Weather Engines?

[𝙰𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚕]

In the next week or two, I'm planning to make my first few purchases for X plane 11. I've settled on the flight factor 767 to be my aircraft of choice. Along with this I'd like to buy weather addons, I've done research, but I still can't decide between buying Active Sky xp and ultra weather xp (together) OR Xenviro. They've been updated relatively recently and it's hard to decide. What would you recommend? Thanks!

[ZeroReady]

What are you looking for in the product? Better cloud textures? Accurate replication of real time weather?

I've been on the fence about payware weather since I started using the NOAA plugin.

https://x-plane.joanpc.com/plugins/xpgfs-noaa-weather

Uses default XP clouds, but you get accurate real time METAR automatically injected into the sim, the only downside is that it updates like every 15 or 20 minutes as you're flying, so you dont get smooth transitions, the weather just changes abruptly. Other than that though it's perfect. No FPS hit, works flawlessly, easy to install, FREE.

[John W]

I have both Active Sky XP and xEnviro. I can't say I'm satisfied with either. Sometimes each looks gorgeous and other times really bad. So I switch back and forth. I can't stand the cloud textures in the default weather and Active Sky XP isn't much better. I have their high resollution textures loaded and they look OK but not great.

I don't like the limited cloud range that Active Sky XP has (same range as the default weather). So when you are under an overcast condition it's like being under a giant disk. The clouds extend the same amount in all directions and then stop. Personally I think this looks really bad.

I don't get that as much with xEnviro but I see it at times. xEnviro also has issues with the thin, fringe cloud areas that scintillate. So that doesn't look natural and xEnviro is still working on that. xEnviro adds wet textures to the ground when it's raining and also does snow on all ground textures.

Overall I probably use xEnviro more than I use Active Sky XP.

You said you did research. Did you look into the forums for each of the weather engines on X-Plane.org? You probably won't find much for Active Sky XP because it pretty much looks like the default weather engine but with a slightly better weather depiction. There are many issues posted for xEnviro and the xEnviro team is working hard on them.

Good luck with trying to decide on a weather engine. In all seriousness, it would probably be better to wait until something comes out that clearly provides better weather than the default.

[old tail dragger]

I fly VFR only, I like the scenery. I fly with no clouds, no wind, altimeter 2992.

[Rød Pølse]

Xenviro is very buggy, very inaccurate weather and VERY expensive. Active sky XP and xvision is the way to go.

[Kosmozuikis]

Active sky XP and xvision provides the best results. Xenviro is not good, especially at its ridiculous price and there's skymaxx pro which is a joke and not even worth talking about.

[John W]

What do you use xvision for? I was looking at it to see if it could extend the range of the clouds in Active Sky XP but did not see that it could.

[Rød Pølse]

Xvision is a tool that helps simmers to make the most eye-catching virtual
flight experience in X-Plane 11

[Kosmozuikis]

I don't have any problems with the range of clouds. And xvision clouds are better than the ones ASXP provides.

[jerdawg]

I've been waiting almost two years to buy a weather engine......looks like my wait isn't going to end any time soon.
One is better for this.....one is better for that.....etc...etc.
Same goes for a good ATC add on.
Spend your money on orbx scenery or build some ortho scenery instead.
I think a proper weather engine will happen soon, just not now.

[Rød Pølse]

jerdawg. I disagree. ASXP is very accurate as a weather engine. Providing the most accurate weather data (NOT TEXTURES) to Xplane 11, When you find a weather engine that provides correct weather and wind data you won´t find it any better what more can you ask for?. TEXTURES is a different story. Xvision is the best visuals we have for now. Xenviro on the other hand which promises to bring the user a weather engine AND textures is a complete joke. Xenviros weather and wind data is flat out inaccurate and the textures look like shaving foam AND on top of that it fries your GPU. And as an extra gesture they ask you for 70 USD.
So to conclude, ASXP and Xvision is the way to go. I have 12 years of simming experience.

[Stringbean]

FS-Global Real Weather (FSGRW) is another great weather injector tool and provides far more layers and weather stations. No textures though, that would have to be a separate addon but I use default Xplane clouds which does me fine.

[Kosmozuikis]

Default clouds breaks the immersion completely for me.

[John W]

ASXP does add high resolution textures to XP11. You can select high performance or high resolution. It backs up the XP11 textures and replaces them based on your selection.

Regarding xEnviro. Yes I own it and use it but not as much lately. At times it looks absolutely gorgeous. Other times not so much. I agree with the shaving foam analogy but the clouds don't look that way all of the time. I had such high hopes when I first purchased xEnviro 1.07. And quickly realized that I had purchased what was to me a beta product. And it still is. Still has problems. Currently I am experiencing cloud fluctuations along the horizon when there are broken clouds. So I'm hoping this is being worked on. But as time progresses I'm using ASXP more and more. Not that it doesn't have issues. I absolutely hate the way it does overcast skies. Can't stand the way the clouds extend equally out in all directions but DO NOT go to the horizon. But it's probably just me.

So from what I've read it looks like the current best combination is ASXP and xvision. Keep in mind that makers of ASXP have stated that they are working on a version 2 which will completely replace the XP11 default weather as xEnviro attempts to do. The projection was that it may come out within a year from the release of ASXP. So keep an eye out for that because I am as I don't think the combination of ASXP and xvision will solve the cloud range issue for overcast clouds.

[John W]

So I decided to change my mind and I just purchased and installed xvision. So far I am very pleased. It wasn't working at first so I browsed through the online manual and discovered I need to use presets that are designed for flywithlua. I tried the impressive_for_lua preset and that is working. Now to find other presets that are made to work with flywithlua. Does anyone have any suggestions on where to look?

[Kosmozuikis]

Vivid preset is good. Also to make everything work with xvision you need to use FXAA. It can be 4x+FXAA or whatever, just needs to be FXAA.
ASXP devs should wait for vulkan before doing anything more serious.