Hi all

To be honest I'm not sure that I'm going to buy anymore Active sky products, a few days ago my Active sky x stopped down loading weather , I opened a ticket in the support section with regards to this their reply is at the bottom .

I'm sorry but this appears to me that they have done this purely in order to force you to buy their new product (AS2012) who's to say that when another new product is released they are not going to do the same thing.

 

Also just one little point I have active sky 2004 on my laptop which is WORKING so I don't quite get their point with regards to the EOL

 

 

 

Hello Owen,

 

We apologize for the inconvenience. Due to server security issues, data compatibility and ASX reaching its End of Life Cycle (EOL) as it is almost 8 years old, we finally had to phase out the ASX weather services which in turn will unfortunately render ASX obsolete for real-time data download functionality.

 

You are eligible to upgrade your ASX product to Active Sky 2012 for FSX at a significantly reduced upgrade discount. For more information about this upgrade promotion and Active Sky 2012, please visit www.activesky2012.com .

 

We'd like to thank you for your patronage and for supporting our continued development efforts. We appreciate comments and feedback regarding our products and services, including our approach to handling ASX's EOL situation. We look forward to doing whatever we can to achieve your total satisfaction.

 

Please let us know how you would like to handle this.

 

Sincerely!!

HiFi Support

 

Regards,

 

Dave Opper

Community Manager/Support Specialist

HiFi Support Team

HiFi Technologies, Inc.

 

Ticket Details

Department: Sales

Type: Issue

Status: On Hold

Priority: Urgent

 

Support Center: http://support.hifitechinc.com

 

 

To be honest I'm not sure that I'm going to buy anymore Active sky products, a few days ago my Active sky x stopped down loading weather , I opened a ticket in the support section with regards to this their reply is at the bottom .
I'm sorry but this appears to me that they have done this purely in order to force you to buy their new product (AS2012) who's to say that when another new product is released they are not going to do the same thing.

 

I fully understand your disappointment but things like this do happen more often... It's not only Hifi who does this. However, this has always been a concern for me: support for online products... You never know when a company goes out of business or decides to say the product has reached its EOL.

 

This is one reason why I didn't buy FSGRW: it's COMPLETELY dependant on their own servers, which is always a bit tricky with small FSX developers imho . OpusFSX downloads its data from general wordwide sources (afaik you can even select another source) so even when the developers pull the plug, you will be able to keep on using the weather engine. It's bad enough already that you need to be online for verification during installing but constantly needing access to servers from developers doesn't have my preference.

I did reply to them stating that its not just HiFI that are doing this sort of thing.

It seems to be common practice now to over charge customers for FS products.

If its the EOL or extended down load it's wrong when We purchase a product we should not be expected to pay lets say an extra 10 euros for some extended down load when you have paid almost 80 euros for the product in the first place or for it not to work at all.

 

And also I did not quite get their point when I have AS2004 ony laptop and its working fine. So as far as I'm concerned there should be no reason why ASX should not work. It just seems that AS2012 is out for FSX and someone has come up with the idea of getting people to buy it.

 

I don't condone it but company's are pushing people towards the black market so to speak with the likes of pirate bay ect.

But it is no different buying a car or a TV, it breaks down and there is no parts available because it is considered obsolete. And they won't offer a huge discount like Damien has. You need to put this into perspective.

You certainly got your monies worth, I mean 8 years is darn good. I have addons on my HDD that are less then 6 months old, but will never use again as they turned out to be garbage, like a certain plane maker from the Ukraine.

^{Using that logic then we all should stop using Windows - MS did the same thing - Products have an EOL and in the computer world, 8 YEARS is a very long time. You are entitled to your opinion but you may want to be a bit more realistic.  ASX is two generations old, if you were complaining about AS2012 it might be a different story.}

 

 

^Vic

Julian

 

I agree with you to a certain point what I'm trying to get them to answer is how one product is now no longer workingkng / supported because of servers but yet another (AS2004) which is twice as old still continues to work with no problems?.

