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Active Sky for XPX Released!

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21 hours ago, Paraffin said:

Yeah, I got that notice about the new SkyMaxx Pro version and FSGRW integration with RWC. 

In addition, I noticed in some posts over at the .org that it seems you can use AS as the weather injector along with SkyMaxx Pro as the cloud generator (???). In case you want something different than default XP clouds, while waiting for the AS cloud add-on later next year. 

Maybe I'll try AS with SMP since I already own the latter, because I do like the way SMP models clouds in mountain valleys better than default X-Plane clouds. But I want to check out what AS does with default clouds first.

"May you be cursed to live in interesting times".... 

Pardon my ignorance, but what is FSGRW? I have SMP with RWC, now they are saying its compatible with FSGRW. Exactly how many weather programs are necessary and/or needed in XP?
In Prepar3D I have AS2016 + ACA, so I guess I that means I have a weather injector and texture replacement. I'm just a little confused on what I need for the XP side. Would love to try ASXP, but is that all I need?

Thanks

Edited by AAN1718A

Michael Lagow
Madness Software

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You only need one weather injector—Xenviro, FSGRW, ASXP.   You can swap out various cloud/sky textures like UWXP, Xvision, etc. 

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36 minutes ago, AAN1718A said:

 

Pardon my ignorance, but what is FSGRW? I have SMP with RWC, now they are saying its compatible with FSGRW. Exactly how many weather programs are necessary and/or needed in XP?
In Prepar3D I have AS2016 + ACA, so I guess I that means I have a weather injector and texture replacement. I'm just a little confused on what I need for the XP side. Would love to try ASXP, but is that all I need?

Thanks

In short, yes. Its all you need.

A product like ASCA will follow. But already the current version has some form of texture replacement that changes the standard XP clouds into either highres ASXP or lowres ASXP clouds. But you dont even have to install those ones if you dont want. YOu could use it with standard XP clouds too. Like in P3D.

Edited by Senchai

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Okay, seems to be running smoothly now. Did a flight test using real weather on a perfect day for it, big storm blowing outside. Loaded up at the small airport near my house (0S9 Jefferson County, Olympic Peninsula, Washington State USA). Weather shown is a good match to what I see outside my window -- dry, but with a dark, low/thin overcast, wind blowing hard (steady around 20mph, gusts to 40mph). 

The runway at 0S9 is 27/09 and the injected weather showed 19 knots steady from 175 degrees, so a near-perfect 90-degree crosswind. With default AS settings, I couldn't take off... the PC-12 skidded all over the place. I adjusted settings in AS for zero wind at ground/full crosswind compensation, and took off smoothly. 

So that demonstrated the main thing I want from a weather injector -- a taste of the real conditions, but able to back them down enough to still fly in light GA planes and helicopters. Here's the takeoff, finishing at around 5000 feet after breaking out of the overcast (this is 11.30b7):

AS-test-01.jpg

AS-test-02.jpg

AS-test-03.jpg

WHAT I LIKE:

* Degree of control over injected weather seems good (except for cloud base, see below). Passes the initial "matches the weather outside my window" test.

* Good frame rates so far (see images), although I haven't seen conditions yet that tend to tax the system the most, like multiple cumulus stacks.

* The turbulence simulation is very nice. Flying feels more "fluid" and somehow the turbulence isn't as artificial-feeling as default XP (when that kicks in at all).  

* Apparently I can set "maximum cloud icing" to zero, which is important for my FSEconomy flights, where I might be doing something else during cruise and can't monitor icing (or fly planes and helicopters that aren't equipped to handle it. I don't think there has been a way to disable icing in the default XP weather or other settings.

PROBLEMS:

* I've complained about it in another post, but the initial purchase and authorization experience was way too convoluted. Once it's done it's done, so it's a minor complaint in the scheme of things.

* There is an interesting Flight Planning feature, which can tie into a very useful function that stops auto-updates when you're near final approach. I create a flight plan for all my FSEconomy flights in Plan-G and export to X-Plane, and there is a function in AS that's supposed to read that file. But it said it couldn't read it when I tried. That's a file that both Plan-G and X-Plane can read, so they need to do some work there. I can enter the info in the AS flight plan fields as a workaround, but that shouldn't be necessary if they can import the .fms. 

