How on earth do you real pilots fly in the mountains. At times it's like a rollercoaster! :-eek :D

Hi, "When you talk about Chris' AE, is this the same product as FS SKY WORLD 2004?"There is 20x more contents and most are new compare to fssw20004, you can not really compare both. fssw20004 is based on few texture.More contents and differents contents with update will be available for Active Environment and update for ASV as well.ThanksChris WillisHiFi Simulation Software Team Developerhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_dev_team.jpgFreeware Addons for FSW GROUP

Victor,In reality it is a roller coaster as well at times. You learn to stay away from the leeside of a mountain and when crossing a ridge to do it at sufficient altitude. I used to be an fanatic hang glider pilot, doing most of my flying in the mountains. In a hang glider, sail plane or paraglider you need vertical air currents to go up. It sure is rough, but so much fun. Landing in turbulent conditions is the tricky part.Henri

>How on earth do you real pilots fly in the mountains. At>times it's like a rollercoaster! :-eek :D We fly around them not "in" them.We are not allowed to fly "in" them because of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.allen

>I currently own AS4.5 and FS1 Flight Environment. Does>anyone else have this who has upgraded to AS5? Is there a>benefit in doing so. It is my understanding that AS5 has it's>own clowds so are does which would you use? I upgraded from exactly that scenario, and there are differences that make ASV worth the upgrade. The cloud placement and generation seems better to me, but some of that could indeed be placebo effect. Unfortunately since weather is so dynamic I find it difficult to do direct comparisons to AS4.5. As of yet I have only been using the FE cloud textures to try and keep AE out of the equation for comparison.Definite improvements:- Thermals. You can't help but notice this in your flights, adds another hint of realism to FS9 flight.- Weather Configurator. Before ASV if I wanted to fly in a blizzard or thunderstorm, I would need an AS archive file for a day that had those events or I would need to use FS9 weather selection. Now you can easily select a default theme, or modify the METAR yourself to have ASV generate stunning weather to meet your objective.- AI Auto Refresh. It used to be in my pre-flight procedure to advance the FS9 clock to get the AI and ATC runway assignments to match the wind, but now ASV does this for me.- Decoded METAR display. I run ASV via WideFS on my laptop, and it's nice to have the "cheat sheet" of what the METAR is telling me if I read it correctly.Perceived improvements:- Generation of the cloud layers "feels" better in ASV. The weather in the midwest has been extremely dynamic this weekend, so that might be part of the effect. I don't remember seeing layering with this kind of depth in AS4.5.- Cloud tops seem more realistic. The storm cell I flew around yesterday was HUGE, and I actually felt that I had to deviate course to avoid it rather than hopping over the weather like usual.Things that should be improved that I haven't tested yet:- Multi-hour weather archive download. This should be interesting for anyone who likes to replicate real-world flights after the fact to try and "fly the numbers". - ICS / AE. I have been using the FE textures to try and gauge the differences in the ASV engine itself. I plan on starting to add ICS / AE to the mix in the very near future.For those of us with FE the options are only going to get better. You have probably read the several posts from both the ASV and FE developers stating their commitment to interface the two programs. Once that is complete you should be able to easily pick & choose elements that you like from both FE & AE; you'll have the best of both worlds! I'm guessing that FE rather than exporting directly to FS9 will export into AE as additional cloud sets. That way it should be straight-forward to integrate into the cloud selection algorithm.Overall ASV appears to be very solid. It definitely feels like a package that went through months of development. I think the price is very reasonable for everything you get, especially when you factor in the support from Damian, Jim and Chris.Eric

Hi Allen,Enjoying the world year of F=X?Henri

>The decisive question: How is is on the frames?You can read my complete report on this subject in another thread. I compared ASV/AE clouds and FE clouds and saw no practical difference in FPS. The only clouds that gave me slightly better performance were FE's DXT3 clouds. Chris told me DXT3 clouds were coming and would be available as a free upgrade.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpg

