Yes, it's not bad considering, although I remember being slightly disappointed with FSX weather when it came out, I think there's 4 different towering CBs in the stock FSX.

You know, I have to retract some of what I said earlier about your screenshot - that actually isn't too bad, now that I've blown it up. I couldn't see all the updraft details before. I'll be honest, that looks better than my storms these days... that's stock, huh? Now I'm back to wondering about settings in ASN and Rex (probably Rex, since ASN doesn't change textures). Thanks for posting that...

Hi all,

 

Thunderstorm depiction is something we've worked on quite a bit over the years.  There have been improvements in many areas of Active Sky but we are limited/challenged by 2 main fundamental design/depiction issues within FSX/P3D:

 

1) The maximum horizontal size of a cloud layer/object is a weather cell: approximately 10 miles squared (depending on latitude).  Compare this to a typical real thunderstorm, approximately 15-20 miles squared.

2) Depicting clouds and their associated sprites is very performance intensive - The larger/thicker a cloud is, the larger the performance penalty.

 

A very large "super-cell" thunderstorm, similar to as shown in the screenshot, may cover many miles (50 square, for example) which would be equivalent to 25 weather cells in FSX.  Having a 25-cell-sized weather object of 40Kft thickness within the existing wx depiction system of FSX would absolutely kill performance down to single digits, even if it were possible to display objects of this size.

 

With that said, we are indeed working on some groundbreaking stuff here to vastly enhance thunderstorm (and have been for a while now).  It's very challenging but we think it's worth it if we can improve things.  More on that later.

One of the most important things ASN has accomplished are CB complexes that keep their position- and CBs in predictable areas over oceans. You can avoid and fly around these storms, and they won't pop out of place during a weather update- as compared to the behavior of other weather engines. 

Give 'em an inch, eh? Good lord people, if you're going to install one addon in your sim, it should be ASN. The difference it makes over default is incredible. Damian has also just dropped a hint that they are still working on ASN, several years after release and they have yet to ask for a maintenance fee of some kind.

Dave, if that was aimed at me, I just want to point out that I think I've taken pains in almost every one of my posts to express my admiration for ASN. I'm not sure where you got the impression I was bashing it. There's nothing wrong with pointing out the simple fact that we don't really have accurate looking storms in the sim. It's apparently an FSX limitation (thanks Damian for the explanation), so clearly not ASN's "fault" - which I never thought it was, I was just wondering if anyone else had solved the issue and this seemed like a decent place to ask.

 

I think my favorite thing I've seen ASN do is slowly lower the visibility. It was utterly true to life - one of those evenings buzzing along under the overcast in the fjords in southeast Alaska, and all of a sudden you realize you're squinting to make out something you should be able to see... because hey, look, it's getting foggy and we'd better start thinking about a pop-up clearance to shoot the approach into Ketchikan... ASN nailed that.

Just in case others want to see the storm picture:

I have asked the same question about this.

And have got no answer.

 

I'm assuming if it asn were to generate something like this performance would drop??

 

Cheers

Mike

I have asked the same question about this.

And have got no answer.

 

I'm assuming if it asn were to generate something like this performance would drop??

 

Cheers

Mike

 

Yes ------> http://www.avsim.com/topic/488235-realistic-looking-thunderstorm-in-fsx/?p=3418884

Hi,

 

on the other hand... did you remember lightning gleam on the sky with AS2012 textures installed? Is it possible to have the same visual effect with REX4?

Example: 6:50 min here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrhT3Ljd10M

 

Lucas

I have ASN+REX Soft clouds and like it a lot. However I agree, real nice thunderstorm clouds building up high in the air, looking really sharp is what I also miss.

+ clouds should throw shadows on itsself to have more structure...


©Mauritius/Alamy

 Multi-Layer Thuderstorm Clouds (True)

 

Setting in AS and you wont have Swiss-Cheese TS clouds anymore!!!