PookyMacMan

They state that the elements of Environment Architect will be included in Weather Direct. By the way, Weather Direct has been in development 2 years, not 5.

I use both, it depends on my mood. Both are "equally realistic" IMO but sometimes I want the ultra-defined look, and sometimes I want the super fluffy look. The weather-defined textures will use both sets so you could try that if that's up your alley.

It would run well, but I doubt it would be exactly like the desktop. Honestly though that wouldn't be a terrible machine to try it with, with some tweaking it could probably be pretty darn good. The only big issue that could happen is heat. No matter what laptop you get, invest in a cooling pad. For your own good and the laptop's!

No matter how much discussion happens, it seems that, unless I missed something, it is as the thread title states: everything is currently vague. The whole MS Flight thing shouldn't drive us to negative speculation, IMO, but rather to less speculation. As much fun as speculation is, at the same time it's better to do that when we've actually got some bites (or bytes, if you prefer) of information. As such, I'm hopeful that the new sim will be great, but I'm really just watching and waiting.

I've got to echo the others: beautiful screens!

It depends what you mean by "do anything." It does replace all the P3D water textures, and there have been some stunning screenshots on their website and forums using P3D. As for masking P3D water issues, it does so to a point, according to my knowledge. Here's the link to the product page - screenshots are on the left and the sim used is written on the bottom right. http://rexdirectexperience.com/bundle.html

REX 4 actually provides all entirely new textures than REX Essential's offering. I find them to be far superior and well worth the price (as do many other users on this and other forums).

I seem to be among the minority that still enjoys REX Essential quite a bit...I understand that ASN provides quite a bit of improvement but I personally haven't had half the issues most mention with Essential, so I still like it a lot. REX Essential is the kind of program where, if you follow all instructions, it will run pretty darn well. But if you make little slips, disastrous things can happen. The fact that it's cumbersome is somewhat annoying, but I still use it.

What kind of performance are you getting now? It's pretty much what Techguy said.

Here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/470021-has-avsim-been-down-all-day-106/?p=3252326 Performance Mode is a special diagnostic mode in the forum software that disables hooks and add-ons for the forum. That's why it seems so empty. :smile:

You're going to hear multitudes of input on this, some saying that FSX is better and some saying P3D. I've personally seen fantastic results (i.e. I've seen screenshots, I don't own P3D yet) with both. Just be careful about the cost of add-ons, some like PMDG require completely separate purchases for FSX and P3D, others like REX Essential (not REX 4) have a small fee for using the product with P3D (the REX Ess. fee is $4.99 one-time but you likely have already seen that). Personally, until you make the plunge I think FSX is worth investing into. When set up correctly it is mind-blowing, so it's definitely not a waste of time. And as for your specs...totally fine. :wink: That is quite enough to get fantastic results.

I'm seeing the same here. Although I like a nice uncluttered look, I do like checking recent community posts...hopefully this is a simple maintenance issue. Or it could be a forum update, perhaps IPB 4.0 preparation? But now I'm thinking too hard... Edit: could have answered my own question if I checked in the other thread in Hangar Chat. The forum is in performance mode, which is why search is disabled (and view new content) and why none of the other add-ons/hooks are appearing.

I assume the "Toshiba std" in your PC specs is supposed to be "Toshiba ssd"? :wink: Otherwise I would stick with all the DXT options and go no higher than 2048 on texture res. Considering you don't have a dedicated GPU that number may need to be 1024, but try 2048 first.

Yes they are, albeit the weather categories are slightly more broad than the clouds IIRC. If Tim floats by this thread he could confirm that. I'm pretty sure the only categories that are chosen at random are water and runways.

I've always found REX clouds, skies, water etc. to be my favorite ones. I don't use Essential for textures anymore, but I do use REX 4 and Soft Clouds together. I choose textures based on ICAO as another user previously mentioned, it works wonderfully. In my opinion it always picks the right kind of clouds (i.e. a REX 4 set vs. a Soft Clouds set) for the scenario. Also as another user mentioned, I wouldn't use Soft Clouds all the time because they do look really soft indeed. However, in situations where you want soft-looking clouds, there is no equal IMO. BTW, about the ICAO feature - textures are tagged with certain characteristics for certain scenarios, however the choice of which one within that category is used is random. For example (I don't know if the exact numbers are true, it's purely illustrative) there may be 5 sets of clouds that are tagged heavy thunderstorms, but it'll pick randomly among the 5 for a heavy thunderstorm. This is from posts by Reed or Tim on their forum FYI.

It's more texture choices. That's all it is. But they are some pretty good looking clouds.

Star Trek was slightly more understandable for a while, I actually know a lot of kids these days whose only exposure to Star Trek is the new films (not even Next Gen). So it seemed like Star Trek was fading slightly in the distance until its recent reboot. Star Wars, however, is quite odd...that is one of the most commonplace film series in history...

Not to sound like a ######, but that's what I use REX 4 Texture Direct for. Stunning texture set IMO. Edit: didn't realize that fanb*y was a forbidden word? Can anyone explain that?

I'm loving Soft Clouds too, now that it's released. Would've recommended it before but it didn't exist when I wrote the original post. ^_^

They said they are going to release it for Texture Direct (free update for existing purchasers of SC). Seems kinda curious that they didn't release the integrated version first, but oh well.

2015 is the year of major movie releases. And the title should probably be updated to The Force Awakens instead of The Force Unleashed (cool video game series but not the same) I'm mostly curious to see how the original returning actors will look and play in this release.

Well the soft look isn't for every type of flight IMO - I frequently switch between TD sets and SC sets. The SC are nice for flying really high over them. And they're only low level clouds anyway.

Wow! If it were't for certain characteristic sim elements, I would have thought it to be a photograph! Excellent shot!

I enjoy these. As stated earlier, they look particularly good in FSX as you fly over them. I alternate between them and REX 4 clouds regularly.

Haha, what a great way to spend time with the girl! Now to configure all those add-ons... Unless you don't use them of course.