Fsbuild-2 Flight Planner

After using search on this site for FSBuild support for use of REX or REXe weather, it seems strange that the only info I repeatedly find is that FSB "...supports ActiveSky products but not REX products..." without any explanation or future plans to include REXe weather.

Not to start a comparison war, but many people find REX Essential (REXe) to have a greatly improved weather engine including winds and temps aloft data and with AS type "smoothing" options, making it a reasonable and comparable alternative to AS for weather. Some even prefer REXe. In fact, the fantastic add-on, Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) already has direct connection options for both AE and REXe weather input.

It seems that in the spirit of advancing the best interests and competitive spirit of the flight simulation world, FSBuild should likewise provide an option to also use the REXe metar weather data as an alternative. Please indicate if FSBuild intends to remain viable and forward thinking by providing a future support for REXe weather soon.

When can we expect FSBuild to provide this support for using REXe weather datas input?

Hello? Anyone home in this forum?

Hello Ernie...how about an answer please?

Hello, "FSBuild does not support" DJ...are you still around?

It would be so nice if your forum was active and if you actually cared enough to answer a potential new customer.

I can't answer your question with regard to any future plans for REX - that is strictly up to Ernie since he's the developer. With regard to why it doesn't currently support REX, I expect the answer would be that FSB far pre-dates REX's existance and there has been no particular demand for REX support.

DJ

My recollection is someone asked about REX support in 2009, then again someone asked about REX support in 2010.

And now it comes up again. It doesn't seem like a lot of demand for it.

I do have REX, although admittedly, it has not won favor over ASE yet.

It's worth looking into though, but it'd be nice to see more user demand for it than an inquiry once every couple of years.

Regards.
Ernie.

Ernie/DJ, thanks for your replies, that's much appreciated.

I'm sure that you are aware that REX Essential (REXe) was only released a few weeks ago and that is the first time that a true AS type Metar layered weather engine has been available from them, so of course, it's new. Also, from reading the posts, it appears that FSBuild does not much cater to newer FSX users. Most of the users here seem to have been very long time FSB/AS FS9 users, circa 2006, which is about the same as most of the FSB documentation, which still refers to FS2002/2004, not FSX.

However, in the spirit of compromise, since your FSB seems to use the raw MetarXML data from AS, would it not be simple just to add a code line to enable FSB to point toward the REXe> MetarXML folder (or the REXe Pireps or Tafs folders)? Alternatively, could we, the user, put the REXeXML folder contents in a "fake" AS folder for your program to use. What would that file folder structure need to be exactly? Many thanks in advance for your help.

To answer the first question - no, it's not as simple as you think. FSB doesn't use raw metar data - it parses the text file generated by AS.

Regarding the second question... The very first thing you would want to do is to make sure that the REX output format is an exact match for the output of one of the weather programs that FSB supports. If that turned out to be the case then you could put that file in a folder that is recognized by FSB and use it... However, note that the AS file does not contain METARS and is not an XML file - AS creates a csv text file that encodes the weather data in a proprietary format and uses it to generate a binary wx file. Looking over the files in REX it seems that it uses a very different methodology than the AS programs use.

I don't have REX Essentials. I use REX strictly for graphics and use the AS programs for weather, so I have no way of helping you out.

DJ