The Next Version of Active Sky

[FlyGuy42 4]

Originally posted the Hifi Forum: http://www.hifitechinc.com/forums/showthread.php?1147-The-next-version-of-Active-Sky
 
A big thank you goes out to Damian and the Active Sky team for allowing me to post this on AVSIM.

 

Initial Information:
 

Ok... Here's some information!

Our next product will be called Active Sky Next (ASN). It will release first for FSX, with a P3D version coming very soon after (they are not cross-compatible). We're in the beta stage right now, and when the product is solid and ready, we'll release it.

ASN is basically a brand new design, rewritten almost entirely. Our users have been asking for a lot, competition has been heating up, and well, we really wanted to "bring it". So…

Say goodbye to DWC
Say goodbye to Standard and Smooth Cloud Transitions modes
Say goodbye to depiction modes entirely

We're using something brand new, it's actually a hybrid depiction system, using Dynamic FS Theme Weather, SimConnect, and our new low-level AS Connect Module.

What this means is this:

For Clouds, you get accurate skies, all the time, everywhere... no strange gaps in the cloud ceiling when it calls for overcast. No hard transitions. Everything is silky smooth and dynamic.. the clouds update when they should, but so slowly and smoothly you won't even notice. And you don't need to worry about your options. You'll always get accurate, smooth, dynamic weather no matter how you configure things.

For Winds, you get accurate winds, all the time, everywhere. No wind shifts, ever. No S-turns. Nothing but 100% accurate winds that now have full inter-layer interpolation so even vertical transitions are smooth (i.e. no large changes to new targets at specific altitudes like 9K, 12K, 18K). By the way, this is from the same source data we've been using for many years now... some like to call it "GRIB" , but we call it "World Forecast System Winds Aloft Data"... because that's what it is (GRIB means Gridded Binary, used for many types of data). This is 1x1 lat/lon base source resolution (approximately 60nm) that covers the entire globe. For ASN we have added new multiple winds aloft forecast data windows (current, +6hr, +12hr and +18hr) that are integrated into the weather data for full winds aloft forecast integration and better winds aloft forecast accuracy.

For Other ambient conditions like temperature, pressure, precipitation and visibility, everything is totally controlled by ASN at all times and smoothed like butter, like everything else.

For conditions in general, nothing is compromised... everything is accurate and synchronized with FS itself so ATIS reports in-sim are never wrong... the surface weather is correctly reported. No more DWC ATIS woes.

This is simplifying things, as there is much more here behind the scenes to make the entire weather experience immensely accurate in the sim, totally smooth and incredibly realistic. It's a brand new beast that makes FSX (and soon P3D) render weather like we could only dream about before.

The weather depiction is HUGE in ASN, most definitely the most important feature set... but there are tons of other things, that users have been asking for, we are finally delivering...

Things like...

A redesigned simple UI focused on performance and flexibility, with resizeable, undockable and multiple window support (You can have the map, flight plan, command center, and 3 different condition report windows all up at the same time, all updating dynamically, for example).

New cloud sprite awareness, so we know exactly when you enter a cloud and when you exit it. We synchronize turbulence, precipitation, updrafts/downdrafts and visibility with the clouds.. the increase in realism is immense.

Now that we know where the clouds are, we decided to make a detailed accurate NEXRAD radar precipitation overlay for both the Map and the included radar gauge. Real radar simulation.. not generic station-based imagery. You see the cloud, you see the rain cell, and when you enter it, it's all synchronized. Thread the needle between cells. Realistic avoidance procedures. This overlay data is also coming soon to aircraft NDs as we are working on an interface of our radar data to aircraft developers.

Speaking of entering clouds... be careful.. especially with those thunderstorms. They now can render your aircraft uncontrollable if the conditions are right (and your decision making is wrong). Synchronized turbulence and updrafts/downdrafts are here (and we can't forget about the new microbursts and redesigned wind shear effects).

Turbulence is also redesigned (along with wind shear), bypassing the FS-internal simulation. Vertical and horizontal wind action affects your aircraft realistically.

We're analyzing the terrain in detail now, so much more realistic terrain up/downdrafts are now included. Ridge soaring is a treat. Be careful of downdrafts on approach when you see that warning in the AFD, because if the conditions are right, you'll get them.. even from fairly small terrain features. The entire vertical air simulation system was designed to be as realistic possible at a high level of resolution.

Wake turbulence was redesigned, trails now moving correctly with wind while also sinking and dissipating. We also added a new "other aircraft" overlay so you can see all aircraft around you on the map (and a visual representation of their wake trails too).