 

All I'm saying is on the surface it appears that they have done this purely to force FSX users into buying their new product as to me their reply does not make any sense, it's not unusual there are lots of other company's that do the same thing and each time they are pushing more and more customers to the dark side with the likes of pirate bay ect.

 

I don't use it I'd rather purchase my product but I can see people's point of view if this continues to happen all the time.

Julian

 

I agree with you to a certain point what I'm trying to get them to answer is how one product is now no longer workingkng / supported because of servers but yet another (AS2004) which is twice as old still continues to work with no problems?.

 

 

I believe that as2004 is for FS9 not FSX. Different issues. SO, according to your logic again, AS2012 should stop working very soon because ASNext is coming?

 

No conspiracy here, the product is just old and there are many reasons for stopping support but 'forcing' people to buy the next iteration is NOT one of them.

 

Vic

Vic

 

Basiclly yes that's what I'm thinking, I love the products produced for FSX and despite my rant I will more than Likely continue to use them.

 

I'm not having a dig just at HiFI all I'm trying to get across is that The FS world is a very niche market and by company's EOL products and cutting support without a word and making you pay for extended downloads then they are forcing people over to the likes of pirate bay.

 

Also not sure if you would have the answer but could you explain the server difference between AS2004 and FSX products?.

Ok I have received a very nice e-mail from HiFi fully explains the reason why ASX no longer works which I'm fully aware of now.

The reason for this post was to raise the wider FS issues and try to make company's aware that by doing this only forces people into downloading pirate copies of products.

Maybe software developers like HiFi should go to a system of stating up front that online access to downloaded weather is only good for 5 years or something similar.  This way the consumer at least knows up front what they are in for.  Personally I think that you should also consider that after 8 years a lot has changed and improved in terms of weather engines for FSX and perhaps the best thing to do is upgrade to ASN when it is released.  For the upgrade price of probably $30 or $40 if you get another 8 years out of it If it can do what they say it will then I can't see how you are not getting great value for your money with the upgrade.

Regarding having to download the weather from a company server, vs having a program that accesses the services on the internet to fetch observations, forecasts, weather model runs, I would like to point out that because of the very nature of those sources of information, programs relying on them may also suffer sudden interruption, either due to problems with service disponibility for the wide public ( metoffices, airline companies etc have other sources for the same information, using dedicated high availability circuits that cost a lot of $$$ per year...), or because their URLs become non available or change.

 

A few years ago one of the simulators I use - ELITE Pilot - which fetches METAR data from the Internet, stopped getting RWW because the address of the data server changed.

 

There is yet another aspect that we should have in mind when considering complex weather injectors like those which, based on those internet sources, and probably also on those other restricted and expensive networks through which they can have access to a much wider range of data, make their own in-house processing of the data they collect and create a "grid of weather" that is probably adapted to the reality of FSX's weather model, and has the many variables "massaged" in order to ensure a smoother rendering of weather paterns in the simulator.

 

Programs that simply access the data from intenet sources and do their job on the executables run on our PCs, "on-the-fly", injecting that data, will most probably be unable to get the same level of smoothness, homogenity and overall quality and sophistication.

Keep checking the link posted by the OP - there's a great explanation of some of the inner workings of ASN by one of the developers that might answer some more questions.

 

Vic

Keep checking the link posted by the OP - there's a great explanation of some of the inner workings of ASN by one of the developers that might answer some more questions.

 

Vic

 

Hm, I have to say Kostas caught my attention...! ^_^

I'd be happy to a monthly or annual subscription towards the server/data costs. I upgrade Navigraph data every now and then, PFPX will have a small cost subscription in 12months so if HiFi go the same route its fine with me for what I view as being core to the simulation experience.

Hm, I have to say Kostas caught my attention...! ^_^

 

I'll bet!  :lol:

 

Vic