even close to ASN in terms of visuals, performance and fidelity. That said, REX textures + ASN seems indeed like the perfect combo, at least for me at this very moment.

been a long-time REX Essential user. I really like their products and recently bought Texture Direct and Soft Clouds, must have add-ons imho. I was also using their weather engine, the good/bad scale unfortunately leaning toward the latter in the past months, plus it takes them forever to release updates. Tried ASN last night with a free trial key. Holy heaven. I'm sold, the difference is a no-brainer, not to mention the ASTOUNDING fps increase in my particular situation. Being a customer who really likes and supports REX products (couldn't fly without their textures and clouds!), I'd love to post some constructive criticism on their forum. Their weather engine currently stands no chance against ASN. I encourage anyone who hasn't to try it out, I doubt you'll ever look back. REX team, come on, color me impressed! :wink:

works fine for me. FSX:SE + WOAI + DX10Fixer. only downside to using WOAI, which has otherwise excellent models, is that all, and I repeat ALL aircraft textures don't have mips, which causes the planes to shimmer ingame. I'm almost through with the painstaking process of adding mips to the literal hundreds of the WOAi textures in my Airplanes folder. I'm longing for a tool which adds mipmaps to textures in subfolders.

really strange. other than thinking it has to do with your monitor connection. probably not relevant, but do you have WideViewAspect=True in fsx.cfg?

yep, I did try levels at first, but obtained more satisfactory results with liftgammagain. I guess it all depends on what shaders you have activated before and what settings you use on each. But I did try the exact same figure as in your screenshot! :smile: @Fi5kuS iirc automatic installation in FSX only adds a link to the ReShade.fx in the FSX folder. You can have the Mediator along with the files it comes with when you download it in any position on your hd (I suggest a folder called ReShade where you keep your frequently used programs). What is it exactly that doesn't work for you with automatic installation?

I promise I'll get back with a few pics, including one of my Pipeline tab. For now I can tell you that to avoid becoming crazy finding a balance between day and night, I was able to obtain good results by adding the liftgammagain SweetFX shader only for night flying. What is incredible about this tool is the ability to fine tune the settings down to each individual's perception of reality.

I'll post my presets from my FSX pc, but in the meantime here are a couple I've uploaded last night. In my opinion ambient light is what is really missing from default FSX. When combined with some of the shaders I've listed before - mainly used to improve IQ - the ambient light shader is what really makes the difference. I also use Shade, which helps the overall atmosphere with its presets for brighter light and gray day.

the program is absolutely safe and reliable, and the interface allows to remove the profile and return to your previous situation with no side-effects. No need to manually uninstall anything. There's no tampering with the installation whatsoever, everything is done without any alteration to FSX files. It is powerful, safe and straightforward at the same time, provided you enjoy experimenting.

I'm not on the pc with FSX installed. Later I will provide you with the correct info. Out of memory: SweetFX - vibrance - tonemap - HDR - lumasharpen (better than adaptivesharpen from CustomFX, has less artifacting) - curves CustomFX - colormod - colormood - colorhuefx GemFX - ambient light I'm aiming at reducing the non-essential ones, so it's a work in progress. If you are interested in individual settings I can provide you with the config files. I, however, found out that monitor calibration plays an essential role in what one perceives as correct shader settings.

open the mediator application (provided you've extracted all necessary files needed to run the program in a folder you will have dutifully named "Reshade") and on the left hand there are self explanatory options, one of which, named 'Add', will ask you to navigate to the folder where the .exe resides for which you want Reshade to inject shaders. Head to your FSX installation folder from there and pick fsx.exe, at which point use the correct radio bullet depending on which API you use to run the sim (DX9 or DX10), confirm, and you are set to go. From the Pipeline tab select which effect you want to use, then go into the library where the chosen effect resides (CustomFX, GemFX, SweetFX and so on...) and tweak the individual settings from there. I suggest you start with something easy and straightforward such as Tonemap from SweetFX, for the impact and tweaking of individual shaders can be overwhelming at first. Word of advice, most of the sliders apply changes on a very sensitive basis, i.e. an integer point shift can mean a very drastic change in the sim's appearance. Once you get the heck, it's a real drug. The incredible advantage is that if you keep FSX windowed while fiddling with the mediator, you can see your changes applied instantly and experiment with shaders real-time. EDIT: seems like I found a way to post from photobucket. This is the only pic I've uploaded since using Reshade 1.0. I will post more significant ones later. the effect here is subtle, the way I like it to be. It reproduces a real life flight I took a couple weeks ago over the mediterranean along the western coast of Italy, heading south. Hot summer day with haze and low scattered clouds. The light was very bright at 36.000 feet on that early afternoon, between 1:30 and 2:00 pm.