4 minutes ago, J van E said:

 

The best compromise imho is to use ASCA for dynamically changing sky textures only (the change of a sky color during a flight really makes a difference!) and to use SF for clouds only (the change of a cloud texture is less noticable imho... if noticable at all: the amount of structures SF offer is more important and I like the SF textures more than the ASCA ones). Then you will have the best of both worlds. But running ASCA without any texture enabled will do absolutely nothing.

 

Thanks for the clarification.   I agree with the quote above and will run my ASCA as recommended by you.

1 hour ago, J van E said:

Well... it is easy to be mistaken here (and it's hard to explain LOL) but this should read:

"if no option is selected (in ASCA) sky color and cloud textures are changed via Sky Force by loading a theme (nothing gets synced here or injected dynamically: this has to be done before starting the sim), weather conditions are given by Active Sky and "Cloud Sync" only provides structures (so the shapes) of clouds." (If that 'sync' actually inject structures into the sim no one knows but that's another discussion.)

Great and full explanation of all the products, thanks very much. The part of textures from ASCA, textures from REX and ASP4 weather engine seems to be easy to understand but I can't understand what really does Cloud Sync if the weather engine is disabled. 

So you mean the best option is running ASCA only with skies selected, ASP4 for engine and REX Sky Force with engine disabled, Cloud Sync enabled and installing clouds textures?

 I always install set by set as full themes seem to add also skies by default. I still have to decide if I prefer dynamic skies but with cartoon colors from ASCA (in my opinion) or static nicer skies from REX Sky Force (in my opinion too).

One thing that's not covered here and has been a question on my mind, is the impact of certain settings within the AS16 interface when using SF.

Namely,

The Fog Layer Generation setting.
The Prevent Thunderstorms when CB reported setting.
The force broken to 7/8 setting.

And there maybe a few more but this is just off the top of my head.

Anyone have any experience playing around with these settings while using SF?

Cheers

5 hours ago, RancidViper said:

The Fog Layer Generation setting.
The Prevent Thunderstorms when CB reported setting.
The force broken to 7/8 setting.
 

The Fog Layer Generation setting. As default ON

The Prevent Thunderstorms when CB reported setting. ON SF has really nice depiction of CB cloud formations so this option stops the rending of thunderstorm clouds, so it seems to make since to have this option ON.

The force broken to 7/8 setting. Turned OFF as SF is handing structures I see totally overcast and 5/8 6/8 7/8.

 

I have  ASP4, ASCA (fully dynamic, only sky textures active), Envtex (onyl sky textures, embedded in ASCA), Envshade and SF3D (only cloud textures and models, dynamically, w/o weather engines, w/o sky textures).

My question, except ASP4/ASCA what else do I really need to start before I boot into P3D? In my unsterstanding it is enough to start ASP4/(together with ASCA) if the desired textures/settings/shaders in Envtex and SF3D have been loaded into sim in a previous session.

SF needs to be open... on your task bar to use it’s cloud structures. It’s all in the manual.

12 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

SF needs to be open... on your task bar to use it’s cloud structures. It’s all in the manual.

Yes, that's what the manual says but I think that even with SF not running the 1160 cloud structures that SF puts into the cloud folder will be used. Those structures are, as has been the case for years and years, simply loaded from disk when needed. SF needs to be running for the Cloud Sync option but frankly, I wonder if it actually does something. I haven't seen any prove of it yet in any way. 

Interesting little test I might do this evening: load the default weather theme that has those typical high thunderstorm clouds and then fly with SF running and SF not running: I am curious if those typical high SF structures will be gone with SF closed. I expect them to still be there.

16 minutes ago, J van E said:

..., I wonder if it actually does something. I haven't seen any prove of it yet in any way. ...

I had this impression too. That's why I asked. Some tests as you suggested should show it.

What does the SF Wx engine do if you have your sim date set to summer and it is actually the middle of winter?  Does it stop injecting?

 

Thanks

bs

Also - I have read the user manual front to back and have never seen the message "Weather injection in progress".  Anybody have any Ideas?

Regards

bs

2 hours ago, bean_sprout said:

What does the SF Wx engine do if you have your sim date set to summer and it is actually the middle of winter?  Does it stop injecting?

 

Thanks

bs

No, it simply keeps on injecting real time current weather. So if you set the sim to summer but it is snowing right now you will get snow. SF has no clue at all what date your sim is set to and it doesn’t care either. 

16 hours ago, Nyxx said:

The Fog Layer Generation setting. As default ON

The Prevent Thunderstorms when CB reported setting. ON SF has really nice depiction of CB cloud formations so this option stops the rending of thunderstorm clouds, so it seems to make since to have this option ON.

The force broken to 7/8 setting. Turned OFF as SF is handing structures I see totally overcast and 5/8 6/8 7/8.

 

Thanks for that info.

I'm still not sure what the Fog Layer Generation setting actually does. I have tried switching it on and off during a flight in various weather conditions, usually with some form of fog in the conditions.

However I don't see any difference, neither does there seem to be any FPS change.

IIRC the Fog Layer generation is meant to reduce or eliminate the old "milk puddle" effect when mountain tops rose through the fog.

 

Vic

On 1/29/2018 at 7:04 PM, Nyxx said:

The Fog Layer Generation setting. As default ON

The Prevent Thunderstorms when CB reported setting. ON SF has really nice depiction of CB cloud formations so this option stops the rending of thunderstorm clouds, so it seems to make since to have this option ON.

The force broken to 7/8 setting. Turned OFF as SF is handing structures I see totally overcast and 5/8 6/8 7/8.

 

 

14 hours ago, vgbaron said:

IIRC the Fog Layer generation is meant to reduce or eliminate the old "milk puddle" effect when mountain tops rose through the fog.

 

Vic

Hi Guys,

So I did some testing with this setting switching it on and off, and the results were quite surprising. In some instances it made no difference at all, but I assume that was because of the weather at the time and place.

However, I just completed a flight from VOMM - VCBI with AS historical weather set to Monday 22nd January at around 6am local time.

I hope it's ok to post these screenshots here, I thought about creating a new topic but since we already started discussing this here I thought why not.

Decided to do the test at cruise level so I could get a good view of what's going on below me.

Fog Layer Generation OFF

Fog Layer Generation ON

Immediately you can see it generates what seems to be a stratus cloud layer, and the FPS starts jumping around like crazy when looking at it, as you can see it's 14.9 here.

Now front on view.

Fog Layer Generation OFF

Fog Layer Generation ON

So for now I have left this setting to off, whether it's the correct depiction or not I have no idea, but the fluctuating FPS was enough for me to leave it off for now.

 

I have few questions. 
I have ASP4, ASCA, ENVTEX and PTA.

1. I understand that when I want to use real weather from ASP4 the only themes, which I can use are "Full Dynamics" and "Global Automatic". Is that right?
2. Should I have both ASP4 and ASCA run in the background during my flight?
3. I've noticed that most of the ENVTEX users have unchecked the "Sky Colors" option in the "Enabled Content" options in ASCA. What is the purpose of that?