REX Global Airport Textures Vs. ZINERTEK Enhanced Airport Graphics

Good morning forum,

I thought I would create a separate post comparing these two products as we were discussing airport runway / taxiway wear and tear in another thread and these two products were mentioned.

I have been using REX for awhile and have been enjoying it and just came to learn of ZINERTEK so thought I would give it a try.

The below are my findings and thoughts but at the end of the day, both products work as advertised and it ultimately comes down to personal preference.

  1. Price - REX is $1.50 (CAD) more

  2. Installation - Both come with “installers” to drop the required files into your community folder

  3. Licensing - ZINERTEK requires a key which is provided at purchase

  4. Options - REX has different installation options for both Taxiway Markings (New / Used) as well as Runway Rubber Buildup (Heavy Light). ZINERTEK is a straight default

Thoughts:

Rex having the options to choose the ware and tear for both Taxiway Markings and Runway Rubber Buildup is a nice feature, I personally use “Used & Heavy”.

ZINERTEK (from my opinion) seems to use “Heavy” for the Runway Rubber Buildup but “New” for Taxiway Markings. They are quite bright with no lines running through them. This was true for the Taxiway lines as well as Holdshort.

It should be noted, neither of these are “dynamic” in the sense they get more wear and tear as you use them. They are static.

On the runway, REX has defined tire / wheel marks that then merge into thicker black marks while ZINERTEK doesn’t seem to have definable wheel marks and goes straight to the dark paint.

I did not test at night, but there are complaints that ZINERTEK is hard to light up when coming in to land.

It should also be noted I did not have any FPS hits for either.

Back to the “new” looking paint of ZINERTEK, I also tried adding the Ground Marks Fix from flightsim.to to see if that would override and dumb down the new looking paint but it does not.

Lastly, here are some screenshots comparing both.

REX Installation Options:

REX Start Of Runway:

REX Progressing Down Runway:

REX Holdshort:

REX Taxiway Markings:


ZINERTEK Start Of Runway:

ZINERTEK Progressing Down Runway:

ZINERTEK Holdshort:

ZINERTEK Taxiway Markings:


Conclusion:

For the extra $1.50 my personal preference likes REX, but having both, maybe there will be updates / improvements to switchover to ZINERTEK.

I hope this helps someone looking for an add-on like this.

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Just a little addition, Zinertek is available from the in game marketplace, Rex isn’t. (This is not intended as a discussion of the pros and cons of the marketplace, I mention it just for completeness).
Futhermore, both products have known to be broken after updates. I seem to remember they both didn’t work correctly after the Nordics Update, but they have been fixed accordingly. Still one might be aware of this and uninstall, should problems occur after updates.

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I also have both and also prefer Rex :slight_smile:

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Why are the taxi markings so vastly different from each other in detail? I also noticed Rex has no holding line but Zinertek does.

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All the markings are the same, but I may have missed it when capturing the screenshot. The Holding line is on both just before the runway intersection and when entering / exist.

As for why the colors / details. In Rex if you select “new” you get the bright new one matching ZINERTEK, but if you select used you get the nice dulled down version.

Not sure why ZINERTEK left as new.

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After a couple years of (hopefully) improvement, what are people’s thoughts on the two of these enhancements? I’m debating on getting one, but i’m not sure which yet

I still prefer REX over Zinertech.

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