Hotfix is out.

No more .net

21 minutes ago, Silicus said:

- Does SF 'inject' clouds that are as real as possible to what I would see out of the window of my real airplane according to the Metar???

- It seems to me that I have to pick the look and feel of the clouds ahead of my flight that are 20/50/1000s of miles away??? How would I do that? How do I know?

- so I pick clouds that I think look pretty?

- SF injects cloud models which should indeed be as real as possible, based on the METAR. To dress those models up it uses the currently installed cloud set. SF does not inject cloud textures (or skies) like ASCA does.

- yes, well, you indeed have to manually pick a set but according to Reed a set contains enough info to give you all possible clouds. Why SF comes with 22 sets then is a mystery to me. I think they’d better include one good all round set. I guess some people won’t buy texture addons without tons of texture sets. 

- yes, just select what you like. There is no way of knowing what would be the most realistic set for a specific situation. (I personally find it impossible to select a set based on those pictures... most sets look the same to me.) Another option would be to use the random option and just hope the 3D models will do the job.

 

I find that the clouds are too grey all around. Is there a setting inside SF to increase their brightness?

1 minute ago, Denco said:

I find that the clouds are too grey all around. Is there a setting inside SF to increase their brightness?

No. Do you use PTA or ENVSHADE? Those addon may have a big influence on the clouds.

2 minutes ago, Denco said:

I find that the clouds are too grey all around. Is there a setting inside SF to increase their brightness?

Use PTA as it will do that and so much more.

Just now, J van E said:

No. Do you use PTA or ENVSHADE? Those addon may have a big influence on the clouds.

I don't use any of those two programs. I only use SF + AS with ASCA Completely disabled.

 

7 minutes ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

Use PTA as it will do that and so much more.

I don't wish to buy any more software for P3D. My main sim is X-Plane and I occasionally fly in P3D. It would have been nice if the developers would give us an option to increase the cloud brightness. 

39 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

Hotfix is out.

No more .net

I get a crash when trying to update. Switching to manual update does the same from the program itself. Is there a link to the update itself? I don't see it on the site.

 

Never mind. I found it. From FSElite site.

I have two problems with SF so far.

1. Every now and then I get rectangular decks of (overcast) clouds where the holes are also rectangular. 

2. Quite often I see layers of semi transparant clouds. So I see some sort of cumulus through which I can see another sort of cumulus through which... etcetera. It's not like fog or anything: the shapes are way too sharp for that.

Anyone else having this too? 

11 hours ago, speedyTC said:

All that I can say is that by bypassing the bundled WX engine and using a well-known other one, I have never been so immersed in the sim. Keeping on eye on the WXR in the FSL A320 and seeing the weather building outside and then gradually getting more threatening as the clouds change from white to light grey and then a dark, angry grey...wow. Not to mention the CBs that grow and tower above the aircraft. It makes one feel the real power that is hidden in those formations, something that I never really experienced before. And this is with the old timer, FSX.

I'm curious to see what the REX team can do with Weather Force and I wonder if that will be an eye opener as well.

For now, thanks REX. I'm having a ball.

I think this says it all for me.  I don't have to know how it works, just that it works.

Now, with SF3D, I fly in awe of the clouds and formations. I think it is amazing software and the best thing that has happened to P3Dv4 since the Active Sky 2016 weather engine.

This is overall a great and informative thread.  I decide to buy SF based on the information here.

Thanks all!

7 hours ago, signmanbob said:

I fly in awe of the clouds and formations. I think it is amazing software and the best thing that has happened to P3Dv4 since the Active Sky 2016 weather engine.

After days of sitting on the fence and reading forum topics on SF, I too relented yesterday and bought the product.

From my first flight (ASP4 plus SF), I was also in awe. It was also the first time I felt truly threatened by the weather (helicopter GA flight). Was flying VFR so had no business getting into the clouds (certainly not in the RW), but hey, I wanted to see what SF clouds look like from "inside". Thankfully I had set up for instrument flying, because what I experienced was a total white-out. Kept thinking "if you cant fly instruments this would really have a very bad ending". Broke tops to most beautiful solid overcast I have ever seen in sim, with no repeating patterns, just absolutely awe inspiring. Turning back to base where the weather had deteriorated drastically, it was a long time down through zero visibility, with ghost-like lights of other traffic appearing occasionally, and TCAS warnings of "Traffic, Traffic" (yep being in that soup in the KSFO area without IFR was not a bright idea at all!).

Near cloud base with the sun ahead, the mist surrounding me turns to fiery red smoke, like flying through a seething fire storm. Spectacular. Broke cloud base 2000ft AGL, to see that dark threatening base above (shivers, had no business being up there!). Landed back at Coast Guard base KSFO, and despite having my wings stripped off by the CO, all I could think of was "Wow, what a flight!".

