FSX-MS AS Next available now

[zmak 331]

well super impressed straight up. There is a big storm at ReykjaviK right now if any one wants to experience it. Lightning and thunder all around and looks perfect.

 

Turbulence feels very real and very different to OPUS DHM

 

Whats the deal with the rain drops on the windscreen? is this an active sky thing or is a Real air duke turbine thing?

[RudiJG1 172]

Whats the deal with the rain drops on the windscreen? is this an active sky thing or is a Real air duke turbine thing?

It's not an ASN thing...

[tf51d 284]

 

 

Setting that to 12 is not advisable, if you do this you will see anomalies in the Map and Weather gauge, sometimes the clouds will appear in grid like patterns if you do. Believe me if you enable overcast enhancement in the options (which is off by default) you will practically never see a hole in the overcast layers. Just leave it at the default max of 8 and be sure you are actually supposed to be over an overcast layer, you may actually be flying over 7/8th's which should have holes in the deck.

 

Thanks for the advice, I had it set to 12 because that is how I have it set for ASE, and didn't change it with ASN. Will try with the default setting as you suggest. I did hit one snag, easily correctable so not a big deal. On long flights once in cruise, I will switch to windows to read AVSIM, watch youtube etc. I was flying in an area with forecasted Overcast skies, which was depicted perfectly. On return to the sim, after the scenery refreshed, the clouds didn't. The sky was completely clear, and the current conditions still called for overcast skies. All other weather wind turbulence etc, was fine just no clouds. I found the refresh weather option in the debug tool, and that solved the problem. I preceded to DFW without any issue, and flew the completely overcast sky at 6000ft, and stayed into the soup all the way down to 300ft. The conditions perfectly matched what ASN was reporting.

[Nyxx 6,993]

If people don't what the most perfect weather engine we can get and don't even try it for free then, there lose.

[zmak 331]

Have just done a side by side comparison in perfect stormy weather

 

ASN is thick and dense cloud base down to 300ft with no blue sky and no sight of the sun either at ground level or flying through the clouds up to 10,000ft

 

Flying below the base at 300ft I was sucked up in an up draught at 3-4000fpm. Wild ride!

 

OPUS has some what stormy weather with lightning except there is blue sky and the sun is visible. Clouds are patchy with no real base

 

Turbulance. 

ASN is more like quite moments followed by sudden intense activity, a bit like sitting in an airliner when severe turbulence hits.

OPUS is a more constant Head movement 

 

there are plus and minuses for both. ASN has no live Camera and no head movement during runway Roll

 

In a strictly flying sense ASN has more depth and immersion eg, no blue sky or sun in the big storm.

 

Its going to be a good week of testing, in the end the simmer wins!

[daniel_pt 30]

Well, I just tried the ASN and I have to say that it's very good. Stable and smooth...Top stuff!

 

If I'm going to buy it? Don't know yet, as I'm very satisfied with the FSGRW, which I also consider top stuff!

I think I'll wait a couple months and see what the FSG guys deliver in the next update...

[NGXfanatic 85]

I installed the demo, and all I can say is WOW. It's pretty much everything the preview hype said it would be. I can't believe how realistic flying inside clouds is now, your view is totally whitewashed, and it's not some kind of cheap visual hack where the outside view is just one shade of white. There is some transparency there, you can see the sun peaking through, and you do notice wisps of clouds passing by, not sure how Hifi does it but it seems very volumetric. Even the clouds look volumetric, fluffier, even though I'm pretty sure they are the same 2d images as they have always been. It's hard to describe, you have to see it to believe it.

 

For my first test flight, I loaded up the Cessna 150 at my hometown airport, KPHL Philadelphia International, and used live weather. As anyone on the east coast today can attest, it was all snow and low visibility, and the minute I took off into the soup I was lost. Cruised inside the massive overcast at 6000 ft for the entire flight trying my best to find my way to the runway just using the compass and the ILS, I became quite disoriented! For anyone looking to brush up on their instrument skills, this is the only weather engine for flight simulator that I know of that offers this level of realism inside tall cloud bases, it's as good as flying with a blindfold on.

 

I won't miss DWC one bit, lol! I pretty much resigned myself to accepting global weather, and all it's tradeoffs, for as long as I'm a tubeliner junkie, thinking that only the GA crowd can have a plausible visual representation of weather. It's such a relief that I no longer have to accept all it's glitches and penalties. I can now enjoy seeing beautiful contrails high above when I'm taxing on the ground. I can use the official ATIS frequencies from published charts and get the correct weather reports. AI fly to the correct runways, no more head on collisions when I'm on final approach! There is real variation in the cloudscape. Bottom line, Damian is true to his word: compromise is a thing of the past.

