FSX-MS AS Next available now

[kterz 49]

Where do you access the AIRMETs and SIGMETs in the text briefing, so they can be copied and pasted into the PFPX OFPs?

We in purpose disabled this functionality. With the addition of international sigmets, you would get 20 or more (probably unrelated to your route) sigmets/airmets. What you can do now is either look at the map, hear the full voice or even better tune (if possible periodically during your flight) to 122.05 This will give you even more info and it will all be related to your current route. Also non- sigmet related hazards (like t-storms, or windshears) affecting you will be reported there too.

 

So, a combination of the map, voice briefing and xgauge are useful if you want to exercise avoidance procedures. OTOH, if many of you find the textual representation useful, it can be added back (in a subsequent release). I just feel it should be filtered to contain only the ones relevant to your route.

 

Thanks,

 

Kostas Terzides

ASN developer

[HighTowers 1,436]

Dave you still get lots of really bad wind shifts in OPUS and unlike when I first started using OPUS you see a weather update and that one thing was why I started to use OPUS in the first place. OPUS does a great job but I hate sudden wind shifts and hate even more weather updates when ever thing changers. ASN handles these to perfection and that is with 15min updates, but you never see then.

 

That make OPUS redundant from today. I will use it for P3D until ASN works with it. Is it worth £50 for a weather engine?, yes when it's the best and unlike almost every other addon you will use it with ever fight you make.

This is bang on. OPUS used to be fantastic and was clearly king at one point. But recently, my wind and pressure shifts have been getting worse and my settings havnt changed!

It really is nice to see the smooth transition of weather and not clouds popping in and out all of a sudden. That is a huge acomplishment. Its not raining when there is blue sky above you!  

 

Congrats to Damian and the Hifi team.

[MarkW 1,494]

Here is the thing..  

 

I was sold on REX Essentials being the best and king. Bought it.. Nice textures, nice weather!

I was then sold that AS2012 being the best and new king.. Bought it.. Nice textures, nice weather!

Then Opus.. $45. (didn't buy) Just weather (and cameras I would never use)

Then FSGW.. $55. (didn't buy) Just weather

Now ASN.. $30.(didn't buy) Just weather..

Next REX Direct (won't buy) $????

 

I can't afford to be plunking down $30/$55 for weather depiction every-time the hot new thing is out.  I'm not knocking the work put into them all, I'm knocking my wallet and it's saying no way Jose. I simply can't afford to keep up with the flight sim weather race.. 

 

 

I think these guys have been making weather addons for 12 years or so.  I don't think anyone could expect them to still be living off of the first iteration of Activesky.  I would agree that HiFi tends to have a new and improved product out every year or two, however, we are not all forced to upgrade each time.  I think it is up to us a consumers to do the research to figure out if the upgrade is just a small upgrade or a major change..,..ASN looks to be the major change and it therefore woth the upgrade

[MadDog 353]

 

 

I just tried it and it is fantastic, but I think the AS users are seeing a bigger fundamental 'step up' here.  As an Opus user, ASN is very close to it.

 

Dave... I've got to disagree with you a bit on this one.  For this "former" Opus user, ASN seems to be a huge leap forward:

 

Major Wind Shifts:

Opus = Yes

ASN = No

 

Cloud redraws (popping) with weather updates:

Opus = Yes

ASN = No

 

ATIS reflects actual weather at destination airport:

Opus = No

ASN = Yes

 

AI aircraft use appropriate runways for wind at destination:

Opus = No

ASN = Yes

 

These improvements alone are worth $50 to me.  Not to mention the voice weather briefings, precipitation only in/under clouds, improved wind gusts/updrafts/downdrafts, and vertical variability of cloud tops I get with this new program.

 

Opus has always had impressive visuals... but it has a host of little flaws that have annoyed me for a long time.  Time will tell, but ASN seems to have addressed many of the FSX bugs that had previously been declared 'unfixable".  I'll continue to use Opus for the camera functions; but I have a new weather engine now.

[JRBarrett 3,112]

Dave you still get lots of really bad wind shifts in OPUS and unlike when I first started using OPUS you see a weather update and that one thing was why I started to use OPUS in the first place. OPUS does a great job but I hate sudden wind shifts and hate even more weather updates when ever thing changers. ASN handles these to perfection and that is with 15min updates, but you never see then.

 

That make OPUS redundant from today. I will use it for P3D until ASN works with it. Is it worth £50 for a weather engine?, yes when it's the best and unlike almost every other addon you will use it with ever fight you make.