Integrated forecast weather, both surface and aloft, creates dynamic changes in weather if the METAR gets stale, and also lets you quickly see how conditions are expected to change, by just moving a slider (also works on the map).

New global airmets and sigmets are enabled, no longer just for the USA. This is provided by real data, available in real-time mode, and these reports are shown visually on the map. But they also now influence the weather conditions accordingly. For example, if severe turbulence is reported between FL330 and FL370 in a certain region, you should expect it during your flight.

These are just a few of the new features.. we'll be talking much more about it all in the near future as we prepare for release. I just wanted to give you all a better idea about what is coming. 

In summary, it's a game changer, and while we're very proud of our past products, and impressed with what others have done with weather recently, this completely blows everything out of the water. 

After almost 3 years of development work on this (and 12 years of progress in the making), we're super excited to let the cat out of the bag and show you all what we're talking about!

With that said, there is still work to do, and we are focusing on getting things closer to completion before we finalize our feature list and provide official details, press releases, screenshots, videos and more. Thanks for your patience and your support while we finish things up.

 

Technical Details:

 

Hello to all,



given the announcement of ASN by Damian, I think I should jump in here right now and explain some things about the way ASN works internally.

First, let's start with some background:

- You may all know the fsx weather depiction limitations (wind shift bugs, cloud shifts during simconnect updates, sudden visibility changes and above all the fact that the way cloud rendering is performed inside fsx is completely decoupled from all other weather phenomena. The latter is responsible for bugs like "being able to see the runway even though an overcast cloud is in place", it's responsible for "rain out of nowhere", inconsistent cloud turbulence etc. And that was the main reason it was widely believed that a realistic precipitation showing (Doppler like) radar is not possible to simulate accurately.

During these years, various developers (with Damian and Hifi pioneering in this), tried to figure out ways to overcome these limitations. For example to avoid "cloud shifts and pops" during weather updates, Active sky first incorporated the smooth cloud transition mode (first in ASX IIRC). Then, it has been recognized that for serious simming, smooth and predictable winds aloft should be the first priority (among others reasons for correct fuel planning). This led Damian to invent the infamous DWC mode to finally be able to provide winds aloft accuracy and stability. This work took lots of years and now (with AS2012 SP2) I think he reached to a point of providing a very satisfactory result that lots of users enjoyed flying with (including myself). However DWC reached its limit. There are known issues related to this mode (ATIS inaccuracies, global mode means clouds are basically the same with small variations- if writeLocalStations is on etc).

Some competitive products chose another way providing better "eye-candy" ("detailed from horizon to horizon depiction") using the (very old) fsx theme mode. Many users are impressed by this, but there are limitations there too. Cloud shifts are present (even though they try to limit them), as are wind shifts (unless "fsx friendly" winds or other tricks are used which I am not so sure how realistic they are). And initially "simple and innovative" programs start adding one user option after the other to satisfy user demands, while more frequently than not the answers in their support forums is that "it's simply the way fsx works and nothing can be done about that". I remember Damian told me six months ago "been there done that", meaning he was in a similar position (with user requests vs fsx limitations) many years ago 

Other products, have dropped fighting on these fsx limitations advertising "global" weather coverage as their main advantage and a new "magic" way of avoiding winds shifts. The truth is, all of us (we are first of all simmers), tend to believe what's been told to us and initially some issues only occur rarely. And in the beginning we forgive them (keeping in mind the fsx limitations). And then comes a new product and we give this a shot too etc. This has created a cycle of hype, bubble blowing and then eventually bursting. And of course this applies to the Active sky series too, including ASN. But we can't avoid that. We are very excited with what we achieved during these last 2 years and want to share it with the community. And one of the reasons we remained silent all this time, was that we knew that you might not believe us if we made these statements earlier. Now, the release is close (I can't tell exactly how close) so you can test for yourself once out (there will be a trial version available).

So let's get back to the fsx weather issues. What should we do? How should we handle them (from a developer perspective)? There is no easy, "magic" way of fixing this. That's what I realized more than 2 years ago (when I joined the team). I (we) had to bite the bullet. We had to do it the "hard" way. And what's the hard way? The answer was to use low level code, function hooks, assembly whenever needed, to attempt to bypass and fix all these issues. And that's what I did. And don't tell me this can't be done. It has happened before by other developers. It just needs long sleepless nights, red eyes on the debugger trying to figure out how fsx weather internally works and how it can be improved. So what was the result of all this?



