NZFF

I always get caught out by their regular releases, same with cold and dark last week, it actually showed up in the sim before I realise it is available... So before I saw the news and Twitch stream (delayed of course, I think it plays here in the middle of the night) I fired up FSW to check out my latest scenery experiments, and flew my normal test flight, Tekapo to Timaru. The first thing I noticed was that I really had to climb for a long time to get above the clouds over the range, which kept me on my toes. I had to go to 3,000 metres to get above it, and the cloud bank extended to the coast, so luckily I found a hole on the coast to descend to Timaru. It was funny to watch the release video later, and hear that that's what they like so much about trueSKY, that you actually have to take the weather into account a lot more, and that clouds are not simply there to fly through.
It does set the ground appearance back a bit, giving a very washed-out look to the scenery, but this will apparently be tweaked to the community's taste. Overall this is a leap-frog weather system, still in the early stages, but offering a huge improvement over FSX-type weather depiction. I was quite blown away, and that was even in reasonably good weather:) The consensus is that there's a lot more to see than just from one daytime flight, so I'm looking forward to exploring a bit more.
FSW still needs a bit of 'punch' in the visuals, like a big HDR overhaul. And no real weather yet, but hey, this is early access....
Certainly a bigger kick for me that trying the new FS 2 Dash yesterday. All the new sims have their strengths, and I wouldn't write-off any of them yet. I love X-plane, FSW and FS 2 all for different reasons, really.