Stephen,

 

 

a) I read the other thread the minute I posted my msg above. I read the stuff on your site.I was actually after users' opinions.maybe I should have made myself clear.

 

b:)The shaking effects I'm actually interested in are the ones you feel on the the ground when the plane starts rolling down the runway or when it is about to land.I just use those fake ones that ezka offers and it is better than nothing.

 

Anyway I went ahead and bought it. (you can't beat flight1 30daysmoneybacknoquestionsasked).I like the weather facility.I couldn't figure out live camera. I tested the software for a few mins only and on take off and landing there were no shaking effects :-) I need to hit the help files.

 

Thanks

Stephen,

 

 

a) I read the other thread the minute I posted my msg above. I read the stuff on your site.I was actually after users' opinions.maybe I should have made myself clear.

 

b:)The shaking effects I'm actually interested in are the ones you feel on the the ground when the plane starts rolling down the runway or when it is about to land.I just use those fake ones that ezka offers and it is better than nothing.

 

Anyway I went ahead and bought it. (you can't beat flight1 30daysmoneybacknoquestionsasked).I like the weather facility.I couldn't figure out live camera. I tested the software for a few mins only and on take off and landing there were no shaking effects :-) I need to hit the help files.

 

Thanks

 

Hi,

 

Select and load your aircraft in FSX.

Enable the Live Camera in the Configuration dialog.

Then create a virtual cockpit camera view for the pilot position.

Name the view, assign a joystick button and tick the Default box.

Enable DHM and edit and enable all the DHM effects.

Also edit and enable all the AHM effects (via the DHM dialog).

Save the camera views and away you go.

 

In other words the DHM and AHM effects are associated with the virtual camera view.

Normally I only enable them for the pilot and co-pilot VC camera views.

 

Regards

Stephen

I see this, "The aircraft.cfg files on the OpusFSX server and all OpusFSX clients are updated each time you click on the Save All Cameras button within the OpusFSX Camera Configuration dialog."

 

So if we uninstall OpusFSX, are the default .cfg files for each plane restored? Or perhaps the altered .cfg files won't make a difference in vanilla FSX?

Hi VeryBumpy

 

You are spot on there, the modified aircraft.cfg won't make any diffence to FSX.

 

Regards

Stephen

Hi Opus Software...

 

I'm quite interested in this product... I really hope it's as good, as you are saying! :)

A couple of questions though...

 

How are the weather engine, handling overcast situations? I know, that it's a limitation of FSX, to produce true overcast situations...

This can be helped out, by changing CLOUD_COVERAGE_DENSITY=8 to e.g 12 or 14... but it's quite a framerate-killer... :)

 

How's it coping with fog or mist situations? The fog patches in your images on your website looks very nice... I was thinking about fog/visibility transitions and foggy areas seen from above e.g cloud coverages etc... (hope you know what I mean) :)

 

Thanks in advance!

I haven't noticed any major problems with overcast conditions apart from when the cloud depth is too low. We top both foggy and misty areas in a layer of thin stratus, 8 octas for fog and slightly thinner 4 octas for mist. Both effects can be disabled separately to suit your taste. The screen shot on our website showed a fog layer topped with thin layer of 8 octas stratus cloud. The effect is heightened due to the detailed, localised, and varied weather created within the Dynamic Weather engine.

 

Regards

Stephen

Live Camera stuff.

 

Only thing that interests me are the AHM and DHM. Making new viewpoints is just a bonus IMO; I'm after flying immersiveness, effects and eye candy. I don't care for the all or nothing AHM (look into turn in the car sim world) movement; I'd like it to be linear with the amount of bank. AHM would flake out 50% of the time and not work. Spy showed some 'FSUIPC read failed to offset 023A' error. DHM is nice and I have no real complaints. Land hard and your view gets out of whack, nice.

 

 

 

Live View stuff.

 

I was a bit shocked I needed to install and run FSX on the client(s). Thought this would be more like the desktop extender program "MaxiVista" but it's not.

Client has a bit of a delay of about 1-2sec on my wired lan client laptop. Client did not load the proper time of day but all else seems proper and works very well.

 

 

 

Live Weather I'm not really interested in too much but I'm guessing it's decent. There is another thread for that too somewhere.

 

IMO, worthwhile addon but I'll wait for it to be a bit more reliable and at a more attractive price point.

Live Camera stuff.

 

Only thing that interests me are the AHM and DHM. Making new viewpoints is just a bonus IMO; I'm after flying immersiveness, effects and eye candy. I don't care for the all or nothing AHM (look into turn in the car sim world) movement; I'd like it to be linear with the amount of bank. AHM would flake out 50% of the time and not work. Spy showed some 'FSUIPC read failed to offset 023A' error. DHM is nice and I have no real complaints. Land hard and your view gets out of whack, nice.

 

 

 

Live View stuff.

