Rex Soft Clouds

[Deleted]

Does anyone have Rex's Soft Cloud set, and if so, how do you like it?

Thanks.

[scottb]

I just bought the REX4 textures + SoftClouds recently on sale for $20.00. I like the clouds I've seen so far, I haven't tried too many variations yet, but they look really good with Active Sky Next weather. I don't see any major frame rate hit either. I had been using Active Sky textures before, I wanted to go back to REX for better visual punch, and use ASN for the weather. So far it seems to be a really nice combo.

-Scott

[Sandy]

I've got the soft clouds set, but frankly haven't noticed a lot of difference from 'normal' REX 4. Using Opus FSI for weather generation on P3D, with the volumetric stuff turned on.

Here's an image from one recent flight near Sequim Valley airport... (click image to see full-screen version)



((but I have no idea why I have a white box in the image.... something I messed up in Gimp apparently))

[Deleted]

Thanks guys. Boy, that doesn't look too bad at all. I'm thinking of doing the same thing as you Scott - using it with ASN. I heard they don't have any Cirrus with the Rex package. Does ASN fill in with that (I'm assuming yes). Also, can you get a full overcast condition with those?

Thanks!

[scottb]

Glenn, I think you would still get the Active Sky cirrus clouds. If REX doesn't provide textures, it should just continue to use what Active Sky put in for Cirrus textures. I had some pretty solid overcast recently on a flight around Juneau. I don't know if I have any screenshots. if not, I might be able to re-create it with historic weather in ASN.

-Scott

[pivo11]

That stuff looks pretty good, might have to give it a go.  I mean, it's been a while since I've had any new weather stuff. 

[scottb]

Here's a couple shots flying over a low overcast. This is near Kake, using ASN for weather and REX4 for textures:

-Scott

[Deleted]

Thanks a bunch for this Scott. I did end up picking them up tonight. So far I like what I see. I do NOT like what they don't tell you first though! First is you have to install their download manager to get these. Then you have to install a Microsoft SQL dbase server. Neither should be a problem but I like to know about these things ahead of time. In any event, from what little I've seen of the clouds so far, they do look very good and I've not noticed any impact on frames at all. For the price it's a decent deal. Appreciate you putting up the photos. I'll have some coming probably tomorrow.

[scottb]

I realized this morning that I wasn't actually using the Soft Cloud textures, just regular REX4 textures for my clouds. I had them in my profile but hadn't installed them into my game. Whoops! Now with Soft Clouds, my overcast looks even better.

-Scott

[Deleted]

Oh, ok. Well, I need to try different sets for my installation. So far I'm not as impressed as I thought I would be. I've installed Set 1 this morning and will try them tonight and see how they go.

Thanks Scott

[Bushpounder]

Don's good old advice for life and simming - Keep your expectations low - you will never be disappointed!

BP;)

[scottb]

Here's an updated shot of my flight at Kake using the soft clouds textures:

This is a reported 2500' overcast.  One thing I haven't tried yet is generating weather related textures.  I always found Active Sky Advanced did a pretty good job with that.  It's easy to get unrealistic looking textures for your weather conditions if you just randomly do textures yourself.

-Scott

[Deleted]

@don - I always expect the worst. I think that's why my wife is an EX wife

OK, looks good Scott, and I think you are right about generating wx related textures. I loaded in Set 1 tonight and they look really, really great. I'm very pleased with them (pics to follow in the Cross Country thread later). I'll continue to experiment but #1 set is worth the $$$ alone . Keep posting though - I like your shots.