Friday, May 14, 2010

REXPlane

REX is here for X-Plane. That's really exciting to me because REX is a very successful add-on to FS X, and it's been understandably difficult for us to convince companies that have a functioning and profitable business model on FS X to jump over to X-Plane, which requires building new capabilities in-house, starting at the bottom of the learning curve, and developing new processes. I hope these guys have a ton of success. Heck, I'd buy the product just because REXPlane is such an awesome name!

What surprises me is that we haven't seen more ports of airport scenery. These packages can be partly converted mechanically using Jonathan Harris' FS2XPlane tools, and in the case of an airport, the potential for recycling is huge - that is, the largest part of the development process is modeling, creating textures, and connecting the two. Since X-Plane can use these art assets with minimal mods, it seems like a very viable type of port.

12 comments:

Pesho said...

This looks awesome. Will be bought

Anonymous said...

Looks excellent! Well done REX.

Hopefully XP10 will give 3rd party developers the SDK hooks they need to surpass what's currently possible with FSX or XP9 weather!

Laminar Research please talk to the REX developers about their "wish list" of SDK/weather capabilities. With XP10 just around the corner now is the perfect time and surely XP10 weather will be absolutely awesome!!!

IMHO it is the commercial 3rd party developers of aircraft/weather/ATC/scenery products who will raise XP to the next level! Please foster their involvement as much as possible.

Kind regards, MatthewS

Steve said...

It is very lovely. Lots of work went into those textures. Unfortunately, the clouds still spin when I look out of the cockpit in 3D mode. Looks pretty silly, even moreso when the art has such finesse. And for the price (grumble) and hype, I would have expected a plugin or something that addressed this... more than the automation of texture substitution and METAR smoothing. Sorry to be a soggy towel, but it's important to be honest with my reactions and for folks to know what they're really dropping $30 on...which is as much as we spend on 60+ GB of scenery and programming genius in X-Plane.

Unknown said...

Sold, had to have it. This is what I look for in X-Plane. have a look at the cloud theme video sample I made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg433may9Hg

Benjamin Supnik said...

Two comments:

- No plugin can fix the "spinning clouds" short of replacing our weather rendering engine entirely. There are a lot of things that can't be "just patched" by plugins.

- I wouldn't take X-Plane's $30 as setting a reasonable high water mark for add-ons. Rather the $30 price of X-Plane is the result of us (LR) being directly subject to Walmart's idea on product pricing, and it is a price that severely undermines the long term viability of X-Plane.

Steve said...

Sounds like XP10 would be a good time to ditch Graphsim if you are contractually able to so (I realize that won't be discussed). ...And redo the weather rendering engine. :) Considering that there are much older sims out there, Allied Force for one, that render clouds with far greater elegance, it would be in the interests of X-Plane's long term viability to consider it's flight environment quality it's top priority for the next release.

I realize my non-published comparison of the cost of REX to that of X-Plane might not be entirely fair due to your price ceilings, and I would concede that the price is not going to demolish my life savings. But what I now have simply does not live up to the hype, and I think that the advertising should explain clearly that this is a package of substitute textures in the main.

Benjamin Supnik said...

I can't comment on anything relating to future features or distribution.

Ryusennin said...

While REX is certainly a welcome effort, it seems people have a short memory. Indeed, I can't help but notice that it looks very much like XP6 used to. Problem is, that was 7 years ago.

http://tinyurl.com/2faez94

simmo said...

Hey Ben, I never knew I could contact u via this! You and Austin are geniuses, you have given me so much joy, that I try to express in my videos. The flight sensation is just so right. Send my thanks to all involved in your wonderful sim.
I posted the first 2 demonstrations of rexplane to get the word out, this was my fave http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-A6eMsgUs

I personally love rexplane, and have already started experimenting, some very realistic misty effects, adds greatly to the sim.

phew, and that was straight after finishing the vid of 787 for Heinz. That was a busy day!
I've had over 40 fsxers subscribe to my channel since Tom's Falco came out,mammy favourable comments,I hope I've brought a few your way!
Simon W (id5556 channel)

Steve said...

Hehe... Ben,I was trying to pose my comments in a way that wouldn't back you into that "no comment corner." Sorry...really....my bad.

One HUGE request that I think would really benefit REX is to restore the cloud puff size and frequency controls. The spinning cloud effect can be minimized if one is careful with how one moves his or her "head." REX is helping X-Plane....can X-Plane help REX? Will their be a 9.6 version?

Pesho said...

I don't think the add-on is wrongly advertised.

"REX is an environmental add-on, and manipulation program which includes a robust selection of beautiful user-selectable sky and cloud themes.."

That's it.. it does not say anything for doing more. I was aware of the fact when I bought it, but I bought it anyway. It is a very good addition, and there are other reasons to do so. Showing there is market interest in X-Plane add-ons could trigger more of the FSX add-on developers to put effort in earning some money from X-Plane users. Hopefully the REX-guys would continue improving it.

sgabriel said...

Hi all. Can anyone tell me if REX does anything about the default moderate turbulence that Austin has made a part of every single fluff of cloud in the sky?

[You'll surmise that this unrealistic aspect of X-Plane really bothers me, as does Austin's refusal to consider changing it.]