I own Active Sky since the previous version, but only used it 2 or three times. A shame, if I read all the positive comments on all the boards!So, I decided to give AS another try. Why I dodn't use AS for that long? I always saw AS as a real weather engine needing access to online data. And because my gaming PC is offline most of the time (security reasons,...), I didn't consider AS to be of much value for me.Now, I'd like to ask the experts here what I could do in my special case.There are two weather generators which I use more or less often: the one that comes with the FS2004 SDK (somehow time consuming, but good if I want special weather somewhere), and Wetter2004, my favourite generator, which creates random weather in a specific area.I suppose both cannot deliver the quality AS can.But as far as I can see with my limited information (read the handbook of AS a long time ago, and forget most things...), AS needs to load its own data set to be operative.This data can be delivered online (web connection) or offline via downloads through the AS user interface.And here's where my trouble starts:i) AS doesn't seem to be capable to work with already existing weather (e.g. I create one with Wetter2004 and let AS "smooth it out")ii) the downloads in AS are only for a specific hour; in the past, I didn't find a way to download a whole day/week/month/...iii) AS has the ability to work with manually entered METAR data; as far as I understand this weather would then be global (not very exciting...)Because of ii), it would be hard to load data for a specific situation, let aside create a special weather situation.What I'd like to have in the first place is either randomly generated weather (like Wetter2004 does), or better the possibility to use AS to make existing weather (generated by some other program) more realistic without loosing the previously generated weather too much.I'm eager to read your comments. I'm probably horribly wrong in certain areas...Andreas

Hi Andreas, Thanks for your feedback...AS2004.5 at this time is focused on live weather, either real-time or historical. It does not support user-defined "themes" in this regard. It is also not compatible with other weather-generators.However, we have already started work on the next AS version, and new offline functionality is planned. We are looking to provide themes, full offline historical playback (hour by hour), easy user-configurable weather across localized, regional or global areas, and more. This will bridge the gap between real-time and user-defined weather generators and should be the ideal "one-stop" solution.More information on development of the next version will be available soon...