- I figured out a completely new way to control the ambient winds at the aircraft level (in all 3 dimensions), while keeping the cloud depiction decoupled. This led to the first new innovations not seen before:

- Direct turbulence control (both in the horizontal and vertical axis fully configurable). This is real turbulence (no camera effect) affecting airspeed and in fact if severe it will stall or overstress the airplane. But with ASN you're warned for this early on and you can avoid it

- Real time Updrafts/ downdrafts based on winds, continuous terrain slope sampling, surface temperature and type (thermals) and of course precipitation.

- Complete wind shear control. I even simulated a micro-burst phenomenon as realistically as possible. This is one of the most impressive new features of ASN and showcases what can be done with ambient wind control. And yes we modeled it with high fidelity and accuracy. Strong downdraft (close to t-storms usually) surrounded by equally strong centrifugal winds. It typically presents as a strong headwind on initial encounter, then the downdraft follows and then significant tailwind possibly stalling the aircraft very close to the ground. This is one of the most dangerous weather phenomena out there (lots of people have been killed because of this in RL). Of course, we wouldn't be complete if we hadn't couple this with an equally detailed PWS (Predictive Wind Shear) alert implementation. This includes both a warning on the map (and gauge) and an aural alert. We will also provide this info to aircraft/ ND developers so that they can take advantage of it.



- All this means we reached realism to a maximum point E.g. turbulence is there when expected by a chart. For example the LSGG approach plate warns for turbulence on ILS-05 approach when at the PAS region and NE winds are present. Flying the approach the other day I was surprised myself when ASN created turbulence exactly where expected. The same for updrafts and downdrafts.



- As for the rest of depiction (clouds mainly), we opted to use theme depiction mode because it gave us freedom to most accurately set the cloud variation we wanted, providing ATIS accuracy and nice "eye-candy" clouds users of competitive products have been used to. This did not happen of course with a reduction in accuracy. Cumulus/Stratus is now selected based on air stability data, temperature etc., while we fully conform with the station metars and any additional raw weather info we use for our synthesis.

However, in contrast to other products, we document every decision made in our depiction (for example why this cloud is there, if it's not part of the metar etc). This "transparent" way of demonstrating our data is part of Active sky philosophy. We are against cryptic "1GB server side global weather data" way of doing things. These can only be evaluated in a subjective way anyway. Active sky has always showed for example the interpolation sources of a station (if it didn't have enough raw data and needed this). And this helped advanced users become a more "integral" part of the way the application works. Given that we all are users after all and want the best possible weather simulation, this helped in the actual weather engine evolution. And yes, in certain cases this revealed bugs, or inconsistencies in the way things worked, but still helped things move forward with time. Novice users may get overwhelmed by all this, but part of Active sky philosophy has to do with motivating the users to advance their knowledge in this particular field (weather). For example lots of times people have considered wake turbulence a bug. However, once the discussion is made and the needed explanations are provided, we've all gained something (even if in most cases it ends up with the respective slider set to zero  )

So let's get back to ASN development. I said we selected the theme mode as the best suitable depiction mode. But what about cloud shifts? We always considered cloud shifts/pops unacceptable. We had to find a solution. Well, yet another round of long sleepless nights started and led to our innovative "smooth theme reload" feature. During this period (that lasts 5 minutes), clouds slowly fade out and new ones fade in. This happens so smoothly, that users may not notice this at all. Our radar also follows, smoothly changing from let's say stronger signals to lighter Doppler returns.

But what about the radar? We already knew what needed to be done to be able to achieve this. We needed to know the exact cloud sprite positions, but that was not enough. We needed something even more important. We needed to control ambient precipitation. This was tough, believe me! However, it's done now. So what does this mean? Lets' say above your airport you have scattered clouds giving precipitation, when you are below them. It's normal in RL to have rain here and in a couple of meters to have no rain. This was not the case with fsx. It was either on or off for the whole area an fsx "weather cell" occupies (it's different based on latitiude, but it's about 19x19 kms in middle lats). This was the main reason we got the rain out of nowhere issue. Now, what happens with ASN? In the above given example you may get an airport with the ATIS giving you scattered clouds and light rain. And you're lined up and wait in the middle of a wet runway, yet no rain! You look up and no clouds are directly above you. You then take off and rain starts and stops depending on where exactly is the cloud placed. So how much more realistic can this be done?

So given this flexibility, we adjusted our radar to actually give the precipitation information needed, thus we accomplished for the first time an accurate Doppler like weather radar. Just a note here: This is not simulating an on board radar at the moment. It is more like a NexRad radar giving base (ground) reflectivity, supposedly sent to our gauge through satellite connection. But the technology is now here. We can always provide an on board like radar (with tilt function covering specific altitude range etc), or provide means to aircraft/ND developers to take advantage of this.