 

I was a bit shocked I needed to install and run FSX on the client(s). Thought this would be more like the desktop extender program "MaxiVista" but it's not.

Client has a bit of a delay of about 1-2sec on my wired lan client laptop. Client did not load the proper time of day but all else seems proper and works very well.

 

 

 

Live Weather I'm not really interested in too much but I'm guessing it's decent. There is another thread for that too somewhere.

 

IMO, worthwhile addon but I'll wait for it to be a bit more reliable and at a more attractive price point.

 

Thanks VeryBump

 

Linear AHM, not a bad idea we will add it to the list.

 

The read error relates to the second hand of the sim clock, that might indicate your system is struggling a bit, and if there is any lag on your client then I would say that is a most definite yes. There should be no delay whatsoever, this usually indicates that your client system is also finding it difficult to cope. Make sure you have followed the Getting Started guide, especially when it comes to changing the FSX settings on your client and selecting a suitable default FSX aircraft. It makes a big difference. You may have to drop your target frame rates on the client to somewhere in the 20s to give FSX time to process the updates, it isn't coping at present. I would be interested to know what was the spec of your main server system and client system.

 

I do disagree regarding the reliability though, it would have helped if you had read the Getting Started guide and installed FSX on the client before trying it. The windows error was generated because none of the DLLs existed (no FSX or SimConnect). Happy flying and thanks for giving it a go, you are certainly a tenacious fellow.

 

Regards

Stephen

To Opus Software,

 

 

A quick question...

 

Just your unbiased version :)

How does your Weather Engine in OpusFSX matches up against ActiveSky 2012? Is it better, and if so, how?

What differences is there? How does OpusFSX handle en comparison to ActiveSky 2012?

 

I'm on the verge of buying this... just wanted to have an opinion if it's worth it? :)

 

Thanks alot, in advance!

 

 

Regards,

Anders

Hi Anders

 

In a nutshell, as far as the weather engine is concerned there is no comparison, the OpusFSX engine is second to none. All the reasons for this have been described on our website. The OpusFSX Live Weather Engine is the ONLY engine that has instant weather updates, detailed localised (non-global) weather, no clearing the sky to slowly load the METARS, no METAR morphing as soon as they are loaded, FSX sticks to the detailed weather defined within the local region, no phoney global weather (see the changing weather patterns en-route) etc. etc.

 

I'm sorry I am on my iPad at the moment, give me a few moments and I will collect together all my previous posts and give you the definitive full description, with photo etc.

 

Regards

Stephen

Thanks alot for your time...

 

Looking forward to your post, then! :)

Hi Anders

 

I'm sorry it is going to take some time to sift through all the past posts and comments and produce the definitive answer I was hoping to. Can you please check our website for details because all I can say for now is that ours is the ONLY product that uses instant Dynamic Weather update. All the benefits of these are actually listed on our website. I am not aware of ANY other method that can load real world weather into FSX/P3D that truly works. There are serious flaws to loading METARS into FSX/P3D, you must either assumed the weather is global (phoney and totally unrealistic), or you must clear the sky and slowly load the METARs one at a time (totally unrealistic and very annoying), also as soon as you start this process FSX starts to morph and vary the weather. We've tried all the methods and none of the METAR loading methods were good enough. As far as looks are concerned we reccommend loading the excellent REX, ActiveSky, or FEX HD sky and cloud textures and away you go, let the OpusFSX Live Weather Engine do the rest.

 

Here is one post I made a few days ago which should highlight the difference between global and localised weather ...

 

Yesterday whilst flying the PMDG 737NGX I could clearly make out a line of thunderstorm and towering cumulus about 40 to 50 miles ahead. Real live weather, I know because in reality my house was underneath them. As we approached and flew through them the turbulence built up but then resided as we flew into a clearer zone. In exact agreement with the METARS. Surrounded by distant thunder storms we landed in light rain at East Midlands before the weather once again closed in. All ATIS reports matching the real world conditions exactly as expected. Now that's quite something even if I say so myself ! An impossible effect if you are using phoney global weather or relying on METAR updates within FSX/P3D.

 

As far as winds aloft are concerned (another popular question), the winds aloft have been extensively discussed from post #11 through to #20 and beyond in the 'OpusFSX Weather Engine...feedback' topic (read these comments they describe the inherent problems within FSX). We are desperately trying to circumvent these problems and still provide accurate, detailed and varied (non-global) weather within the Dynamic Weather Theme's weather grid. As you are probably aware by now, the only known way to provide true winds aloft is to dispense with localised weather and use global weather. We have many ideas and that is all I am willing to say on this matter, but the problem is internal to FSX and P3d so there will have to be some compromises ;-)

 

We have plans for many improvements to the Live Weather Engine, mostly in two areas and both aimed at improving the stability and accuracy of the detailed weather. The first plan is to more than double the size of the weather grid, extend the weather horizon so to speak. At present the engine collects METAR reports and creates a weather grid consisting of 32km cells covering an area of 480km x 480km (about 300 x 300 miles), we are going to more than double this to cover an area of 992km x 992km (about 620 x 620 miles), we will most probably even allow you to specify an even larger area of 1952km x 1952km (about 1220 x 1220 miles), but the largest weather grid options may only be available if you are running the weather engine remotely on a (non FSX/P3D) networked client such as a laptop with Internet access and a LAN connection to the server.

