Can anybody recommend a good a weather add on for FSX that doesnt have a big hit on FPS?

Active Sky?

There are two main leading products:
Active Sky 2012 just recently came out is supposed to be pretty good:
http://www.hifitechinc.com/products/active-sky-2012

And the also great REX 2.0 which has been out for a while and I own and love for terrific realistic looking sky, clouds and water textures and they are supposed to be coming out with a free upgrade to the weather generation portion shortly:
http://www.realenvironmentxtreme.com/forums/index.php?/topic/14715-announcing-rex-essential/

I don't think you can go wrong with either one, AS2012 is probably stronger on the weather generation portion, REX was stronger on the clouds/sky/water textures up until now and hopefully the weather update forthcoming will make it compete on the weather portion, but I have not seen the textures from AS2012.

Happy REX user here but I have heard AS2012 is terrific too.

Thanks guys.

One other question, How are the FPS hit vs with and without the add on?

It all the depends on the amount of clouds rendered and thus, on the weather outside.

But if you don't elect to install high res 4096px cloud textures, you won't notice much of a performance hit.

No Measurable FPS hit compared to standard textures and weather for me, I stick to the 1024 textures on clouds since I think they look just as good as the 4096 ones at least to my ageing eyes, some examples here:




I'd assume AS2012 does the sky textures as well, with REX that is one of the cool things I love too, you can see how nice the moody red sunset sky can be for screenshots.

Cool thanks guys. Now I just have to decided which one to go with LOL. Am I to assume that Active sky can do real weather via download and keep it up to date during your flight? Also REX would be a set your weather and go no real time weather?

REX updates itself during your flight using real-world weather information, much like FSX's default real-time weather engine.

^ On my system this causes considerable stuttering - only for a minute or so - but if it happens at an inconvenient time (when landing - which it has done) it's a bugger. It doesn't happen often "at the wrong times though".

For REX is there an option for just one update instead of every 15 mins?