Well, I'm 0 for 2 on getting posts answered in this forum, but maybe third time's the charm.I've been generally satisfied with AS2004 since purchasing it a month or so ago. What I've found aggravating in the past has been when the ceiling at the arrival airport, in particular, is much lower than indicated on the METAR. This often happens due to a low fog/haze layer that pops up and disappears at unpredictable intervals (see my earlier post entitled "That weird fog/haze layer").Today I flew three flights and I'm sorry to report that in all three cases, the weather at one or both airports didn't even come close to matching the METARs. Details:First flight was KDEN to KSBA. KDEN METAR was scattered clouds at 15,000, which matched up pretty well with what AS was showing. When I got to KSBA it was a different story. The field was reporting clear skies, 6 miles visibility. Well, I was in the soup from about 6,000 feet all the way down. I flew the ILS and spotted the approach lights at about 700 feet AGL. Even on the ground it was foggy.Well, I figured maybe it got confused with interpolating neighboring fields or something like that, no big deal. I came back a couple of hours later and flew KSBA to KSFO. SBA was still reporting clear skies, something like 6-8 miles vis, etc.. Well, AS was not. Once again I had about an 800-foot ceiling, totally gray skies. And this was even true on the ground! How could this be? My understanding is that when you're on the ground, not moving, AS should basically be using nothing but the METAR from that field in order to construct the weather.Anyway, flew to SFO, which was reporting OVC020. Ok another ILS approach, not my favorite but no problem. I was pleased with the overcast layer, except for the fact that again, I didn't break out until 800-1000 feet. I just don't understand why ActiveSky can't be more accurate here.Final flight of the day was KSFO-KPSP. Same weather in SFO as before, which was fine. The enroute METARS continued to be very low clouds with clear conditions above as I headed east toward Fresno and south to Bakersfield, and this looked accurate from FL330. Pretty much everything south of Bakersfield was reporting clear and a million, and conditions were clear as I began my descent, except for a little bit of that aforementioned fog/haze layer clinging to the mountains. Because of the mountains a straight-in approach to PSP from the northwest is not possible, you have to proceed south of the field, enter a hold to lose some altitude, and then head back north to land. Well, pretty much all of a sudden passing 6k, I was back in the soup. This was with PSP and all surrounding airports reporting clear skies and 10 miles visibility. I flew the VOR approach and got down to about 3000 feet or so, and was able to call the field in sight though it was still a bit foggy even on base and final.Stuff like this would almost make me think that AS is not communicating with FS at all, but I know it is because as soon as I load it up at the beginning, the weather changes (I clear weather both within FS and in FSUIPC, then pause the sim as soon as it becomes active and load ActiveSky) and the ATIS that the FS controller reads matches the ActiveSky reported METAR perfectly. It just doesn't match what I'm actually seeing on the ground a fair percentage of the time.I know that ActiveSky uses very complicated algorithms to integrate several METARs at once, and I'm sure this works great the majority of the time, but I wonder if there's anyway to emphasize the weather at the departure and destination fields a bit more. I like to plan my approaches pretty far out, and if I see that my destination is CAVU I'll plan on a visual approach. This is kind of a pain once I get there and realize that's not going to happen. Also, I fly (and control) on VATSIM a lot and if the controllers there see METARs like I had in SBA and PSP they'll assign a visual approach. Then I feel like a dumbass calling them back and saying, "Ok, I know the METAR says skies clear but for some reason I'm still in the soup at 3,000, can I get an ILS?" I don't really feel like it's too much to ask for the destination weather to match the current METAR more or less perfectly. Even if, let's say another field 20 miles away is reporting cloudy skies, and then the destination is clear, I would rather have some sudden cloud shifts/disappearances than have AS decide, "Oh well, it's cloudy 20 miles away so it must also be cloudy where we're going to land today, even if the METAR doesn't indicate it." I also don't see why when cloud ceilings exist, they can't be at the accurate levels. OVC020 vs. OVC010 doesn't make that much of a difference because you're shooting an instrument approach either way, but if the ceiling is advertised as 5k and I know that AS will get it right I can still plan on a visual approach. But every time I've tried to do that AS has let me down, and I end up getting a 1000-foot ceiling, or 2000 feet.One other nagging problem: I turned off wake turbulence weeks ago because, as many others have reported, it's completely insane and literally prevents you from landing if you get anywhere near it. However, I still get w/t-like effects constantly when behind other aircraft on the approach, or even when they're holding short of the runway I'm about to land on. I'll be flying along smoothly about to flare and all of a sudden I get blown to one side or the other. I've checked and AS doesn't say "wake turbulence event encountered/finished" but I can't find any other explanation for it.I've tailored my settings to be exactly the same as the recommended ones, but I'll include my config file anyway in hopes that it's some minor error that can be fixed easily. I should say that I really do want to like AS2004, and I've had several very good flights with it. In most cases it is a thousand percent better than the default weather system. However, it really disappointed me today, and I started to wonder whether "real-world weather" wouldn't have at least done a better job of rendering SBA and PSP with clear skies.I know there's another update in the works so I remain hopeful that we'll see some progress on these issues.Regards,Marc SykesSystem info: P4 2.4GHz, 1G RAM, Windows XP Home, 2 80G hard drives, multi-monitor, FS9 with unregistered FSUIPC v. 3.14, Ultimate Traffic, etc..//AS2004 configuration file[General]WindowPosX = 17355WindowPosY = 30DefaultWeatherFolder = C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesFlight Simulator 9ModulesActiveSky2004SuppressionCeiling = 2000SurfaceWindLimit = 10CloudLayerLimit = 10LocalSuppressionRange = 80OnlineUpdates = TrueExtendedDestinationWindsForce = FalseGlobalWrites = TrueVoicePlayback = TrueLocalSuppression = TrueStartupSound = TrueUseProxyServer = FalseFogLayerGeneration = TrueUpdateSuppression = TrueOvercastEnhancement = TrueRouteWindSmoothing = TrueLimitSurfaceWinds = FalseLimitCloudLayers = FalseDisableUpperLayerGeneration = FalseVisibilitySmoothing = TrueDisableMessages = FalseAutoTimeZoneDetection = TrueUpdateInterval = 5VATSIMData = FalseZuluConversion = -5TAFProcessing = TrueWakeTurb = FalseStartPaused = FalseUseSystemTime = TrueDisableCAVOKClouds = TrueProxyAddress = NONE