 

The current METAR reports from ALL met stations within these weather grid areas will be downloaded and used to construct the detailed weather, we also have plans to increase (double) the resolution of the weather region to construct the weather using 16km weather cells. The whole reason for these future upgrades is to provide the most accurate, detailed and stable weather. The extended weather grids just provide a vast look-ahead or peek over the current weather horizon so that the central area you are located and flying within is constructed with knowledge of the much wider meteorological picture.

 

The other main upgrade will be aimed solely at improving the weather interpolation algorithm (its currently on version 2). This algorithm is responsible for looking at the full weather grid and interpolating all the weather between the known met stations at the same time stabilising the data to prevent any faulty met reports messing things up (e.g. a faulty automated met station reporting 60mph winds when all around the winds are calm). This algorithm is quite extensive so after producing the usual beta versions during the development cycle for the weather grid size change, we will enter a phase of producing betas for the weather interpolation improvements. We are going to need several long distance flyers to help fully test this one.

 

Anyway, I hope that gives you some idea of our current plans regarding the weather engine, the development is ongoing and will continue, for at least another four years anyway. We have no intention keeping all this in-house and releasing an upgrade next year, that is not the way we work. All upgrades and enhancements are posted as soon as possible within the development cycle even if that means as beta versions.

 

I hope the above makes sense, it was mostly cobbled together from other posts.

 

Finally here is a photo kindly sent in by one of our intrepid users,

 

 

That's quite alright... Thanks for your extensive post!

 

You're saying, that your product differs from other products, due to your Dynamic Weather Engine. How's it working?

You mentioned that other products was using METAR data to inject weather into FSX - and that this was flawed way of doing it? (Correct me if I'm wrong). :)

 

How's OpusFSX with your Dynamic Weather Engine different? Isn't it using METAR data also? I typically see, when using ActiveSky that when flying from one destination to another, that the weather is accurate at the starting point - but during the flight towards the destination - it get's more and more wrong! This is typically cloud cover etc...

 

How's OpusFSX coping with weather at a starting airport and destination with respect to accuracy? The flight I've tried, was typically about 1.000 nm...

 

Thanks again for all your explanations!

Of course we download the latest METARs from all the met stations currently within the weather grid area (300 by 300 miles at the moment).

 

But we do not update FSX using the METAR method (the only method available up to now). We update the Dynamic Weather using a method unique to us, that is all I am willing to say. It is different because weather themes load instantly etc.etc. and METARs load the same way they have always loaded (see above). The weather IS correct throughout the weather grid area because all the met stations are used to determine the weather (everywhere).

 

IT DOES NOT GET MORE WRONG TOWARDS YOUR DESTINATION. It is 100% correct at every met station and they usually cover the entire grid (300 by 300 miles, soon to be over 1220 by 1220 miles), correct and very accurate weather as far as the eye can see in every direction and beyond!

 

I think I've covered everything more than once. The weather is accurate everywhere ... we use the downloaded METAR reports from the met stations and interpolate that ... this will soon be improved in our next major upgrade (see above). Of course the met data is reloaded at the configured rate or after flying the configure distance (default 30 minutes or 50km).

 

I'm sorry but I have very little spare time today.

 

Regards

Stephen

Of course we download the latest METARs from all the met stations currently within the weather grid area (300 by 300 miles at the moment).

 

But we do not update FSX using the METAR method (the only method available up to now). We construct a 'Dynamic Weather Theme' (unique to us) that is all I am willing to say. It is different because weather themes load instantly etc.etc. and METARs load the same way they have always loaded (see above). The weather IS correct throughout the weather grid area because all the met stations are used to determine the weather (everywhere).

 

IT DOES NOT GET MORE WRONG TOWARDS YOUR DESTINATION. It is 100% correct at every met station and they usually cover the entire grid (300 by 300 miles, soon to be over 1220 by 1220 miles), correct and very accurate weather as far as the eye can see in every direction and beyond!

 

I think I've covered everything more than once. The weather is accurate everywhere ... we use the downloaded METAR reports from the met stations and interpolate that ... this will soon be improved in our next major upgrade (see above). Of course the met data is reloaded at the configured rate or after flying the configure distance (default 30 minutes or 50km).

 

I'm sorry but I have very little spare time today.

 

Regards

Stephen

Enable the weather engine to be run from the client and i'll buy it.