rex essentials + od

[britfrog 180]

Well the weather here today was pants the clouds were at 300 feet or less, vis less than a mile in mizzle, so decided to see what REX made of it all. so took a pmdg ngx for a few ILS circuits and bumps.

Firstly I have to say i have been quite critical of REX for a number of reasons most recently their essential release i think created more problems than it solved . one of my "beefs" was that it did not reproduce the current weather anywhere only historic weather despite having the box ticked to use current weather, whilst REX2 with OD did , REX nicely acknowledged the fault however I thought this would just be overlooked,but how wrong could I be!

Let me say right now,that the current release of essential + OD is what I have been waiting for, it does finally what it has always been promising to do, so today when the local weather at LFMP would even make birds stay grounded I went off and was really blown away not only was the vis spot on, but the way the cloud base was created of some really low stuff in little clumps plus some general murk right up to 5000 feet it was very very realistic. Whilst I know the way that clouds are made up is hamstrung by fsx their latest cloud representations are the best yet, so hats off to them for a job well done, this is the best weather program around at the moment by far.

[britfrog 180]

I have been looking at opus and have read some reports that say it is better than REX but I do not get the fps hits that you seem to with REX , or at least havent found the file that caused your grief, and despite the fact that i only have a 2mb download speed I find the updating of weather almost instantanious but there is a slow start up. there seems to be a lot of people who reckon that the I5 is as good as the I7, however i disagree, maybe the I7's advantage is shown by my p'c's performance? i have run the I7 up to 5.4 after that i started to get scared and was having trouble getting the voltages correct etc, plus the cpu was getting really toasty.

I stopped looking at fps rates when i installed the I7 as it is always fluid and not jerky no matter what scenario i fly in, and i have it limited to 30fps not unlimited, again one reads so much twozzle from so called "experts"

I always use 4096 textures and up to an lod of 8.5 (apparently impossible and a waste of time according to the know alls on the pnmdg site) unless i use ftx combined with pmdg when i have to cut the lod back to 4.5-5.5

However our specs are quite similar, as fsx is supposed to be cpu hungry i would go for 3950 but doesnt that take a different motherboard?

P.S. I have just downloaded the opus demo, as the weather is going to be pants again here tomorrow it will make an interesting comparison.

[britfrog 180]

as the 2600k will go onto your current mobo it has to be the cheapest upgrade,

as for graphics i am still happy with my old 460gtx it can handle all thrown at it at the mo so a 560 will be good for a few years yet

was just looking at the opus comparison video comparing ase and rex. i must say my new rex gives much better weather than what they were showing but i think essential was rushed out, there is no doubt that the plus version combined with OD (version 1029) gives a far more realistic representation than ordinary essential. luckily i have 3 fsx setups on 3 hard drives so i can try opus on the version that i try all new stuff on before eventually deciding whether to put it on the no1 drive as i hate to install then uninstall as it always leaves relics. fs2 crew and gex were awful for leaving things behind. However without actually trying it i must say the pics in the opus gallery dont exactly blow me away.

just been looking at the lfmp TAF for tomorrow before 8am they are quoting 2000 meters in mizzle and overcast at 2500 so it is better than today

however if you update your rex to rex essential plus od you should be able to use the histopric database and set todays date and fly in real crap.

Just in case you dont have a real life site for all weather try this one:

http://euro.wx.propilots.net/

on the top left there is awhite band open this to

METAR-TAF multiple inout

eneter the icao airport like LFMP

and away you go

the page with rainfall radar is also a real life handy tool if you want to know what to expect within the next few hours.

and lower down you can also get the real weather maps as well and also the usaf weather maps

P.S. EGLL looks pretty bad tomorrow AM so if the lfmp weather is too good try there

[britfrog 180]

if opus will use the rex textures then it has to be a no brainer ! will try it out later. especially if it is quicker than REX

weather here this am isnt too bad easily get-in-able

[britfrog 180]

installed it, couldnt get anything to work at all, removed it, so have to live with rex

[britfrog 180]

ok i RTFM and got it to work, first impressions were how quick it uploaded the current weather, took off from lfmp and was impressed by the low clouds however they evaporated as i got closer, i tried to fly through some others and they also flashed and disppeared as i got close. So proceeded up the valley toward my house and came across a realistic bank of very low cloud/fog thought i would descend through it to see where it stoppped and it was like fsx of old , one minute you were just above a cloud bank and then whoosh it disappeared and i could see the ground.

Decidied to do a high rate climb to the cloud base the sky around turned many colours from blue to purple each time a cloud appeared the sim would jerk and sometimes flash , i never managed to find the cloud base as it kept moving away from me

OK i was only using the demo version but this is 44 bucks so i want to be impressed before i buy it, to be honest from what I have read i should be impressed but i must be missing something, from what i have seen so far the only thing in its favour is its speed and that is impressive.

I will try it again later and give it another chance.

[britfrog 180]

Just had another go, firstly with rex which did give a pretty realistic representation of the poor weather here, then shut off rex but not fsx and fired up opus this immediately made a different representation of the current weather (but not bad either) however without the reduction in low level visibility that rex had correctly installed. I will have to do more investigation by swapping from one to another to get a better feeling of who does what better.

At the moment opus wins hands down on speed , however rex does some things better than opus and vice versa, so for me the jury is out for the moment. I shall play a bit more later on but chores now beckon.

now 12.30 here fired up opus and had a wet runway and rain which is correct , REX didnt have rain but the cloud bases etc were the same when i looked into it REX is using the 1030 metar and opus is using a later one, when i checked with the actual lfmp weather rain was on the metar after 1100. So opus wins as it is using a more recent metar than REX ,

One of the downsides to opus is it changes your key assignments eg V no longer takes a picture, G no longer puts the u/c down and also i no longer have a PTT button so cannot talk on vatsim. I will now have to RTFM

[OpusFSX 0]

Hi britfrog

I would like to point out that we definately don't change the key assignments, we consider that one of the benefits of using OpusFSX.

Regards

Cheryl

[UKJim 502]

oh god another rex / opus thread on the web! I want opus but sum comments are putting me off! Not sure!