 

I totally agree. I was an early adopter of Opus, and continue to support the company. Stephen pioneered the use of "theme-based" weather, and has continued to upgrade and enhance the program on a regular basis. BUT, Opus, (and all other weather engines with the possible exception of FSGRW) have issues, (sometimes very serious) with wind and temperature shifts, due to the fact that FSX's internal weather processing routines are quite buggy when dealing with winds and temperatures injected from an external source - especially in "theme" mode. Those bugs are "baked in" to FSX, and since the program development ceased many years ago, will always be present.

 

Most of those bugs can be avoided by using global weather - what was known as DWC in previous versions of Active Sky - but there are serious drawbacks to global weather in terms of realism, since in global mode, the weather is the same everywhere at all times. You can't have weather fronts that you can approach from a distance and fly through, can't have a scenario where there may be a cloud bank to the north of your current position, with clear skies to the south etc...

 

The only way to inject realistic weather scenarios that closely mirror existing weather conditions in the RW is to use themes - but theme mode comes with the serious wind and temperature shift bugs.

 

Stephen at Opus has addressed this issue extensively in his support forum. Read the sticky topic "Wind Shifts" at the Opus forum for more background. To get around the most serious of these FSX bugs, he has implemented many extremely clever workarounds, various forms of stabilization and "sim friendly" wind and temperature processing routines, which have corrected many of the most serious shift problems - but they can still crop up. Stephen has probably gone as far as any developer can in trying to "tame" and stabilize the very buggy native FSX weather processing system.

 

Stephen has stated many times that the only way to completely eliminate the bugs would be to either (A) obtain the FSX source code and re-write the weather system from scratch (which will obviously never happen), OR (B) bypass the existing FSX engine completely by hooking into its processes at a deep system level, and run a completely new, improved weather processing engine external to the legacy FSX code.

 

(In the same way that Majestic has bypassed the legacy FSX FDE engine by hooking it and running an entirely new FDE externally in their wonderful Q400.)

 

To the best of my understanding, this is precisely what has been accomplished with ASN... and it IS a game changer, in a big way. From my own testing of ASN over the last 12 hours, it appears that HiFi has definitely achived the Holy Grail of FSX weather injection - i.e. complete and absolute control of vertical and horizontal air motion, temperture and precipitation at any given moment, everywhere and anywhere in the simulated flight environment with no glitches, twitches or sudden unpredictable wind and temperature shifts. (other than the actual kinds of wind shifts that one might encounter in real world flight through areas of heavy turbulence).

 

ASN's ability to precisely control in-game precipitation - controlling where it exists, where it does not exist, and specific type and intensity of precip at any given location - is especially interesting. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time this has ever been achieved by anyone.

 

For this, Damien and his development staff deserve praise and thanks. It's an outstanding feat of software engineering. That's not to say that ASN is "perfect". Like any new software release, I'm sure there are bugs, though frankly, I have not seen them yet!

 

And this certainly does not spell the end of Opus by any means. Opus, in its present state, is still a fine program, and their camera and DHM facilites are second-to-none IMHO. Stephen and Cheryl are already working on the next "2.0" generation of the software, and I have no doubt that they too will move towards bypassing the existing FSX weather engine as has been done by ASN, because I think they have done all that CAN be done with stabilizing and "massaging" the buggy legacy FSX weather injection system.

 

In this regard, it shows clearly the value of free and open competion in the marketplace. It drives innovation, and we all benefit from that.

 

And, moving forward towards P3DV2, this kind of new approach should be even easier for developers to implement, as LM has made it clear that they intend to clearly document exactly where and how to hook external add-ons into the sim's internal processes. Doing this in FSX, without such documentation, probably involved a tremendous amount of work, which makes ASN's achivement all the more remarkable.

[WebMaximus 372]

Wow...after reading through all of this thread I'm so happy to hear you guys like ASN as much as I do after beta testing it for quite some time now.

 

I also own all wx addons and like some of you I too thought to myself "Should I really spend even more $ on yet another wx engine" but after seeing what ASN does for the weather in FSX I would happily spend these $.

 

To me weather is one of the most important things when it comes to creating the "As real as it gets" feeling and ASN does deliver that in a way I haven't seen in any other wx addon before.

 

So...for anyone on the fence at least give the free trial a go. You owe it to yourself if you're serious about your flight simming and if you're not impressed you haven't lost a single $.

