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Good weather engine?


caaront

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I might get the rex weather architect.


 


I notice you can set up storms of varying intensity, rain, snow, wind, even ground fog.


 


I think it is what I am looking for.


 


Any advice or suggestions?


 


Thank you.


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I have REX Essential with Ovewrdrive, it has weather, but only real world or a weather theme, I want to be able to have fog on the ground, clouds in the sky, and set whatever other parameters I want, and it looks like rex weather architect does that.


 


Will open REX essential plus overdrive and look around, and check out ASN.


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I load a weather theme in REX E+OD and use it to open P3D v3 and all I get is the regular scenario set up with nothing about REX weather, and I end up with whatever scenarios there.

 

About to give up.


Do I start P3D, set up whatever scenario, then install the weather textures from REX E+OD?

 

I will try that

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I load a weather theme in REX E+OD and use it to open P3D v3 and all I get is the regular scenario set up with nothing about REX weather, and I end up with whatever scenarios there.

About to give up.

Do I start P3D, set up whatever scenario, then install the weather textures from REX E+OD?

I will try that

Do not install REX textures into P3D with it running!

As far as your original question, ASN is the best and will allow you to easily create your own weather if you want or use live weather or historical weather.

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My main deal breaker or maker is if there is a check box for ground fog, if ASN has it I will try it, but on videos and screen shots I find no mention of it.


 


I know there is a screen shot of REX Weather Architect showing the check box.


 


Please let me know.


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Do not install REX textures into P3D with it running!

As far as your original question, ASN is the best and will allow you to easily create your own weather if you want or use live weather or historical weather.

Can I make ground fog?

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Think your  confusing  wa  with  other  weather  engines.  Wa  is  not  a live  weather  engine, its only  a addon where  you can design  your own weather  eg  fog,  rain  thunderstorms  etc,  if  you have  rexe  or  rex4  it  will use  those  textures   to what you  have  designed  in Wa.  Make sure  if  you use   Wa  not  to run any live  weather  engines  being  asn  of  opus  or  rexe


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Can I make ground fog?

 

In a word, "Yes".

 

With Active Sky Next in "Manual Weather Mode", it is certainly possible to set up very realistic ground fog by entering appropriate values for cloud type, cloud coverage, cloud base and your required visibility distance.

 

And, when it's set to "Live Weather Mode", and you are landing or taking off in fog, it certainly depicts it very realistically.

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WA does what I am looking for then, I care less about the weather most of the time, but if I can create my own storm, where I want with the parameters I want, its what I want.

 

Not really looking for a live weather engine.


Thank you all very much.

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Another thing to consider is this... ASN is a real time weather engine... it loads actual real world conditions into the sim. If you don't see any fog outside, you'll not see it in sim.

REX Weather Architect is NOT a weather engine (in the traditional sense). It simply allows you to create a weather "theme" and load it into the sim.

So if all you want is the ability to create your own custom weather, exactly how you want it, the REX WA is a good choice. If you want to see actual conditions in real time, REX WA will not fit the bill, but ASN will.

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I use FSX SE and I'm looking for a live weather engine. What do you guys think? Active Sky Next Steam Version or the standard ASN? I'm leaning towards the regular version being the better choice simply because its not tied to steam.


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WA it is, but going to experiment by placing stratus clouds at ground level first.

 

 

Aaron - are you familiar with setting up volumetric fog via a visibility layer that starts at about -1000 feet and then goes up as high as you want...say 1 or 2 thousand feet?

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I have both Active Sky Next and OPUS FSI, but I would personally recommend ASN because OPUS brings my system to its knees, I get with it 23-26fps in bad overcast. With ASN constant 29-30fps, for me it's huge deference, but OPUS draw more beautiful.

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Aaron - are you familiar with setting up volumetric fog via a visibility layer that starts at about -1000 feet and then goes up as high as you want...say 1 or 2 thousand feet?

No, how do you do it?

Thank you.

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So if all you want is the ability to create your own custom weather, exactly how you want it, the REX WA is a good choice. If you want to see actual conditions in real time, REX WA will not fit the bill, but ASN will.

ASN is much more than just live weather. You can create your own weather easily with ASN. It's a very configurable program and is very easy to use. I use it all the time to create my own weather themes.

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I don't want to create weather as weather is the one thing you cannot control, so using ASN and flying the same route a few times creates the differences that real world weather gives you to break up the monotony. Creating weather leaves you with no surprises.

But I guess some people are controlling types and like to create and control, I prefer random surprises

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Why don't you give FSXWX a try. IMO it works extremely well. I've been using it for several months and frankly see no reason now to change, even though I have REX and was reasonably happy with the weather engine

 

It's free, set up is very well documented, integrates with FSX seamlessly which I use (also runs with Prepar3D v2 according to the website) and will use both real time and historical weather data.  It will give you a chance to experiment before you commit to hard cold cash.

 

Best regards

Renault


Apologies for double posting. I lost my internet connection as I was in the process of posting the first reply and thought that my first message didn't go through , so I recreated it.

 

I wish for the "old days". Unless someone cut my piece of string the two can's always seemed to work!

 

Sorry about this

Renault

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No, how do you do it?

Thank you.

 

Its in the same advanced weather menu that you use to set up stratus clouds.(User defined weather>advanced weather>visibility)

 

but try this:

 if you are flying in an area where the average hilltop altitude is say 500 feet above sea level then set your lowest visibility layer so that its base is -1000feet and its top is 400 feet and the visibility is 1 mile or less.  Lower the height of the layer if needed.  this can look really cool in places like San Fransisco with a top set at about 200 feet.

 

In version 2.4 it seemed to me that adding more visibility layers would screw up the lowest layer.  They may have fixed that in v3 but start with only one layer and see what you get.  The volumetric fog can be quite convincing.

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Got WA and set up a storm around Tulsa, OK and it is great, I can set every parameter, from light to severe, will be great for videos which is what I wanted the flexibility for, to set up a specific weather event where I want to.


 


I don't particularly care for weather usually, but if I feel a video or screen shot calls for it I can set it up.


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