I use Active Sky Evolution (ASE) for weather and Flight Sim Commander 9 (FSC9) for flight planning. I think both are very good. There are other programs that you (and others) might think are better.

Mark

boeing247 wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 3:14am:
Yes it does.

I wouldn't recommend the REX2 flight planner myself though, but that just the way I see it. I only use the texture enhancement from REX2 + Overdrive, not the weather. That's because I found that the weather I got from ASE matched the weather in my area much better than the REX2 weather did (the last few times where I compared them that was the case).

Active Sky 2012 is much more like REX2 +Overdrive, but still incorporates the ASE weather engine (or maybe even an updated better version). I was thinking of getting it, but not just yet. I do have REX2 + Overdrive and ASE after all. Money, money, money is what it boils down to!

I won't argue with you on the differences though. Purely because it comes down to what the individual user prefers.

Mark

boeing247 wrote on Apr 9^th, 2012 at 4:50am:

I don't think ASE has a flight planner. If it does, I've never seen or used it, I do create a light, save it and then load it into ASE and that gives me a great Idea of the winds and weather to expect during my flight. Although the weather for FSX is update, it doesn't seem to update the weather information in the flight plan I gave it, so I refresh it every 30 minutes, or so, to keep it up to date on the changes. It is a long time since I used REX2 weather. I might give it a go to see how it works in comparison to ASE after a few updates.

With FSC9, you can add SID, STAR and TRANSITIONS to the flight plans you create, the downside is that you can't remove any waypoints that are a part of them, without deleting the entire SID, STAR, or TRANSITION. This makes it difficult.

For example.
I fly from MEL to SYD - YMML SID (DOSEL7) DOSEL Y59 RIVET STAR (RIVET9) TRANS (SY). So what happpens according to FSC, I get to NASHO then VECTORS(the final waypoint(?) in the STAR) and then I head directly to SY (VOR), before turning back towards a couple of other waypoints prior to heading for SOSIJ to capture the ILS for RWY 34L. If I try to delete any unnecessary waypoints, I delete the entire TRANSITION! In the FMC., I can delete waypoints that I don't need (not using the ATC), before going from NASHO to SOSIJ then capturing the ILS. All is good. Just not in FSC9.

I found Aivlasoft's EFB a bit awkward to use, not very friendly in my opinion. Both FSC9 and Aivlasoft's EFB have demo versions that can be used to see what you prefer.

Maybe I'm just too used to FSC9 which I have had since it was released, but I stated with FSC8.2 back in 2008,  so I know FSC very well.

Mark