Let me shed some light on aspects of ASV that people have not mentioned, or perhaps have not yet discovered.Like all things new, the visuals are the first thing people notice and talk about. I can't believe that some AS2004.5 users are saying they won't upgrade because they can achieve the same thing with AS2004.5 and Chris' free textures. Not only are they unaware of the multiple new textures Chris has developed that they don't have, but they are completely unaware of what ASV does "under the hood" that they can't see.The biggest improvement over AS2004.5 is Direct Wind Control (DWC) within the simulator. This concept is at the heart of the program's design and gives ASV the unique character no other weather program has, even previous versions of ActiveSky. A component of DWC is the Vertical Air Simulation (VAS) that everyone is starting to rave about. The mountain waves, the thermals, and so on. Yet beyond that is a much bigger improvement! ASV controls all aspects of the wind around the user's aircraft. So not only does one get updrafts and downdrafts, one also sees a true horizontal simulation of the winds at all altitudes. The wind vectors match those reported. No sudden wind shifts, no rotating wind vectors as one is cruising at high altitude, and you don't have to run a flight plan through ASV to achieve correct wind vectors. You get correct winds simply by running ASV!I'm not talking about the AS2004.5 ability to limit the wind vectors, I'm talking about a true and consistent representation of how winds are presented while flying.The second improvement that no one has reported is the Offline Sequence Playback. Many of us have wanted to fly at a time other than the present and still achieve realistic weather conditions. For example, a hurricane is making landfall and you're at work, unable to run the sim in real-time to experience the conditions. You head home hours later, the real-time conditions have subsided, yet you still download the archive data (nearest 3hr saved file) and proceeded to run the sim, relying on the TAF feature to produce changes over time.With Offline Sequence Playback, not only can you download up to 24 hours of contiguous hourly reports (not 3hr as before), but ASV will automatically set your sim clock to the starting hour of the playback sequence. You are ready to go right after the download. Furthermore, ASV will continue to load the proper METAR for the historical hour as time progresses within the sim. Real weather as it happened in hourly sequence (or if the station failed to report, the TAF option will take over if set).How many times have you flown in another part of the world only to have your daytime flight simulate night time weather conditions? Very unrealistic isn't it? Now you can fly in the same daytime conditions that occurred 12 hours before on the other side of the globe, with hourly updates (up to 24 hours).Just these two improvements alone, aside from the beautiful sky scenes, is enough reason to show ASV is much different than AS2004.5.Finally, people keep asking about the frame rates. Folks, like any add-on, the frames are dependent on how you setup the program and how you use it in combination with other add-ons. ASV is designed to give the user full control over what they see and how the program functions. Therefore, with the multitude of option settings and the Active Environment settings, the user can tune the program to balance the weather against the frame rates. Just like the options in FS, it's a give and take depending on your computer, but you do have full control over what you see and how many frames you get. People running current hardware should be able to run ASV at max settings and have good frame rates.No, ASV does not tune the weather dynamically to match a fixed frame rate. Although that seems like a cool idea, personally I would not like the weather to change from low overcast to unlimited clear conditions simply because I'm making an approach to a frame-intensive airport. I much prefer the ability to manually tune the program to my setup and know what to expect when running ASV.I've only touched on a couple of the big improvements. ASV is loaded with many smaller improvements. When you put the entire collection together, there is no comparison to AS2004.5, other than heritage. If you are holding out because you think AS2004.5 looks the same, and runs the same, and you're saving yourself $28, you are seriously missing out on a fantastic program.Bruce

Hi Bruce,Thanks for the helpful description of ASV. I have upgraded but not had time to explore much of it yet (maybe later today :) ).I don't have Flight Environment (FE). The fact that the install of ASV backed up and replaced texture files in FS9 makes me believe that new cloud textures are implemented. Does that negate the improvements of FE- or does having FE negate the improvements in ADV cloud textures- are these two programs to some extent mutually exclusive?Thanks, Bruce.

Bruce,"The wind vectors match those reported. No sudden wind shifts, no rotating wind vectors as one is cruising at high altitude, and you don't have to run a flight plan through ASV to achieve correct wind vectors"How do you know this? Are you part of the programming team? Just curious as to background in this. :-)

I see that after I installed AS5, AS 4.5 is still installed and can be started with the Desktop Icon. Should I uninstall 4.5, now that I have 5?

When you first install ASV, the backup is conducted to save your current textures. This was implemented to give users, who spend hours tweaking their textures, the ability to return to their personal settings if they don't like what ASV A/E provides.In the ASV options screen, under the active environment section (right side of panel), you'll note that one of the options is All Manual. If you select this, and do not make any selections in the Active Enviroment screen, you will retain all of your original textures. ASV only replaces the textures if you submit an A/E selection, or if you choose one of the other Startup AE Selection Modes in the options screen.FE can be used with ASV, and some people are reporting their preference for this setup.Bruce

Bob,ASV and AS2004.5 are independent and you can use either of them. I have both set on my machine and it's interesting to look at the weather in one, then close and open the other to see the differences. Quite an improvement with ASV!If you want to remove AS2004.5, there is a message thread in the ActiveSky forum that addresses suggests the proper way to uninstall AS2004.5 without affecting ASV.Bruce

Thanks Bruce, I appreciate the tip.Bruce.

>>How on earth do you real pilots fly in the mountains. At>>times it's like a rollercoaster! :-eek :D >>>>We fly around them not "in" them.>>We are not allowed to fly "in" them because of the Pauli>Exclusion Principle.>>>allen>:D :D :( :(