Active Sky for X-Plane might be released Q4 2018

[Griphos 138]

Count me as +1 on the desire to see anvil-head cumulonimbus!  Wouldn't that be great!

Edited December 6, 2018 by Griphos

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 hours ago, Longranger said:

It has more to do with the problem, do you start to change the weather system when you replace nearly the complete graphics engine in the near future anyway?They are currently replacing the shaders. It is all a part of their way to Vulkan.

I understand that, and agree...but only up to a point. And that point is that a flight sim that can't model a decent thunderstorm is ignoring the "ocean of air" that we fly in. Avoiding hazards is part of the job, and CBs are one of the REALLY BIG hazards out there. They're not even modeled in this sim, to any real extent.

It doesn't take Vulkan to model a thunderstorm, it takes a commitment to modeling 3D weather, including updrafts and downdrafts, and horizontal airflow near the ground in the flight model that have nothing to do with what you see outside the cockpit.

I've said this before, and I don't know how true it is, but I think the fact that X-Plane is so far behind in modeling the kinds of severe weather that commercial airline and bush pilots have to deal with, is a result of Austin (the Laminar CEO) being a recreational GA pilot who has the luxury of just not flying when the weather is bad. Stay home, program stuff on your computer... meanwhile the commercial bush pilots and airline pilots out there actually have to deal with heavy weather.

I hope I'm wrong about that, but the history of X-Plane's internal weather modeling says otherwise.

Austin has talked about renting time in a float-plane to improve the modeling of water takeoffs and landings. Which is a great idea, and it does need work. Name another flight sim where the CEO talks this way about improving the flight sim. This is how we got a more accurate modeling of turboprop engines, when Austin bought a plane with a PT-6 and got interested in how it actually works.

Maybe he just needs to fly on a few more bad weather days, or talk to a few airline and bush pilots about what they deal with every day.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Paraffin

[Adrian123 1,015]

13 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

modeling of turboprop engines

I do like the Turbo Props in Xplane. Go from flying the Carenado PC12 in P3d to Xplane and it's a night and day difference. Agree, weather should be priority one, then seasons.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Adrian123

[Dean_EGTC 57]

I'm not in any rush for AS when I can get results like the below.  All done at a cost of $0 - Default XP WX engine, FSEnhancer and RE Shade.

 

 

 

Ok, so it won't let me add another image so here's a link - http://www.dmcity.com/webpics/B752F2.png

 

Tell me the're not pretty decent.

 

Merry XMas!

[filou 2,737]

1 hour ago, Dean_EGTC said:

I'm not in any rush for AS when I can get results like the below.  All done at a cost of $0 - Default XP WX engine, FSEnhancer and RE Shade.

 

 

 

Ok, so it won't let me add another image so here's a link - http://www.dmcity.com/webpics/B752F2.png

 

Tell me the're not pretty decent.

 

Merry XMas!

Thank you for sharing.Sorry but i am not at all convinced by your clouds!

Here at least it looks like something I saw often in the real world

[Pochi 68]

For sure, it looks good but it is only one specific type of cloud and weather...uniform overcast low level stratus layer. We have yet to see some more puffy, vertical and isolated structure.

Pierre

[filou 2,737]

5 minutes ago, Pochi said:

For sure, it looks good but it is only one specific type of cloud and weather...uniform overcast low level stratus layer. We have yet to see some more puffy, vertical and isolated structure.

Pierre

They work on it but even at this stage I take...

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

That's an entirely different debate guys. Billboard 2d clouds versus volumetric 3d clouds. 
But it goes beyond what Active Sky is about, at least in its first version (without cloud texture replacements)

[FlyBaby 659]

1 hour ago, france89 said:

That's an entirely different debate guys. Billboard 2d clouds versus volumetric 3d clouds. 
But it goes beyond what Active Sky is about, at least in its first version (without cloud texture replacements)

What product uses 2d billboard clouds?

 

[Griphos 138]

Yeah, I can tell you those clouds aren’t at all convincing. But, then, I’m not all that interested in convincing clouds. Maybe that’s all tube-flyers want, but when I think weather engine, I think winds and turbulence. It’s the AIR that needs a lot of work to be convincing in XP, not visuals. And AS really captured convincing air dynamics in P3D. Maybe it’s just a GA flyer  concern...

[Murmur 3,940]

I think it's both. If you have ultra realistic air movements going on below static, ugly, unplausible clouds, a great deal of immersion is gone (for me)

[filou 2,737]

7 hours ago, Griphos said:

Yeah, I can tell you those clouds aren’t at all convincing. But, then, I’m not all that interested in convincing clouds. Maybe that’s all tube-flyers want, but when I think weather engine, I think winds and turbulence. It’s the AIR that needs a lot of work to be convincing in XP, not visuals. And AS really captured convincing air dynamics in P3D. Maybe it’s just a GA flyer  concern...

I used many years AS ( Maybe be a fashion effect ) with P3D and I've never been impressed by the overall quality of the rendering even for air dynamics and I would not even talk about their clouds...

I took more pleasure in the XP Cessna 172 with default dynamics turbulence than any existing add-on weather for P3D.

 

 

[Griphos 138]

Well, as a real GA pilot, I can say that the default wind dynamics in XP are bad.  Part of the problem is the code for wind interaction with the airframe.  I think current coding makes the fuselage a flying surface.  But even from the perspective of just wind dynamics alone, they are not at all realistic.

Better than P3D default, of course, by a significant margin.  

AS was a huge improvement for P3D, but P3D had a LOT of room for improvement.  It was the best of all the weather engines I tried, and I tried all of them.  I look forward to seeing what they accomplish for XP.

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

20 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

What product uses 2d billboard clouds?

 

It's easy to say what doesn't. So far only the new xEnviro seems to have noise generated clouds which are actually 3d. Anything else is not 3d. Sure, they might add some effects when you enter a cloud or somewhat stop clouds from turning towards you when you fly close, but those are still workarounds

[Paraffin 2,197]

3 hours ago, france89 said:

It's easy to say what doesn't. So far only the new xEnviro seems to have noise generated clouds which are actually 3d. Anything else is not 3d. Sure, they might add some effects when you enter a cloud or somewhat stop clouds from turning towards you when you fly close, but those are still workarounds

I'm not so sure about that. SkyMaxx Pro has claimed "Full 3D Clouds" for a while, and I haven't noticed any obvious 2D billboard-type effects.

Clouds in SkyMaxx cast believable shadows on the ground that might be trickery (i.e. calculating the ground shadow as if the cloud was 3D while showing a non-rotating billboard to the viewer). But the effect sure looks believable, however they're doing it. There are even rain effects that start and stop as you move under individual clouds, which presumes some degree of 3D modeling for the rain, at least.