Real Environment Extreme  - Review By Paul Loch

Dial-up users please note, loading times will vary depending on connection speed. Please be patient.

Overview & Background

After much wasted time looking lustfully at the web site: http://realenvironmentxtreme.com/index.html that I stumbled across when trolling the net for FSX add-ons and the outstanding looking graphics they displayed.

I justified to myself getting this because if you buy an add on aircraft you use it for a couple of weeks to learn to fly it, then you take it out of the hanger once in a while. Its the same with scenery packages; they only work when you are flying in that region and you don’t do that every time. But the sky is something you are looking at all the time. In either an IFR or VFR flight you spend 50% of the time looking out, and it doesn’t matter what aircraft you are flying you will always use it. Real Environment Extreme isn’t just about sky environments.

Finally the day arrived when the Flight Sim Store changed the “pending release” to “add to cart”. No more dreaming about it, I can now own it! As usual the FS Store was painless to use, (a tip here buy in NZ dollars so you don’t get hit for foreign exchange rate conversions by your credit card company and the $8NZD surcharge) and I downloaded the installer.

The download of the program itself is a rather large 4.4GB. That in itself isn’t too bad from past experience. The largest FSX add on I’ve downloaded so far is a whopping 10GB for Aerosoft's Germany1 scenery which took about 4 hours. But the smaller download took almost 18 hours on DSL, this was not due to bandwidth at my end either. But if you are on Dial up I wouldn't even try to go there unless you are going on holiday for a month and then set it to download and walk out the door! Considering the IP address I was downloading from was across the ditch (Australia) it was rather disappointing.

Once downloaded the installation was easy. You point the configuration manager to your FSX.exe file if it is not in the default location and then your FSX folder. Once configuration is sorted*1 you then set your options that are well explained in the PDF user guide. My computer is no slug but I lowered a few settings to be on the safe side from the default settings. One thing that impresses me is the options you can set for the environment*2, as this in itself makes it worth getting the program. The user can set Airport Environment, things like runway markings, airport signs, taxiway markings, surface reflection. Runway / Taxiway and how this is displayed Asphalt and concrete runways and taxiways. Sky, Water, Lightning, Clouds, Sun and Flare, Lights: Runway  and aircraft strobe and landing lights. Also configurable are clouds and water reflections*3.

Main Menu - Once configured you jump to the main screen then give you four options of what to do. To keep the review short I’ll discuss two loading options. The one I use most is “I just want to fly*4”. REX starts converting the files which takes about 4 - 6 minutes*5, then automatically loads FSX and gives you the default FSX start screen. You load up your aircraft and enjoy the weather and ground textures you have selected. When you click I just want to fly the first option you have is what sort of weather you want. I normally select real weather and it starts doing is downloading real time weather*6, if you select this option. This takes a few minutes to download. The other options are to use a historical file or use a REX theme much like the default FSX weather theme that you can even create yourself if you wish.

The second option that I will briefly cover, and I’ll confess I haven’t used that much, is the flight planner. The process takes about 8 – 10 minutes to set up. As I normally do my own flight planning I intend to leave it alone for the time being, I’ll discuss the mechanics of what you can do with the flight planning tool though in case you are interested. The first thing to be aware of is some people on the support site are screaming blue murder because of the issues of crash to desktop (CTD) with this tool. I have experienced this CTD myself occasionally, but because I don’t use it that often I haven’t followed this up apart from reading the FAQs and making the changes suggested. On clicking flight planner “REX will randomize the texture theme creation and inject the textures into FSX. After that, you will be taken directly to the flight planner to begin the process of filing your flight plan”*7.

The flight planning is very detailed. You can either select one of the aircraft pre loaded in the database or add your own. I tried two aircraft that I use regularly De Havilland Dash 8 Q300 and the Lockheed C-130 H Hercules. The Q300 was included in the database, but the C-130 was not. As stated you can add the information of any aircraft not in the database so the C-130 was added. You then add details*8 like flight plan name, IFR / VFR / DVFR, POB, pilot’s name, flight number, destination contact and phone number (Why I ask? Is the virtual pilot going to run off on shut down find a virtual telephone and ring up the contact?)

The next screen gives you departure, destination and divert airport, departure time, cruise speed and altitude*9. You then submit and the flight plan is created.The plan result is very basic. NZPM – NZAA gave me one waypoint at HN NDB*10. A trans-Tasman plan from NZWP to YBTL gave me no waypoints. This is very disappointing as even the default FSX planner gives you 5 - 6 more waypoints. However there is an option to edit the flight plan and add waypoints. As usual with FSX the plan can be printed off, but the amount of detail doesn’t warrant wasting ink on the few that I’ve created so far. A very cool thing is once REX has created the flight plan you can get the weather details of you route*11. This includes a Weather avoidance system which shows weather radar which also includes storm scope, turbulence, icing / hail, wind / shear, altimeter, conditions, alerts and conditions at departure, arrival and alternate airports.

Frame rates - I was concerned that this would cause a massive hit rate to frames and had started saving to buy a 280 GTX graphics card to handle what I thought would be a massive drain on graphics processing. I was very surprised and rather pleased that my 8800 GTX card not only handled the program, but I have seen a slight improvement in frame rates. My PC's specs are: Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3, 2.60 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 3328 Megabytes Installed Memory, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX. Below are some screenshots, for more check out my Photobucket folder.

In closing I’d advise the reader to consider what they want to use REX for: If you want the amazing graphics and eye candy, I’d recommend you buy it right now! It is worth the cost just for that. As it had just been released I’m guessing the servers at the Flight Sim Store were grinding to a halt due to demand when I downloaded this. But if you are on dial up I don’t think realistically you would be able to download it. The weather updates also seem large, so even if you did download it on dial up, you would also have delays to get real time weather. However if you want to use the flight planning tool I’d approach it with a bit more trepidation. Perhaps wait until SP1 is released unless you want to tinker around getting it set up just right. For its faults I would give it a four on the ARNZX rating, but it has potential to rise to a five if the developers get the service pack right.