 

I also appreciate the ease of use. Ever since I started using Hifi products, from Active Sky Advanced though AS2012, I had to carefully tweak the settings to get things just right. So much trial and error, testing workarounds, and comparing notes with others, it was kind of exhausting, almost like the nonstop tweaking we have to apply to the FSX.cfg! Not anymore, the only "tweaks" you make are some adjustments to sliders for things like the min/max range of visibility and cloud draw to accommodate the various levels of hardware horsepower of the user base, and some other minor settings, but most of the confusing boxes we had to check off (like Prevent Cloud Redraws) are no longer needed. ASN doesn't care if you fly low and slow or high and dry, weather is weather, and you just load up your choice of airplane and just go!

 

All of what I describe so far are just my initial impressions based on some short circuit flights, I can't wait to see how it handles a proper long haul in the PMDG 777. I can't believe I will be able to finally put my passenger seatbelt sign to proper use. Now, instead of simulating that I'm flying into clear air or cloud turbulence when the air is perfectly still, for fear of disrupting the delicate, finely tuned PMDG flight model and encountering S-turns, overspeeds, or unpleasant airspeed/altitude oscillations, I may get to experience a plausible jostling of the cabin in close approximation to real world flight behavior. A lot has been said about how unrealistic the FSX turbulence model is, I hope ASN addresses that issue once and for all. A lifelike turbulence model is about as groundbreaking as the elimination of the quirky old depiction modes in my book. Finally, flying in bad weather has consequences. All we need is true icing modeling and a corresponding penalty enacted on addon flight models, and we will really be as real as it gets!

 

Thank you Damian and crew for taking the risk and providing us with this long desired high fidelity weather engine. This year has been a memorable one for what I had started the year thinking was the beginning of the end for FSX. I can only imagine how awesome ASN will look on PD3 v2.0 with its true volumetric clouds and fog.

[kterz 49]

Hi,

 

first of all thanks all for trying ASN. It's been very rewarding to see all these positive comments here. We worked very hard to produce this result and I'd like to reassure you that we'll be here whenever any issue comes up. ASN is a complex application and given the diversity of hardware/software combos out there, chances are that issues will exist. In such cases, please either open up a support ticket, or use separate threads in either our forums or in the dedicated unofficial Active Sky forum. This will help us keep track of things easier.

 

And don't forget our video contest! I'm sure that anyone that is reluctant (for whatever reason) to give the trial a shot will be convinced once more of these videos, showcasing what ASN is capable of, come up.

 

Thanks for the advice, I had it set to 12 because that is how I have it set for ASE, and didn't change it with ASN. Will try with the default setting as you suggest. I did hit one snag, easily correctable so not a big deal. On long flights once in cruise, I will switch to windows to read AVSIM, watch youtube etc. I was flying in an area with forecasted Overcast skies, which was depicted perfectly. On return to the sim, after the scenery refreshed, the clouds didn't. The sky was completely clear, and the current conditions still called for overcast skies

Just, a small correction here to Andy. It doesn't matter what the cloud density value is set by the user. We actually force revert this now back to 8 if larger, so this shouldn't be an issue

 

About the "clear clouds" after scenery refresh, can you open up a thread/support ticket (as discussed) with steps to reproduce this? May be the sim rate was increased and this was the issue behind this?

 

Many thanks to all! Enjoy ASN

 

Kostas Terzides,

ASN developer

[NGXfanatic 85]

I preceded to DFW without any issue, and flew the completely overcast sky at 6000ft, and stayed into the soup all the way down to 300ft. The conditions perfectly matched what ASN was reporting.

Cool, that was one of my test flights today.  I used ASN's search function looking for low vis/minimums overcast skies and with that area in the news these past few days because of the uncharacteristic snow storms, I was overjoyed to fly out of an american hub I had pretty much forgotten about.   When I flew there were some patches in the sky, I think it was the 7/8ths depiction in action, but nonetheless, enjoyed some nice long moments inside the soup on finals, and nervously looking out for the runway threshold lighting at 300ft as well!  

[GodAtum 69]

Any good hurricanes or thunder storms I should fly through?

 

There was some very gusty weather in Scotland last week.

[Don t moderate me this way 882]

Any good hurricanes or thunder storms I should fly through?

 

There was some very gusty weather in Scotland last week.

 

 

Historic weather and weather find function?

 

That weather wasn't restricted to SCO, BTW ...   :vava:

[Andayle 47]

I have just touched down at EGLL in fog. The way it handles the visibility is something I have not witnessed before in a weather engine and I own them all. It just made me smile all the way down to touch down. I think my next flight will be with the T7 in the biggest baddest thunderstorm I can find. Sickbags at the ready people.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Andydigital 93]

You missed out a word in your post Dean, but we know what you mean i.e. I have never witnessed before in a weather engine. Be careful up there.

[VOR_Active 4]

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but will there be a boxed version?

[metalmike 34]

I was flying into MDW last night and got a lot of turbulence coming through the cloud layers. It was actually difficult to slow down until I got a bit lower. Thought that was pretty cool.

 

One thing I didn't like, and I don't know if this is because of something that's my fault, but the overcast I was flying over most of my route wasn't very thick. There were constant holes and "thinness" to the clouds all the way throught my flight from BWI to MdW. Cloud coverage density was set to maximum.