OPUS - Weather engine + live cameras

[Adamski]

This is a very interesting development:

OPUS Software

It combines:

1) A live weather engine (can be used with any system - I use it with REXE)
2) An active camera system (like EZDOK)
3) Vibration, turbulence and dynamic head movement (like a combination of Accufeel and EZDOK).

I use it with REXE (whose live weather engine for NZ appears to be a bit broken at the moment), though I'm retaining the features of Accufeel and EZDOK (which it doesn't affect if you disable OPUS's equivalents).

There's a good forum discussion at Flight1: Opus Software - with developers taking an active part in the discussions. This add-on is certainly "going places".

For anyone that has neither Accufeel nor EZDOK, OPUS would be a great choice. I'd say for the weather engine alone, it's still worth it. Most of my screenshots over the last week or so have been with OPUS (and REXE). Other people on the ORBX forums have been ooh-ing and aah-ing over this product all week.

As regrards the live weather engine, REX seem to be dragging their heels a bit with the REXE update, so OPUS fills a gap. The weather engine loads instantly and appears to be far better at processing the sparse METAR information we have available here in NZ. I've run comparisons: Where REXE finds no weather at all (or something wildly different), OPUS finds something that appears fairly close. This is using NZAA as a base, as we've been having some pretty volatile weather of late.

Another great little feature is to save your current weather as an FSX weather theme. If you see conditions you'd like to save/repeat, you just hit a button and it's selectable in FSX from there on in.

The demo works for 10 minutes or so at a time, but is fully featured - and is long enough for you to evaluate. It's easy to set up and use - definitely worth a try!

For me, there are features in Accufeel/EZDOK that are slightly more configurable, but at the rate OPUS is going, this may change.

It's priced at $44.95 US ($56 NZ) - via the Flight1 wrapper system - and worth it, IMHO.

[AndrewJamez]

Mmmmm...very tempted. I've dreamed of the day I can ditch ezdok. Does it have camera shake for the external cameras? I have read that the weather engine is hands down better than anything else out there and is less CPU intensive. Will it work in conjunction with auc feel?

[Adamski]

QUOTE (AndrewJamez @ Oct 17 2012,6:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Does it have camera shake for the external cameras? I have read that the weather engine is hands down better than anything else out there and is less CPU intensive. Will it work in conjunction with auc feel?

Not sure why you'd want camera shake on *external* cameras, but yes - I think so. The weather engine is certainly *way* better than REXWE. Though it might be less CPU intensive, I think there may be limits to what you can pump through Simconnect (not that I think OPUS comes anywhere near that).

It can live happily with Accufeel, but there'll be some duplication of effects, so you may want to disable the respective functions in either one or the other.

Just try the demo - it's a tiny download and will certainly answer most of your questions.

One pointer though - if you have EZDOK - see if the latest OPUS beta will work in demo mode first. Install the demo - but don't run it. Then unzip the beta into the OPUS directory. Then run. I had an issue with OPUS not removing camera entries in aircraft.cfg files (and EZDOK jumping to the OPUS camera instead). Since fixed - but maybe not in the current demo download.

The developers say that as they improve OPUS, it will implement weather-generated turbulence much better (something neither Accufeel nor EZDOK tackle).