[netshadoe 144]

Excellent post JR. Couldn't have said it better!! ASN was a lot of work for these guys along with cracking FSX...over 3 years, keeping it quiet until it worked. Could you imagine??

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[JRBarrett 3,112]

 

So...for anyone on the fence at least give the free trial a go. You owe it to yourself if you're serious about your flight simming and if you're not impressed you haven't lost a single $.

THIS

 

+1

 

 

Sent from my brain, using my fingers, via TapaTalk

[RWFeldman 159]

Excellent program!!!!1 But where are the camera views??? :biggrin:

[vgbaron 3,704]

When people first saw my ASN Beta tester in my sig, I'd get a lot of questions. The NDA permitted me to only post a BIG FREAKING GRIN!

 

NOW, you all know what I was grinning about. I've spent a lot of real time hours in cockpit and the first time I flew new a TStorm in ASN, I literally got goose bumps. It was intense and something I did not like IRL.

 

To those looking at screenies and comparing still shots -  get off the fence - it's a small (115mb) download - a quick install - NO setup.

The strength of ASN isn't shown or felt in screenies - it's the immersion - ALL of the little things we've learned to "live with" in weather engines are gone.

 

but I'm a beta tester, I'm supposed to say stuff like that, right? SO find out for yourself - try the FREE 7 day trial for yourself and decide if it's worth the $$ to you - we think you will.

 

Vic

[dva238 9]

We in purpose disabled this functionality. With the addition of international sigmets, you would get 20 or more (probably unrelated to your route) sigmets/airmets. What you can do now is either look at the map, hear the full voice or even better tune (if possible periodically during your flight) to 122.05 This will give you even more info and it will all be related to your current route. Also non- sigmet related hazards (like t-storms, or windshears) affecting you will be reported there too.

 

So, a combination of the map, voice briefing and xgauge are useful if you want to exercise avoidance procedures. OTOH, if many of you find the textual representation useful, it can be added back (in a subsequent release). I just feel it should be filtered to contain only the ones relevant to your route.

 

Thanks,

 

Kostas Terzides

ASN developer

 

With PFPX exporting the OFPs to Notepad, it was very easy to copy and paste the SIGMETS to the OFP and print them.  I loved ActiveSky for this very purpose.  However it included the SIGMETS that were not actually needed.  If you guys can add the option of the SIGMETs in text format, I'd love it.  If not, that's okay. 

 

I've watched the weather here in real life and on the sim running ASN.   It seems to be very accurate.  In the other thread, I mentioned it did show no  overcast.   It wasn't long before the overcast returned.  

[virtualstuff 769]

Wow...after reading through all of this thread I'm so happy to hear you guys like ASN as much as I do after beta testing it for quite some time now.

 

I also own all wx addons and like some of you I too thought to myself "Should I really spend even more $ on yet another wx engine" but after seeing what ASN does for the weather in FSX I would happily spend these $.

 

To me weather is one of the most important things when it comes to creating the "As real as it gets" feeling and ASN does deliver that in a way I haven't seen in any other wx addon before.

 

So...for anyone on the fence at least give the free trial a go. You owe it to yourself if you're serious about your flight simming and if you're not impressed you haven't lost a single $.

 

Well AS was never a non branier regarding purchase.

[HighTowers 1,436]

I have to laugh a little here. Here we are sim pilots excited about seeing and experiencing new weather immersions, and deliberately go out searching for really bad weather, whereas RW pilots try and avoid it all together. How ironic is that?

[vgbaron 3,704]

I have to laugh a little here. Here we are sim pilots excited about seeing and experiencing new weather immersions, and deliberately go out searching for really bad weather, whereas RW pilots try and avoid it all together. How ironic is that?

ROFL. THat's exactly the first thing I did on my testing. Looked for Tstorms - promptly ripped the wings off my A/C. Next try was one of the typhoons with 90mph winds - came out from behind a building and flipped over!

 

BUT - I got up, dusted off my chair and walked away - couldn't have said that IRL.

 

Vic

[_Pv_ 0]

"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."

 

Note: The current conditions reports in ASN reports the closest reliable METAR station.  You may be far enough away from that station that ASN is modulating the weather toward a new condition.  Unless your plane is holding location at a reporting station, the Current Conditions report may not always be exactly what you see.  The cloud coverage setting to 8/8 is very important.  So important that ASN sets this for you unless you are loading from a saved options file.  You should set 8 in all your options files.

-Pv-