fsx-ms Best Weather Engine?

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

ASN is the best I've tried.

[jimimac 19]

Opus, I like the camera views

 

Jim

[wijnroks 4]

If you are interested in a WEATHER engine which depicts the real weather situation at a certain moment and place, it is OpusFSI. ASN gives you nice cloudscapes and other features which are nothing more than belonging to a kind of weather game. The bigger problem: it puts a dreadfull dll in your flightsim directory which eats a lot of VAS but offers a nice (fake)radar echo on the ND in your PMDG products. In the meantime you will hardly be able to complete a long PMDG flight because of the VAS consumption. Then, if you have ASN installed, but would like to try out another payware weather programm, you will be unable to try the virtues of the competitors because this dll blocks their fidility. It would be fair if the ASN guys would have named this dll : BoycottCompetitors.dll . I have bought an tried all the HiFi simulation products but my conclusion, as a meteorology freak, was always: it's a pity, Damian never gets it right.......sorry!

[Scarp 20]

FSGRW for my part, very happy with it. Saying that as a previous user of most of the other programs.

[wijnroks 4]

If you are interested in a WEATHER engine which depicts the real weather situation at a certain moment and place, it is OpusFSI. ASN gives you nice cloudscapes and other features which are nothing more than belonging to a kind of weather game. The bigger problem: it puts a dreadfull dll in your flightsim directory which eats a lot of VAS but offers a nice (fake)radar echo on the ND in your PMDG products. In the meantime you will hardly be able to complete a long PMDG flight because of the VAS consumption. Then, if you have ASN installed, but would like to try out another payware weather programm, you will be unable to try the virtues of the competitors because this dll blocks their fidility. It would be fair if the ASN guys would have named this dll : BoycottCompetitors.dll . I have bought an tried all the HiFi simulation products but my conclusion, as a meteorology freak, was always: it's a pity, Damian never gets it right.......sorry!

[Jean-Jacques 120]

Rather than critisizing ASN at great length, why not tell us why you think OPUS is superior which would no doubt be more helpful to the member who started this thread. JJ

[CFIJose 5,485]

This topic comes up every week. It should be pinned.

 

Try the free. Try the payware. Pick the one you like the most.

 

I chose ASN. It's simply the best. Better than the rest.

 

punto final

[neucoas 82]

This topic comes up every week. It should be pinned.

 

Try the free. Try the payware. Pick the one you like the most.

 

I chose ASN. It's simply the best. Better than the rest.

 

punto final

 

This.

Download and try the free ASN trial

Then FSXWX.

 

Elegí el que prefieras.

[Rhinozherous 93]

Active Sky Next - Best functions, user interface, accuracy, representation in FSX and I think there are just no bugs, or at least very very very little bugs... I never had a problem with it. (I think a bug-less software like ASN is seldom these days)

[Guest tymk]

The most important thing is that both ASN and Opus have demo/trial versions, so you really should try them out and see how you like them.

 

That said... If you're looking for a simple, elegant "one click" solution that only does weather and makes it look good, I'd say ASN might be a good bet. The UI is very nice, the product is highly configurable, and has historic weather going back at least two years. I've used their 7-day trial option extensively on two occasions (they gave you the ability to try again with SP3 even if you had used your trial period with a previous version), and I really liked what I saw. Did I buy it? Nope... Would I consider it if I didn't have a great weather engine already? Possibly... What put me off? As one of the posters said, the weather looked great, but often wasn't quite right.

 

First of all, Hi-Fi processes METAR data in-house and then makes it available to ASN in a condensed download. While I applaud them for the effort (and expense) needed to run a network of servers, the lag between real-world data and the data you get in ASN is often too long to give you "real weather". It may not matter to many users that much, but it does to me. As I often use real-world tools for planning (Skyvector, etc,), I prefer the ability to go by current METARs as they are provided, and OpusFSI allows me to do exactly that. I have bookmarked a set of favorite webcams at various airports in the US and UK, and I tested both Wx engines' ability to give me something close to what was depicted. In most cases, OpusFSI was much closer.

