AVSIM Commercial Utility Review Active Sky wxRE

The irony of getting a British guy to review a Flight Simulator add-on which simulates my nation's supposedly favourite subject for discussion wasn't lost on me when the Active Sky wxRE box arrived for inspection. However I should be able to put 'paid' to that myth if I can manage to keep this review down to less than 30,000 words, so here goes!

The box describes HiFi Simulation Software's Active Sky wxRE as 'The complete weather realism engine' and confidently proclaims that it 'totally transforms the skies of Flight Simulator'. These are both bold statements and—for something which forms such an integral part of the simulated flying experience as the sky—quite a tall order to pull off convincingly.

Many of you will be aware of Active Sky in one form or another; earlier versions of the programme have been available for trial download from many FS websites for some time. Others may have been happy to use Flight Simulator's own built-in weather facilities and will therefore not have tried it out. So what you really need to know from this review is: Is Active Sky wxRE worth spending my ill-gotten gains on? Well let's find out...

Interfacing via Peter Dowson's ubiquitous FSUIPC utility, Active Sky wxRE (the wxRE bit apparently stands for Weather Realism Engine by the way) comes in a DVD-style case on a single CD ROM (or by download), accompanied by a comprehensive 44 page manual, which, if you take your simulating seriously, is well worth reading in full. I know most people only start looking at the manual when things don't work as they should, but this is one where you really should make the effort, for it goes a long way towards explaining some of the terminology—which often goes over the heads of flight sim pilots without the benefit of real world flying lessons. It will make your simulated flying a more fulfilling and knowledgeable affair.

Active Sky wxRE installation is the usual effortless 'put the CD in and drink a cup of tea/coffee while it loads' type of deal, providing you have the requisite bits and pieces, which are: FS2002 Standard or Pro, 750Mhz processor, 256Mb RAM, 32Mb video card, 56K modem and either XP/2000/ME or Win98. The whole thing operates with Direct X 8.0 and you'll need 10Mb of space on your hard drive for it.

These are of course the minimum requirements, and we all know what that means when it comes to flight simulators. The machine I tested it on has twice the recommended RAM and a broadband connection (more on this later) running on Win98 clocked at 1.2Ghz, which although better than the minimum spec required, is hardly state of the art these days. Nevertheless, I experienced absolutely no problems at all, and with this in mind I would say most machines should run wxRE without too much trouble.

OK, so what does it do? Well, in simple terms, it searches the globe for weather data (using Meteorological Aerodrome Reports, known as METARs and Terminal Aerodrome Forecasts or TAFs), and when it finds them for the area in which your simulated aircraft will be flying, it automatically has Flight Simulator create that exact weather. And I have to say it does it extremely well.

Now if that doesn't impress you, well it should. Because although Flight Simulator does have the capability to download meteorological data built in, in my experience it has never really worked that well and on occasion it hasn't even worked at all for me. In any case FS certainly can't do it with the flexibility and panache of Active Sky wxRE. As we all know, Microsoft's FS is a good all-round platform, ready to be enhanced by dedicated utilities which improve on the standard fare that comes with MS' product, be it add-on aircraft, flight planners, whatever. Such is the case here with Active Sky wxRE.

Test System 1.2 GHz Processor Windows98 512Mb RAM Plenty of choices here A watery sunset as we cross the Dutch coastline I picked up the jet visible below and behind on tcas and remembered that wake turbulence feature, fortunately we were well clear of any danger. Descending in the moonlight is often a picturesque affair with Active Sky wxRE.

One of the measures of something that is expertly done, is that it is made to look easy. It's this philosophy that's at the heart of wxRE. As you fire it up for the first time—which incidentally can be done before or after FS is running—you are presented with a deceptively simple control panel sporting what looks like just a few selectable parameters for how it will fetch your weather data. However, when you click on the Options button, you begin to see that this is a utility which has the promise to give you exactly what you want. There are over twenty such option check boxes, covering everything from how often it will check for updates, right through to the option to simulate wake turbulence from other traffic in FS. This is an FS weather tweeker's dream come true, but you certainly don't have to be some kind of cloud-chasing anorak to appreciate it. In practice you can just choose the settings you fancy and never look at this options screen again if you wish—simply firing it up, choosing a flight in FS and leaving it to its own devices. But a bit of experimentation will pay dividends in seeking your 'perfect' personal preference.

When it comes time to kick the tyres and light the fires, all you need to do is tell wxRE where your departure and destination airports are, wait a few seconds for the relevant data to come from weather stations along the route via your internet connection and you're in business. When this is done, wxRE presents you with a realistic 'aviation weather briefing'. This genuinely is 'as real as it gets', since it's all sourced from the same data that pilots in the real world are relying on. So much so, that the front end of wxRE has that familiar warning on it stating that it shouldn't be used for real world flight planning, since it's not legally approved for this purpose. At this point, sim pilots that like to have paperwork in the cockpit can choose to print this weather briefing and forecast should they wish to do so.

In testing this utility, I used wxRE to give me weather mainly for some airline flights across Europe, where the weather can be notoriously changeable, as thermal activity from the varying land and seascapes below stirs things up no end. And this makes for some interesting flying, which is a real boon for all you virtual airline captains, particularly if you like to simulate keeping to schedules and giving your virtual passengers a smooth flight.