It looks to me like your getting a little confused here (or me). What you may be seeing is the low visibility and confusing that for cloud layer. If you are in 6 mile visibility, at around 6000ft you wont be able to see that much out of the window.I think you are just seeing the visibility drop to what it says in the METAR rather than any cloud layers. Am i correct?One thing ActiveSky does better than FS default weather is that it reduces visiblity at a higher altitude. FS default weather normally reduces visibility when you are only a couple of thousand feet high so one second you can see the runway clearly, the next everything goes foggy. ActiveSky brings it down gradually from a higher altitude.

Marc,Sorry you didn't get a reply from one of us! A user did correctly post last time and this time.By now you are using Alpha 1?Thanks for you settings! Try the following changes:Fog:OffOvercast Generation:OffTAF Processing:OffPlease let us know if you think things are better.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Support

Hmm ok, let me see if I got this straight, based on the "correct" posts. In the case of SBA, it was reporting clear skies with 6 miles' visibility. No mention of fog or haze. I thought that having to shoot the ILS and not seeing the approach lights until 700 feet AGL' and 1 mile off the threshold seemed a bit odd given this METAR. However:1) This is actually a feature, not a bug;2) I don't have good enough judgment to be able to differentiate between 1 SM visibility and 6 SM visibility.That about right?Since then, I have flown several more flights, and the fog/haze layer pops up pretty much every time, basically every time that the visibility is reported as less than 10 miles. (You guys do know that most American airports don't report more than 10 miles' vis in their METARs, right? So 10 miles can equal unlimited more often than not? Just checking. If that seems condescending, see above.) The enclosed screenshot is from Palm Springs, which was reporting 9 miles visibility, clear skies. You can see how even the hills a couple of miles away are hard to make out, and the ones 5-6 miles away are completely obscured. Sorry, this just isn't realistic.Not only that, I read through the manual, and this fog layer generation is supposed to happen only when visibility is reported less than 5 miles! AND you're supposed to be able to turn it off! I have tried all of the things Jim suggested and others too (loading flightplan vs. not loading flightplan, visibility smoothing on/off, fog layer on/off, overcast enhancement on/off, TAF processing on/off, different suppression ranges, etc.), and I still get this fog layer everytime.I would suggest that you guys SERIOUSLY look into a way to create a more intelligent engine for visibility, both in terms of the way it's calculated and the way it looks. Low visibility doesn't always equal fog. If you can't do that, then at least give me the option to turn this off completely. If the airport is reporting 6SM vis and clear skies, I'd rather have 50SM vis and clear skies than 1SM vis and fog down to 500 feet.Between that and the experience I had on my last flight (130kt headwind to 130kt tailwind in an instant, then back again after 2 minutes; repeated vanishing/reappearance of clouds), I think I'm going to put AS2004 on the shelf for awhile until it's patched. It does some amazing things and has great potential -- I've really enjoyed many of my flights with it -- but this visibility thing is just killing me.Regards,Marc Sykeshttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/59410.jpg

This may be somewhat totally unrelated, but in my video card and/or DX9 setup there is something about turning a fog layer on based on video card texture resolution load to ease its processing. It is application independent and maybe the description of that function I encountered does not apply.My card is a NVidia Ti4200 128 MB clone with 45.23 drivers under W98SE.