REX Soft Clouds

[OldAirmail]

The FlightSim Store has REX Soft Clouds on sale at the moment, an Easter sale, I think. So I don't know how long the sale will last.

Anyway The FlightSim Store REX Soft Clouds - USD$8.18

That's not a big discount though, the normal price is only USD$10.94.

Still, $8 just covers a burger, fries, and a drink, so why not?


WHAT IT IS.

REX Soft Clouds, is just that - clouds that look soft & fluffy.

It replaces the cloud textures in FSX/P3d.

It's EXTREMLY fast at installing the clouds that you pick into FSX/P3d.


WHAT IT ISN'T

It isn't a weather engine.

It doesn't make your clouds look better, it just replaces them.



When you start your sim, the clouds that you chose will be used.

Any weather engine can use those cloud textures, so long as you don't instruct it to replace the flight simulators clouds.


When I saw that it was on sale I started to check out Soft Clouds.

Some say that the Soft Clouds program is fantastic. There are YouTube videos where they show how great they look.

Personally? I think that it's a lot like what color you like on your car. Perhaps it's even less - It's like what kind of bread you like to use for a ham & cheese sandwich.

Maybe even less - like whether you like mayo or salad dressing on that sandwich.

I say that, because the clouds that it provides are just what it says - Soft. Clouds.


When you start your sim, certain clouds will appear, depending on what you chose the last time that you saves your flight.

What REX Soft Clouds does is to substitute those clouds with similarly shaped clouds, more or less of the same size & shape.

What you have to ask yourself is do you prefer to have a soft fuzzy cloud, or one that's (somewhat) well defined.



But it's not an easy thing to decide.

This is what I had as "standard" clouds.


And this is the Soft Cloud version of the same weather.




If someone slipped REX Soft Clouds into your computer, would you suddenly sit up and say - WOW!?

That's why I said the it just depends on what you like. To "YOU", one or the other may look much better.

To me, it's much less important than the choice between mayo or salad dressing.



You get a total of 16 "versions". Clicking on the thumbnail & the INSTALL button will put your selection into your flight sim in the blink of an eye - seriously, it's that fast.

Unfortunately what you see is less than what you get in the sim.




Perhaps they couldn't agree on the clouds descriptions, because EVEY description is the same.


Here is a sample of two DIFFERENT cloud selections




Certainly different. But WOW? No.





With a bit of luck I was able to get some better looking clouds




But they were made through OpusFSI.

I'm sure that ActiveSky, and others, could do just as well.



Am I panning REX Soft Clouds? Not really.

Under some conditions it looks very good.

And for the price, you might as well try it and make your own decision. Just buy it before the sale ends.



As an end note, let me say that MY experience with REX Soft Clouds may be different than yours.

It might be something similar to the problem that Sonic is having in Roads most accurate.

He sees one thing, and I another.

In the case of REX Soft Clouds, I wonder if a computer with an NVidia card may see it all a bit differently?

[Anthindelahunt]

I have had soft clouds for a while and really love them.

Anthin.

[OldAirmail]

Thanks, Anthin.

The REX Soft Clouds are good, but they're just one kind of the clouds out there. Close up & fuzzy.

When you're close to a cloud it should look exactly like Soft Clouds. But the farther away it is, the more defined it should/could be.

Something like the clouds in this picture. It goes from close and fuzzy, to well defined, to less defined out in the distance.


And when it looks something like this picture from Wikipedia, I'll be happy.



Yeah, I want everything.


HMMMmm. Maybe I should take up flying.

[Anthindelahunt]

If only clouds looked like that OAM.


I also use other rex clouds in texture direct.There are some
great Strato Cumulous clouds and huge thunderheads.

Unfortunately Flight sim is not reality.Wish it was.It is getting
better all the time.

Maybe at the end of the year or early next I will try P3D.

Anthin.

[Daube]

Something like the clouds in this picture. It goes from close and fuzzy, to well defined, to less defined out in the distance.

Which is exactely what you get when you install some freeware cumulus textures in low resolution, like 512x512

[OldAirmail]

I have to admit that I've been doing the opposite, highest possible texture.

So give us some hints. I've heard of some freeware clouds, and checked one of them out.

Unfortunately, the instructions were quite lengthy & detailed.

It seemed far more convoluted than necessary for everyday clouds.

Other downloadable cloud textures looked no better than what I already had. Their prime feature being that they were free.

[Daube]

In the HDE v2 freeware package, the archive contains some folders which are simple enough to understand.
For example, there's a folder nammed "Cumulus", which contains all the cumulus textures.
Inside that folder, you have several folders, one for each possible resolution. You can try the "low" or "medium" one. Each of them contain only one single texture, "cumulus1.bmp", that you have to copy into the FSX(P3D)\Texture folder, and that's all.
Nothing complex really.

High resolution cumulus texture look nice, yes. But they are a bit too much "precise" (crisp) for my taste, and they produce a dramatic impact on the FPS when the weather theme gets a bit heavy.