Skywatcher

Sorry, scenery does not use extra cores as it's a limitation of FSX. Anything that is running through FSX uses a single core be it scenery, an aircraft or anything else.

Think you are a little confused. They are both single core games and you will get far worse performance in FSX than you will in FS9.

@JetCat, You know why retro gaming is so popular? Because people have come to the realization new does not mean better or more enjoyable. I have nothing stopping me from using MSFS other than I don't like it over FS9. There is more to enjoyment than graphics. The biggest plus is no new bugs and no continual updates fixing them. I can't imagine anything worse than sitting down to fly and you are told no because first you have to download gigabytes of data and install it. This is STILL the state of affairs right? No game is worth that. Some of us have a life and time is limited.

Agree. Some of us have settled on FS for life for no other reason than we prefer it! Regarding the Ariane or even the PMDG 737, I think the iFly 737 is far superior to both. I wouldn't recommend a new sim for people but switching 737's to the iFly is very much worth the investment.

Only online weather is stopped which makes literally no difference. I'll use ASE for life.

I much prefer ASE. I have FSGRW but haven't used it for a long time. Can't really tell you about specific pros or cons as can't remember. ASE certainly had many more features. FSGRW was slow to load weather and sometimes the server plays up. For some users, they couldn't get it to download weather at all. Now, this was at least 3 or more years ago I'd say and certainly server issues may have since been resolved...or maybe not.

https://secure.simmarket.com/fs-global-real-weather-fs9-fsx-p3d.phtml

Many FS9 products no longer work nor can they be activated. REX killed their weather several years ago. The Microsoft built in weather stopped functioning many years ago. ASE had a long run and the developers unofficially supported it well beyond any period you could possibly expect. Heck, they even gave you the courtesy of a reply now. There are developers I think you can certainly complain about but HiFi isn't one. They even fixed ASE when it stopped functioning a few years ago. They were under no obligation to do so as the product was already old. They did fix it and gave us a few extra years to enjoy it. That even surprised me. Finally, it's not like it's dead. You just need to use historical weather which in many ways is better than downloaded weather anyhow. I'll be using ASE forever!

I just tried to fly to Tivat twice and had a CTD both times on approach. Windows error log shows as being D3D.dll but I'm wondering if mipmaps could possibly cause this CTD. Anyone with suggestions for the best program to fix mipmaps? I flew to Belgrade a while ago, that one gave no problems.

Dijvid, Might be able to come to a conclusion pretty quickly on this one! Just did a flight, used Active Sky Evolution, forecast was for scattered clouds. Scattered clouds is what FS showed me through the duration of the flight. Here is where it gets interesting and quite logical. Cumulus cloud density appeared a little thicker than normal. Hard to really tell and be certain because they were just scattered clouds so no rock solid conclusion could really be drawn. However, cirrus clouds looked like nothing I had ever seen before! There were many patches of them throughout the sky. I've never seen anything like it in real life or in FS before. I'll do another flight with the same settings to really confirm but it certainly appears by bumping up the cloud number from 8 to 12 not only do you increase cumulus density (a good thing) you also increase cirrus density to unnatural levels. It is quite logical and likely how it works. Anyhow, I'll give it another flight and pay particular attention to the cirrus clouds but this is how things appear from my one flight unfortunately. Like many FS tweaks and tweaks in other games, sometimes there are reasons the developers leave the numbers where they are. Let me know if you find anything different.

Excellent! Ok, I'll give it a try as well.

Dijvid, Don't abandon your search, hopefully someone opens this thread with some knowledge and jumps in. I know I did a search a while ago looking for ways to improve the clouds, kinda like you're doing now. I don't expect there is a miracle solution or it would be common FS knowledge. However, I do know people have definitely done some tweaking with cfg settings. Unfortunately when I searched what looked like a couple of decent web pages that may contain some useful info were dead links. There is some info out there regarding your question. Might be some members here who can share some knowledge even if it only improves the clouds a little.

I think the FS weather regardless of what you use is not perfect, clouds are just one of the factors. The most annoying thing regarding the clouds is that they pop in and out at times and you virtually never get a perfectly clear sky just like you never get a heavily clouded coverage without breaks. I'm using AS and constantly doubt certain weather info but I'm not going to cross reference what it tells me every time to see if it is correct. I'm accepting weather for what it is in the current flight sims. I'm hoping the next gen flight sims will make weather what it should be.

There are a bunch of sites out there that can tell you if a site is down for everyone or just you. One example: http://www.isitdownrightnow.com/avsim.net.html

Finding my way through curing scenery problems a lack of an alpha certainly appears to be the most common issue. Great tool! Thanks Peter!