Hey guys. I've never used Activesky weather engine and now its on sale and i'm considering it seeing that my OpusFsi has broken. I'm hoping to get some feedback from the Activesky users on your experience with it and how does it compare to Opus and FsxWx, which is what i'm using right now. I liked the camera and turbulence effects in Opus.

1. Buy it.

2. If someone tells you not to, ignore him/her.

1 hour ago, costamesa said:

1. Buy it.

2. If someone tells you not to, ignore him/her.

So I assume it's really good. Better than everything else?

Definitely worth getting it's probably the most important add on i have ever bought!

 

Best advice i can give you... i wish X-plane had a Active Sky cousin, things would be so much better!

10 minutes ago, dmarques69 said:

Best advice i can give you... i wish X-plane had a Active Sky cousin, things would be so much better!

+1 for that!

To answer short... if there were one addon I would purchase, it would be ActiveSky 2016, Active Sky Cloud Arts and ENVTEX! 

ActiveSky does not have any effects that apply to the camera view directly.  EZDok Camera ("EZCA") uses the active sky API to do that quite well.

What ActiveSky does give you is the best real world real-time and historic weather available, and improves display of that weather in the sim with its own haze/fog/cloud layering.  It's awesome.

I actually just uninstalled my opusfsi which was working fine and purchased as16. I have flown a few airline flights and must say it is much nicer than opusfsi. Maybe it's a shiny new toy for me...but it seems a lot more immersive accurate and easier to use. The 2 years of historic weather was a selling point for me. But the interface is much nicer. The way the weather is depicted over distance is better. You see the systems in the distance and fly towards them and the depiction doesn't change when the weather updates. With opus it always seemed like as I was approaching a system there would be an update and the visual of it would completely change.

Also experiencing turbulence is much more pronounced. I almost never noticed it in opus. Last flight with active sky I ran into chop at fl360 so moved up to 380 and air was smooth. Never had that happen with opus. 

I use Rex for all my textures so don't know anything about cloud art...but I say you do what I did. Jump on the as16 sales they have and swap out opus. I think you will be impressed like me.

Ever since I reviewed one of the very first versions of Active Sky (Active Sky WXRE for 2002) years ago for Avsim, it's been one of the few add-ons for FS which I would say was pretty much a must-have. I've used various iterations of REX too of course, but HiFi have consistently come up with the goods with all versions of Active Sky, so it's always been worth having. As such, I have Active Sky Next on my Steam Edition of FSX and Active Sky with ASCA on P3D v4, and both sims are very much better for it.

Also,  Active Sky support is superb.  Kostas at HIFI just helped me through a problem I was having with Active Sky giving me an error message part way through a flight.  After numerous attempts by HIFI to get me through this (and they emailed me just about every day for over a week), Kostas finally came up with the solution.  Whereas I thought I successfully upgraded Prepar3dv4 to 4.1, it seems my CLIENT exe didn't activate properly.  The weather .dll in my P3d folder showed 4.0, not 4.1.  After finding this problem, a correct install of P3d v4.1 Client solved my problem.  

Now, I'm a happy camper with Active Sky for Prepar3 because of the support they provided.  Great investment in your sim.

 

Stan

Much thanks for the feedback guys. I decided to get it last night due to all the very positive reviews while its still on sale. The setup was easy and the interface looks nice. Looking forward to start using it over the weekend.

How do I get in contact with hifi for my commission

I have used several RW addons, and AS is, in my opinion, the best. As Stan has already said, the support is second to none.