 

Although it may be P3D-specific, visibility was way off in ASN, making 9SM appear to be on the edge of the VFR limit, and with 6SM reported (and indicated in the real-time debug window), I had trouble making out runway lights at half that distance. On many occasions, I wasn't happy with cloud coverage, either, whether or not I used the option to force 7/8 for BKN.

 

What ASN does perfectly, however, is making  weather updates smooth. In that respect, it wins hands down over Opus. I also loved the option to smoothly adjust upper visibility to avoid the hard transition on top of the volumetric cloud layer in P3D (although this may not be relevant to the OP).

 

Regarding the offending DLL, it can be disabled from the menu, which is useful for making quick comparisons.

 

One thing to note about Opus is that, in addition to weather, you get an excellent, highly customizable camera add-on that provides a gazillion of options, including realistic camera movements that actually correspond to the weather being injected rather than adding random wobble.

 

At any rate, I really believe you should try both... :wink:

 

HTH,

Tym

[Scarp 20]

FSGRW has a demo too, I think. For me it is the best because it no-B simple interface without fancy graphics and billions of buttons for everything (that probably has a performance impact). And it also creates weather on par with the rest, no doubt. I have it configured so that it loads in the background when I start the sim and it does everything automatically and I dont have to do a thing. Getting weather info from other airports is as simple as typing in the ICAO code.

 

And to top it iff, once Xplane 10.40 is released, it will also work in x-plane, in addition to P3D, FSX and if my memory serves me, also FS9/fs2004.

 

But it is purely a weather generator, so no new cloud textures or anything, in my case, I use REX for texture replacements and FSGRW for the weather part.

[cmpbellsjc 2,963]

First of all, Hi-Fi processes METAR data in-house and then makes it available to ASN in a condensed download. While I applaud them for the effort (and expense) needed to run a network of servers, the lag between real-world data and the data you get in ASN is often too long to give you "real weather". It may not matter to many users that much, but it does to me. As I often use real-world tools for planning (Skyvector, etc,), I prefer the ability to go by current METARs as they are provided, and OpusFSI allows me to do exactly that. I have bookmarked a set of favorite webcams at various airports in the US and UK, and I tested both Wx engines' ability to give me something close to what was depicted. In most cases, OpusFSI was much closer.

 

Maybe something is amiss with either your settings or connection? Anytime I download the real world weather from ASN and check it against the current METARS they always have matched, unless of course one of the ASN servers is down. Otherwise I have never come across a situation like you're describing where there is a delay. Also, unless a weather station is under very rapidly changing conditions, a lot of airports weather stations only update the METAR every hour. As such, weather you see outside might not be exact what the current METAR is reporting, especially with cloud layers since they can change quickly.

 

I think that is one of the biggest pitfalls that simmers run into with any weather engine is trying to compare what they are depicting versus what they see it the window. None of them will ever be perfect due to he rate at which real weather changes and when the last METAR was posted. It might look close if a METAR just posted, you downloaded that weather into the sim and you look out the window to compare, however 20 minutes later it can look totally different outside but the weather station is still reporting the same conditons from 20 minutes prior.

This topic comes up every week. It should be pinned.

 

Try the free. Try the payware. Pick the one you like the most.

 

I chose ASN. It's simply the best. Better than the rest.

 

punto final

I agree, the is almost like the BEST AI topics that appear almost weekly.

 

I agree however, that ASN is the tops right now after trying other competitive products.

Rather than critisizing ASN at great length, why not tell us why you think OPUS is superior which would no doubt be more helpful to the member who started this thread. JJ

From the sounds of his post, he almost sounds like he either has a monetary interest in OPUS or is a paid basher, not to mention passing lot of misinformation about ASN.

[spilok 1,139]

OPUS seems like a good weather engine, but seems cumbersome to set up for some reason.  Is there one weather engine that is less processor intensive than another resulting in better or worse frame rates?

 

Stan

[JSkorna 137]

OPUS seems like a good weather engine, but seems cumbersome to set up for some reason.  Is there one weather engine that is less processor intensive than another resulting in better or worse frame rates?

 

Stan

ASN uses very few CPU cycles.

 

Spot on, cm..., spot on. I almost posted the same sort of thing when I read that this afternoon. I wasn't going to be as kind as you were though!!

[red259 31]

I use ASN with rex textutes/soft clouds and I am happy with it.