Reviews (by Kenneth)

You first have to decide what is HD or high definition. With television it is easy as it is controlled by a standards committee, but for video games the definition becomes much looser. Google defines it as "a high degree of detail in an image or screen." The artwork it is clearly a high degree better in detail including bump mapping and spectacular textures to add to the scenery ambiance. What about texture resolution? Some developers have seemed to set the standard of 2048 or 4096 as the increase in pixel density needed in order to be considered HD and UHD. If this is what you are looking for then you will be mostly disappointed. With the exception of the hangars the textures are a trite 1024 for HD and the standard resolution is 512. When you consider the standard for FHD in televisions is ~2 million pixels this product is about a million pixels short. However, this is not just about pixel density. It is about higher detailed artwork and that is where REX excels. The details of the textures they provide are on an order of magnitude higher than the overall increase in density. Using good artistic techniques the overall image is sharper and more defined than the standard ACES provided muddy textures. The bump mapping adds a third dimension to low polygon count scenery and the spec map reflects and provides a sheen. Glass has that extra dimension and REX choose to provide lots of glass. (Glass terminals and jetways really look fantastic!) REX also improved the basic pushback tug, fuel truck and baggage tug. These are easily noticeable and look great next to the newly textured terminals. There is also the typical REX ground textures lifted directly from some of their other product lines. If you already have REX 4 Texture Direct these HD ground textures are mostly a repeat. There are some noticeable issues with this package of textures. The first being at any of the FS default "detailed" airports that use different textures. In this case you get a mixture of high detailed jetways sticking out of muddy looking terminals. This is quite disappointing, however REX has promised to look into providing new textures in a future update of REX WWA HD. The other issue is when combining REX WWA HD and other custom scenery airports. When the custom airport designer choose to leave in some default objects you get mixed textures. In the worse of this I encountered clipping and shimmering. Finally, there is the issue that you only get one selection of terminals, hangars, etc. So for default airports, the airport you just arrived at looks exactly the same as the airport you just left. I use FSX:Steam with the DX10 fixer and overall the frame rate at airports has remained about the same. Nothing has been noticeable enough for me to question installing REX WWA HD and when you consider what is actually improved and the degree is was improved (512 textures versus REX 1024) the ability of the computer system to move these larger textures was never really in question. I suspect only those with very old hardware or poor optimization will find any real problems. I also use FSX Fiber Accelerator which I find helps to manage VAS usage and keep OOMs to almost nonexistent. Overall this product does what it says, but for someone with heavy add-on scenery you may have to search for this improvement at some locations. In a few cases the improvements will be very minor while at other airfields the improvements will be very noticeable. It all depends on how much default scenery the airfield uses. There is also about 100+ other textures that were improved on top of the selectable options. Many smaller airport objects will look shaper and include bump and spec mapping. These are hardly noticeable in the sim and I would have missed the fact they were improved had I not browsed through REX's texture folders. Like broad area scenery improvement products this product is designed to rid the muddy ACES textures from your system and for the airports it generally does so nicely. No more flying over high quality Orbx scenery to land at bland default airports. However, if you flying consists of trips only between custom airfields you will not benefit much or at all from this product.