As some of you may have noticed in my unending ramblings on the Christmas Challenge thread, I started to fly X-Plane on a more regular basis and I was wondering if X-Enviro was worth a buy. Personally, I like the default clouds in X-Plane 11. However, I began to develop the habit of flying with real weather, which makes every flight unique and more interesting. I heard that X-Enviro was such a weather add-on. I don’t really know what it improves or what it does, but I hear good things about it generally speaking. Would you recommend this add-on, and if so why? (I also heard SkyMaxx Pro 4 was equivalent)
P.S. I also heard that the current IXEG 737 had a nasty a bug with X-Enviro… what is it, and will it cause a CTD? I’m a bit fuzzy on the details. I wouldn’t want X-Enviro to prevent me from enjoying that amazing module.
I like X-Enviro a lot. It is expensive, and it isn’t perfect, but I have had more Wow! moments flying with it than I ever had before with stock weather. I can’t talk first hand about SkyMaxx Pro 4, but I think visually X-Enviro looks great and the weather extends out to the horizon, so it looks very natural when you are cruising the flight levels, which I believe isn’t the case with SM4.
All my shots on the current Christmas flight thread use X-Enviro. I should also.mention that X-Enviro is still being actively developed, so there are a lot of good things coming down the pipe that we haven’t seen yet.
I forgot to mention, with X-Enviro, you have little control over the weather because it is generated to simulate current real world conditions. With SM Pro you can also use real world conditions, but it is an optional extra , which requires an additional purchase.
I like being forced to use real world, real time weather. It makes you approach your flights a little differently (or at least adds an element of surprise if you just fire up and go flying)…