Hello Everyone!!!It is with great excitement that we announce our next product: Active Sky 2012 for FSX!Active Sky 2012 expands on the award-winning Active Sky Weather Engine and combines it with brand new high-definition graphics, fully integrated to debut what we call "Total Weather Immersion".Over 16GB (uncompressed size) of high-definition graphics textures in dozens of categories are at your fingertips - accompanied by advanced imaging techniques including high-quality down-sampling and user-recoloring. Easily create your own texture variations with a few clicks of the mouse. Route awareness, weather-influenced selections, custom themes, universal graphics add-on integration and a clean, intuitive interface provide robust command of the total experience.Other new features include improved flight planning, auto routing, route export, integrated mapping and route-editing, drag and drop waypoints, improved weather depiction, improved performance, enhanced thunderstorm depiction and much, much more.We are currently in the final testing stages in preparations for release, hopefully by the end of this year.Please note that all past Active Sky/X Graphics customers will be eligible for an upgrade, and we have additional discounts planned for those upgrading from the most recent HiFi product release (ASE). Upgrade and pricing details will be provided very soon.Full details have now been posted on our AS2012 product page which can be reached at http://www.activesky2012.comThis includes a bunch of screenshots and a video! Come take a look...We'll also be providing some additional high-res screenshot previews here on this thread... stay tuned for more...

Hi Damian,Thanks for this great news. I use ASE for the weather and REX for the textures.What about the future between REX and Active Sky 2012 ? Should it be always compatible or must we expect to deinstall completely REX ?Thanks in advance for your explanations.Best RegardsMarc

Is Active Sky 2012 the complete package, Wx and Graphics? Will this negate the need to have ASE and another graphics program (i.e. REX) to get the complete feel? Will current ASE owners have to update with full price purchase or will we see a bridge over cost from current ASE to Active Sky 2012Jim KiefferGreenville, NC

Hi Jim,Some very good questions.

Is Active Sky 2012 the complete package, Wx and Graphics? Will this negate the need to have ASE and another graphics program (i.e. REX) to get the complete feel? Will current ASE owners have to update with full price purchase or will we see a bridge over cost from current ASE to Active Sky 2012Jim KiefferGreenville, NC

Hi Damian, that's great news, sort of. I just purchased ASE yesterday. No regrets, because its a great product but I wish I had known this for I would have held off for the newer version.

Just bought ASE, will I have a upgarade path to this.....

Soo glad i waited.

I was going to buy ASE today. I am glad to find this thread and will probably wait for this new product.

hopefully they will answer the Rex question soon as Rex is currently 50% off, so tempting.

A questions:1 future version for xPlane or other simulator, Flight, Aerosoft Sim, etc?2 Changer for 2012 to ASE, new additions or features?

Hello,First of all, AS2012 retains the universal graphics add-on compatibility via the Snapshot system you've seen in ASE. You're existing graphics add-on library is safe and can be utilized within AS2012 with full wx-influenced support once you create snapshots. In addition, you can create combinations of graphics (i.e. Clouds from add-on A, water from add-on B, Airports from AS2012, Skies and everything else from add-on C) with the snapshots, again, all with wx-influenced support.While AS2012 includes a very large assortment of HD graphics with customization/recoloring support which should satisfy nearly all users, we wanted our user's investment in their existing graphics collection to further improve their experience, instead of making such investments obsolete. Therefore, with AS2012 you gain a bunch of new styles of high-quality graphics and get to keep and use whatever you had before as well.As for those who've purchased ASE, we are planning on two upgrade discount paths... one for those who've purchased past products, and one (more significant discount) for those who've purchased the most recent release (ASE). Further details on this will be announced soon. Please note that ASE was also discounted in preparation for this release. Also, ASE is not being made obsolete by AS2012's release. ASE will continue to be sold and supported as our wx-engine only product for FSX and FS9.Stay tuned for some screenshots :)

1 future version for xPlane or other simulator, Flight, Aerosoft Sim, etc?2 Changer for 2012 to ASE, new additions or features?

Hi,Yes we are already working on product variations for XPlane 10, Prepar3D and FS9. When Flight SDK is available we will work on that as well.And a full feature list and details, screenshots and even a video will be posted VERY soon!

Thanks Damian for your clarifications and future screenshots and .... video.

Here some Preview

Great news, and great screenshots. When can we hear about the new/improved weather engine features?

Can you elaborate a little more on how the weather engine will be improved? ASE is great 75% of the time.... but the other 25% of the time I'm still having trouble getting ASE to get along with the unregistered version of FSUIPC. I've tried every fix I could find online, but I still get wonky winds aloft and weather that won't update sometimes, and the only remedy I've found is to go in to the FSUIPC settings and click "Weather Settings Off"..... which I often have to do several times in a single flight.