One of the pleasing upshots of the fact that wxRE creates 'real' weather from genuine real world data, is that the view at cruising altitude from your virtual cockpit takes on a spectacularly realistic quality. Veterans of the many FS utilities available over the years may well remember some of the beautiful and realistic effects possible if one was prepared to experiment with programmes such as FS Clouds. However, some of the best and most pleasing effects which it was, and indeed is possible to create in FS, require you to have a reasonable understanding of what clouds and temperatures occur at what altitude etc, in order to see something out of your virtual window which looks and acts like the real thing. Not a problem with wxRE—its ability to create some seriously realistic and indeed beautiful skyscapes is really most impressive, and it requires no effort on your part either.

And those skies can be very challenging too, often you will find yourself with a tricky approach at your destination airport owing to a serious and unexpected change in the weather—just like the real world—and you can only have sympathy for the pilots landing there at that time for real, because they'll be looking at the same thing as you are!

Now choosing that alternate airport and making sure you have a 45-minute fuel reserve has more significance for those who really like their simulated flights realistic.

Of course, if you fly without checking out the weather reports and forecasts for your destination, you've only got yourself to blame when things go seriously wrong. No pilot worth his wages would consider doing this in real life, and you don't have to either thanks to wxRE. For in addition to the comprehensive weather briefing along your route which wxRE gives you before you even crank you engines, you can also tune your radio to 122.00 and you'll get up to the minute in-flight weather advisories for your destination as you fly along!

One bizarre incident served to give me a real appreciation of just how realistic wxRE is in this respect: I was preparing for one of my virtual flights from EGCC (Manchester, UK) to LEAM (Almeria, Spain), when I noticed that in FS it had begun to rain as I was taxying out to the active runway. Now EGCC is only about six miles away from where I live, and there is a window right next to my monitor. So naturally I looked out of the window at the sky. No rain. That's funny I thought, wxRE has definitely got this one wrong, because it's not raining outside my house, so it can't be raining at Manchester Airport, and with that I made a mental note to mark the programme down for this error in not picking up the TAF from Manchester. Two minutes later, rain began dripping down my window and I realised that it had taken a couple of minutes for the rain clouds washing my windows to drift the six-mile distance to my house from the airport! This is pretty impressive stuff.

On the subject of receiving weather updates, this is one area where the latest Active Sky wxRE edition is a real improvement over previous incarnations and indeed FS in general. Earlier versions were certainly not as smooth in updating between METARs as this latest offering. Previous versions that I had experienced tended to make the transition between one set of weather and the next online update in a rather instantaneous fashion, which sometimes led to air penetration overspeed warnings when one was cruising at close to the barber pole mach limit, especially if the new update had you flying into a headwind. This was more of a minor annoyance than a real fault in the previous version and something of an inbuilt FS limitation, but I have to say that in all the testing I have done with Active Sky wxRE, I have not experienced this again, so I think they must have seriously updated the 'smoothing' between METAR updates in this latest version. This really helps the realism in FS, with a lot less of that 'instantaneous weather changing' going on.

Having only used the programme with TAF and METAR updates coming via a broadband connection, I can't comment on how effective they are when coming down the wire at 56k, but since METARs and TAFs are essentially just a few lines of text, I can't see this really affecting things dramatically. In any case, this is another situation where wxRE has a trick up its sleeve, for in addition to interpreting current weather, it will allow you to use any weather information you have saved, or even let you create your own. Which means that any weather you encounter on your flights, such as a particularly nasty storm, or a beautiful sunset, can be saved and re-flown. You don't even have to be online to experience 'real' weather as long as you have some interesting stuff saved. The manual has detailed information on how to go about this, although it's fairly intuitive to do once you have a basic understanding of the language of TAFs and METARs (remember what I said about reading that manual!).

If, like many, all your piloting experience has been at your desktop, it can be difficult to appreciate what a profound effect the weather has on flying in the modern age. Airline passengers fondly believe that the weather barely affects aeroplanes at all these days. Of course nothing could be further from the truth, and Active Sky wxRE will certainly serve to illustrate this to you in the most impressive of ways.

Personally, the first time I found myself piloting an aircraft into a headwind for real and noticed my aircraft's shadow moving sideways across the landscape, I realised that we are certainly not masters of the elements! However, I have to say that in the virtual world, the programmers of wxRE most certainly have mastered this sphere. So whether you potter about in a virtual Cessna, or wrestle with the heavy metal, if you want to take your virtual flying to a new level of realism, then I can seriously recommend this smart little add on.

In short, Active Sky wxRE is one of those things that you'll never miss if you don't try it, but once you have tried it, I think you wouldn't want to be without it.

You can order Active Sky wxRE at the HiFiSim website. Note: There is an update available from the Active Sky wxRE website - www.hifisim.com which weighs in at 8Mb and takes it up to version 1.86. This update apparently makes the programme more stable and improves weather data downloading, although I didn't experience any problems with the programme in unpatched form. Nevertheless it's pleasing to note that ongoing support for the product is available and that the publishers are addressing anything they believe to be a problem.