For me, I need more convincing from ASN to see if it's really worth it.

 

Fly the flight I mentioned, and that may do it!!

Here:

 

http://nimbus.hifitechinc.com/ASNInfo/ASN_User_Guide.pdf

 

Hope you feel better.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Oh cool, thanks Devin

Still testing as here on the East Coast getting some major Snow showers, but the FPS hit is major.

 

 

No need tun REX at all as long as you do not want to change textures.
If so, run REX, change textures, close REX, run ASN and FSX

 

I realized last night that I wasn't actually using REX textures for some reason. Is there a way to check to make sure I am using REX textures? I just realized perhaps why I thought the clouds looked so different was because they were the default FSX clouds. And I think that would also explain why I was getting such a FPS increase because the REX textures were not loaded. 

 

When I start FSX which weather theme should I load? When I tried it last night I loaded the active sky theme. 

I did find a feature that OPUS doesn't have (AFAIK), and it's pretty neat.  The Weather Briefing...  there's also a voice playback sort of like what you'd get if you call lockheed (FSS).  That's a nice added feature I've found so far!

Well, I've done 5 flights with it so far and I'm still not sure yet whether I will be switching to this or not yet. Don't get me wrong. This is an excellent weather engine!! No doubt about it at all! They seem to have accomplished everything they said they were going to. Smooth cloud changes, no wind shifts. Those were the two biggest things for me that I was looking for.

 

However, I come from Opus, and while Opus still has these issues(maybe cloud smoothing is fixed with latest beta, I don't know as I haven't tried that yet), is it enough to pay $30(I did have AS2012 prior to Opus) for? I have no doubt that Opus will soon "catch up" again and equal ASN on all these improvements ASN has made to weather generation. So, it's a hard decision.

 

One thing though too for me is I have yet to fly through any rough weather. All the flights I have done(Europe) have been really smooth weather. So, I have to test out the turbulence some time before end of trial. If this were Opus, I would have bumps with the DHM set - at the very least from the vibrations of the aircraft. So far with ASN, it's been smooth sailing. Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be. So hard to say who's right in their interpretation of weather/turbulence. Each does things slightly different here I think. No one can get it EXACTLY to what is happening in the real world.

 

Also, the AAX seems to get more icing notifications with ASN than with Opus. I'm getting them even above all visible precip. Is that normal? Can that happen in real life? I thought precip had to be visible in order to get icing?

 

Anyway, still more testing to do. Overall, ASN is excellent! It's just a hard thing for existing Opus users to decide and switch I think because they are both close, that's for sure. ASN has the lead now but no doubt they will be topped soon - either by Opus or FSGRW(not sure if that's right abbreviation for it). Existing ASN or people with no weather client at all should definitely get ASN as I think it appears to be the best right now(barely).

I did find a feature that OPUS doesn't have (AFAIK), and it's pretty neat.  The Weather Briefing...  there's also a voice playback sort of like what you'd get if you call lockheed (FSS).  That's a nice added feature foun d so far!

I believe OPUS has a menu option that displays a briefing. I've sen it used in a video, not sure how detailed it is.

 

Also to help you decide, this is out of Boston for Los Angeles right now (Boston has Snow!)

 

Dave, have you ticked the "Enhance overcast conditions", last item under the "Cloud options" ?

 

 

Thanks - I have just turned that on, so will try another flight.

 

Like Ryan said, there are some cool "peripheral" features like the briefing, and the 122.0 feature, etc....  but after 6 flight tests in various weather conditions, my current view is that whilst this may be amazing for some people, as a current version Opus user, I am seeing very, very, little difference (granted the weather updates don't kick the plane) and in most cases, when I turn Opus back on and it replaces the ASN weather, the visuals look far better to my eyes.

 

Opus seems to provide an overall 'atmosphere' to the weather; I don't know what it is (I'm no Wx expert), whether it's a haze or whatever, but Opus seems to have an atmosphere whereas ASN just looks too 'clear', too transparent to my eyes .....a little like when you get an add-on aircraft that has no reflection on the windshield at all; ...... and it looks like there's no glass in the windows! ...... ASN looks a little like that to me;   Clouds and some 'layers' of overcast, but above a certain altitude it just always seems to look like scattered clouds and transparent jarring visibility of the ground below.

 

It'll be a couple more tests for me - I really want to give this the benefit of the doubt, and if it is amazingly cool I want to see it, and I want to buy it! ....... but I just cannot get a wow factor from this, with Opus as my starting point.

I do prefer the flight plan entering in OPUS over ASN.  Unless I'm doing something wrong it seems I either have to load an FSX default flight plan, or if I choose auto route, I can get a few options (GPS D, VOR-VOR etc) but I still have to enter all the waypoints manually by clicking in the FPL.  With OPUS all I need to do is enter the route KDLH GOLLF GEP7 KMSP, and it knows all the waypoints in between the STAR etc.

 

I just flew a longer route in NGX from KHIB to KCMX.  CMX has crap weather (heavy snow, indefinite ceiling, real low vis).  ASN did fine, it seems to generally load Wx faster than OPUS, but OPUS looked about the same while flying.

 

edit:  Oh, nevermind, OPUS didn't do so hot at rendering the conditions at Houghton.  The VV006 (indefinite ceiling/vertical visibility) seems to throw off OPUS.  ASN renders it very well (basically solid IMC from 600ft AGL and above).

I'm going to try and do another flight tonight in the Northeast.  Hopefully Damian will get back to us on a fix for the grid-like clouds.

I do prefer the flight plan entering in OPUS over ASN.  Unless I'm doing something wrong it seems I either have to load an FSX default flight plan, or if I choose auto route, I can get a few options (GPS D, VOR-VOR etc) but I still have to enter all the waypoints manually by clicking in the FPL.  With OPUS all I need to do is enter the route KDLH GOLLF GEP7 KMSP, and it knows all the waypoints in between the STAR etc.

 

I just flew a longer route in NGX from KHIB to KCMX.  CMX has crap weather (heavy snow, indefinite ceiling, real low vis).  ASN did fine, it seems to generally load Wx faster than OPUS, but OPUS looked about the same while flying.

 

edit:  Oh, nevermind, OPUS didn't do so hot at rendering the conditions at Houghton.  The VV006 (indefinite ceiling/vertical visibility) seems to throw off OPUS.  ASN renders it very well (basically solid IMC from 600ft AGL and above).

 

What do you use as your current flight planner?  If it has an FSX export option just use that and you can import the flight plan into ASN.  I use PFPX and it is easy as hitting 'Import'.

Have a look what ASN can do

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/428864-asn-flight-kiad-to-kjfk/

I don't have any fancy stuff.  Most of my flying is general aviation.  I rarely use the built in flight planner formats.

 

For routes I use skyvector to choose.  With opus I would just enter the text like when filing an FAA fpl.  With ASN I sort of have to build it manually unless the plane can export to .PLN format (I think NGX does??)

ASN can automatically load the flight plan if you import a plan into FSX, its off by default. I do this all the time when Aivlasoft's EFB loads my plan for me into FSX, ASN then automatically updates the route as EFB activates it. If you make anymore changes in EFB those are also automatically seen by ASN too.

Anyone know if the TRIAL has to start its activation in order to read the manual?  I'm seriously ill and confined to my bed which means I dont want to start my 7 days yet.  Would be nice to read up on it though.

Devin gave you the link - sorry to hear you're under the weather. Get well soon so you can enjoy ASN.

 

Vic

 

 

Also to help you decide, this is out of Boston for Los Angeles right now (Boston has Snow!)

 

What program and textures are those?