Happy customer here for sure, and I think the REX guys have done a fantastic job. I certainly do not feel that they misrepresented or over-hyped the product in any way at all. And no I am not a REX word not allowed, I have always supported both REX and HIFI. As of now, HIFI are the leaders in the weather system department, but REX have jumped to the top of the log (again) in the cloud model / texture department - my opinion of course, but informed by personal experience of both offerings.

Lastly @Jeroen a thanks. Your last topic in which you relented and bought SF, is what got me thinking "I really should give this a try - if J can so can I". So you landed REX a return customer - they owe you a beer (case of!?) at very least!

Rob

19 hours ago, carlito777 said:

Thanks for the explanation, but I still don‘t get it. How can a weather engine, which was programmed when only 4 cloud types/structures (the standard ones) were available, be able to take advantage of all those new cloud structures and models?

I think this was a perfectly valid question and I see no answer yet for this, so let me give it a try. At least this is how I think it works, but obviously REX and HIFI have been in this game a long time, and have their methods which neither party is going to divulge (competition  is really stiff in this field now!). While we will never know exactly how they do it, what I say below is merely an attempt to show it is perfectly possible to read the in-sim weather condition at, around and ahead of the aircraft, in fact at any lat/long (with a flight plan supplied even better for setting up the sky environment way ahead of you, which is why both HIFI and REX advise that displayed conditions will be more accurate if given a flight plan).

If you look inside your P3D Modules folder at the FSUIPC document on FSUIPC offsets, painstakingly compiled by the wizard Pete Dowson, you will see literally pages of weather-related offsets that programmers can read, and in some cases write to, to discover what the weather environment is like in the sim at present, and take actions accordingly. The list is long, but temps, pressures, wind speeds, wind directions and variability of these, gust strengths, local surface and level specific temps and dew points, updrafts and down drafts injected by applications into the sim, various levels of cloud types, cloud bases, ceilings and altitude, visibility oktas - and the list goes on. More than enough info for a system like SF to "peek" into the sim, see what weather is like at the aircraft (I guess they have ways to query anywhere around and ahead of the craft), since they can also see exactly where the aircraft is headed to etc, and then do their magic with their algorithms to decide what cloud models and textures would be appropriate to inject. They can inject whatever the sim will accept, even new models and textures beyond what was originally "standard", as long as they conform to the SDK rules. I mean, if ORBX can break new "ground" with the surface environment, way beyond what was "standard", or we even believed possible, why not the Devs specializing in modelling and texturing the atmosphere. Sure its not a fixed environment but all the variables are there in-sim to define the current state and energy of this ever-changing air-mass, and then dynamically model it accordingly.

So to me its not at all far-fetched hype if REX claims they can asses the weather in the sim (even when that comes from another devs weather engine) because there are so many standard "hooks" into the sim to get the requisite variables (and more-than-likely these programmers have even more tricks up their sleeves to plug into the sim's current weather to get exactly the information they need). From this it is definitely possible to determine the "atmospheric energy" at various scales, and at various places, and so to inject their "new" and appropriate 3D cloud-model structures into the sim with correct associated textures.

So, even using FSUIPC offsets, a sim query can report-back heavy precipitation, high turbulence, strong updrafts and strong downdrafts being injected by a weather application, mixed wind directions and velocities inferring strong wind shear around, with cumulonimbus cloud type. So therefore it does not take a genius to know that there are serious thunderstorms in the area of the aircraft. So instead of that "standard", almost insipid sim CB, we now have injected for us a towering, massive, ominous-looking cumulonimbus with a dense rain shaft at base, a massive anvil full of ice at top, and all the visible features that say "high energy atmospheric area - stay well away!".

So while I understand your skepticism (I am also, and always will be a skeptic), I am just trying to suggest it seems unfounded in this case, as the facts are that it certainly is possible programmatically. Really I think all credit is due to REX in this case for what must have been hundreds of man-hours of work (thousands more likely), to pull all of this together.

 

Interesting thread, still sitting on the fence with an open mind regarding SF3...

I am doing a lot of transcontinental flights, such as CYYZ to SBGR yesterday leaving Toronto at midnight when temperatures are -25°C and reaching Sao Paulo with a string of thunderstorms, heavy clouds all around. I am using ASCA with AS16 + ENVTEX and never had to bother with choosing a set of clouds or skies.

My question to the SF3 users is: How can SF3 manage a flight like this one above? Do I have to pick and choose in SF3 a set of clouds with what I would like to see on a ten-hour route, and how can such a set cover a huge geographical area with so different weather systems, that for me is really difficult to understand after reading those eight pages.

Thank you for any clarification.

11 hours ago, Denco said:

I find that the clouds are too grey all around. Is there a setting inside SF to increase their brightness?

Yea  when i look  outside  wish  i  can  brighten the  clouds  up abit  as well