So aren't there any limitations now with ASN? No this isn't true. The core way fsx weather works (taking 3d lat-lon-alt coordinates of a location), converting it to a 2d grid system of weather cells (1536x1024) and then reconverting this back to 3d coordinates to render the clouds is cumbersome at least. This leads to cloud misalignment in certain cases (as an example you can try for yourself now, with no weather add-on present, clear all the weather up manually in fsx and setup an overcast layer in KLAX. Then look at the result...  That's one of the reasons we'll insist on you having a flight plan in place. This will always lead to more accurate depiction). Or other issues, such as "squeezed" clouds if you go to the poles. 

We also don't control some elements of depiction like icing. Even though we'd like to alter this behavior (and we could), this requires a close cooperation with aircraft builders, because of the possible unpredictable ways it may affect the way the aircrafts respond. We'd like to do this at some point though, but not for the current release.

So... In summary, this code is all brand new (built on the rock solid foundation the active sky series has provided through the years). It's super fast (from startup to be able to work with it takes only 1.4 secs on this slow machine I am working on). And there are a lot of other features I didn't have a chance to talk about (like for instance dynamic control of cloud draw distance to improve performance etc, etc).

This was a long one  I should go back now to write some unit tests (devs know what I am talking about) and keep trying to "break" ASN down (testing it) to resolve the usual here and there bugs. I hope you can understand that I'll have to stay silent from now on until the release, focused on real development issues. Thanks for reading this,

 

 

Screenshots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jetman67 517]

wow cant wait

[rlkjmt73 7]

Looks great guys.

 

Rod

[wlix261 79]

Looks nice

[stans 703]

Wow!

[aentwis 61]

So, precipitation can be predicted and depicted. This is definitely a turn for the better...

 

A

[jose88 50]

[P50andpilot 7]

Any word on wx radar tilt functionality?

 

 

Justin whetstone

[xplanery 250]

 

 

Also, someone please clear this up for me, but if this is Active Sky Next, what happens with AS2012? Will it be unsupported? Will Active Sky be like a Madden game where you have to get a new version every year (or every other year) for updates?

 

AS2012 will most likely stay supported for a long time to come, that's what has happened with previous products at least as far as I know. 

 

I think there's nothing wrong with the text and I have full faith this new version will indeed be as awesome as they promise. 

[ricka47 611]

Sounds great.  One thing that I really like about AS2012 is the ability to load current weather and the corresponding graphics at the same time .  But, I understand that the new version will not have weather-influenced graphics but that one can still use AS2012 for this?

[lodestar 186]

looks promising

[JRBarrett 3,078]

With previous versions of Active Sky, I was able to run the main AS program on a second computer, with the actual weather injection into FSX being accomplished over the network via sim connect.

 

Since it sounds like the upcoming version will be hooking FSX processes and DLLs to achieve the new effects, I assume that the entire program (or at least part of it), will need to run on the same computer as FSX itself?

 

If that is the case, will it use a small-footprint server-type interface on the FSX machine - kind of like that employed by the Aivlasoft EFB - permitting the main program with maps and graphics to be networked?

[stans 703]

This does sound very promising.

[gpbarth 12]

So I read on one of the threads on their site that it was due out "any day now" and that was in August. In two days, it will be October. I am ready to purchase AS, and as I would be using it with REX, I didn't really want the AS graphics, anyway.  But I'm not going to spend nearly $40USD on the current AS2012 and then turn around and spend more on ASN. Is there any update on when this is going to be released?

 

P.S. - there is absolutely NO news on the Hi-Fi Tech site at all, not even a hint!  Any reason for this? I thought they'd be tooting their horn about this new product. Or is this product now called Evolution???

[Chris Willis 8]

So I read on one of the threads on their site that it was due out "any day now" and that was in August. In two days, it will be October. I am ready to purchase AS, and as I would be using it with REX, I didn't really want the AS graphics, anyway.  But I'm not going to spend nearly $40USD on the current AS2012 and then turn around and spend more on ASN. Is there any update on when this is going to be released?

 

P.S. - there is absolutely NO news on the Hi-Fi Tech site at all, not even a hint!  Any reason for this? I thought they'd be tooting their horn about this new product. Or is this product now called Evolution???

 

 

 

Official HIFI Forum are here http://www.hifitechinc.com/forums/forum.php and the status of ASN have been updated. As2012 is huge in download, if no graphics needed , ASN is the one.