Active Sky Next Mini Review

Unlike human relationships where unpredictability and surprises are sometimes desirable this is rarely the case when it comes to Flight Simulation software.  

With that out of the way I want to give a few of my impressions why I think that ASN is the best FSX Wx simulation software to date.

First - as the developer of FSXAssist / P3dAssist, I'll get this out of the way upfront as this is not a plug for SkyPilot products but only to show what is possible with ASN.  That said we are running FSXAssist and loading ASN with he following settings:

All this means is that we are loading ASN BEFORE FSX with an Affinity Mask of 1 (1 core) and an OS Priority of NORMAL as opposed to an FSX Affinity Mask of 254 (7 cores) with and OS Priority of REALTIME.

Now on to our observations regarding ASN:

1) The ASN UI is easy to understand but at the same time fully functional in regards to injecting FSX Wx.

2) Adjusting ASN Wx settings instantly apply to the current flight.  Seems obvious but it is the expected behavior.

3) The Wx map depiction is spot on.

4) ASN performance has no noticeable impact on FSX FPS as we recorded FPS (unlimited) scores in the 100+ range over the American SW.

5) Turbulence at FL 25k was a bit high but was reduced when moving to FL 27k.  A further turbulence reduction was achieved by adjusting the turbulence setting in the ASN UI.  Again - very predictable and understandable from a user perspective. 

6) Cloud formations, both cumulus and cirrus were very believable using REX 4 Direct textures.

7) ASN ground haze / fog layers were again realistic using the default settings.

8) Cloud transitions were minimized in ASN and did not detract from the flight experience.

9) Most importantly, under no circumstance did ASN invoke an FSX crash when using it.

The only caveat that we at SkyPilot Software noticed was when installing ASN into the default Program Files (x86) folder which caused a persistent prompt to locate the ASN data folder.  This is due to the associated permission requirement imposed by the Windows OS.  This was resolved by installing ASN to a root folder such as C:\HiFi.

Summary - ASN is the best FSX Wx engine to date and we applaud its developers.  ASN encapsulates the highly technical FSX Weather Engine functionality is an easy to use / effective UI with a minimum impact on FSX performance.

Regards

Jim Allen

SkyPilot Software