* Not exactly a problem, more of a wish. While I can modify the winds in injected weather enough for rough conditions, I'd like more control over the cloud base. What I would really like is an option that does something like "use the injected weather, but always make sure the cloud base is at least 1500 feet above the destination airport in the flight plan." I think I can tweak this on the few occasions I need it by going into X-Plane's weather menu, reverting to Manual weather, and raising the lowest cloud layer. But it would be nice if AS could do that automatically, and I haven't found a setting that would do it. Maybe raising minimum visibility, but that feels like a different form of cheating. I just sometimes need a higher cloud base to complete an assignment in FSEconomy.

Overall, I'm happy so far, but that's just after a couple of flights. 

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X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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What about thunderstorms and CBs?


"The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity." [Abraham Lincoln]

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2 hours ago, Paraffin said:

Not exactly a problem, more of a wish. While I can modify the winds in injected weather enough for rough conditions, I'd like more control over the cloud base. What I would really like is an option that does something like "use the injected weather, but always make sure the cloud base is at least 1500 feet above the destination airport in the flight plan."

 

you can create weather areas to you liking. Either by meatr or my other means. RIghtclick on the map near the area you want to modify and set the weather to your liking. In Custom Weather mode that is.

You get many options there, have a look

 

Here a few pics from last flight. Again same setup. ASXP clouds (highres) + xVision ImpressiveForLUA

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Edited by Senchai
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@Paraffin read last topic from me. this is possible here.

i cannot say much about gplan but i can say that simbrief xp format works fine to load flightplans. I did many many flights and only saw it fail when the AIRAC is not the same. Also qSimplanner works.

And you SHOULD use flightplans. That makes sure the weather is more defined on the flightpath. If ASXP doesnt know where you fly it will do something else as when it knows. Thats why it is important to load a flightplan.

 

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Edited by Senchai

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2 hours ago, Murmur said:

What about thunderstorms and CBs?

Haven't had a chance to look for a good one yet. On the one hand, there are some encouraging settings in the options for updrafts and downdrafts within a CB. That's progress! On the other hand, I think we might still be in the situation where we don't actually see 3D anvil-head thunderstorms we need to steer around.

In other words, it may just be an intensified effect for clouds around the plane that don't look anything like a thunderstorm before you get there. That's what we already have, at least visually. I hope I'm wrong. More testing needed, but I haven't seen any preview shots of an anvil-head CB with this version.

37 minutes ago, Senchai said:

you can create weather areas to you liking. Either by meatr or my other means. RIghtclick on the map near the area you want to modify and set the weather to your liking. In Custom Weather mode that is.

You get many options there, have a look

I did, but that's Custom weather.

What I'd like is the "Live" injected weather with enough parameters to insure a landing with a high-enough cloud base, like we can do now with wind speed. Maybe that's asking too much, but the data is all there, if they're loading a flight plan and know the destination airport METAR.

32 minutes ago, Senchai said:

@Paraffin read last topic from me. this is possible here.

i cannot say much about gplan but i can say that simbrief xp format works fine to load flightplans. I did many many flights and only saw it fail when the AIRAC is not the same. Also qSimplanner works.

And you SHOULD use flightplans. That makes sure the weather is more defined on the flightpath. If ASXP doesnt know where you fly it will do something else as when it knows. Thats why it is important to load a flightplan.

I agree, I always use a flight plan because I'm almost always flying in FSEconomy in mountain areas where I need to know the MEF so I don't smack into a mountain. 🙂

But right now, AS won't load the .fms generated by Plan-G, which X-Plane reads just fine. I think they need to fix that, because I'm not going to use another flight planner, and Plan-G is a popular one over here in X-Plane land. I don't think it's doing anything illegal in the formatting, because it loads just fine into the X-Plane default GPS.

 

 


X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I did, but that's Custom weather.

What I'd like is the "Live" injected weather with enough parameters to insure a landing with a high-enough cloud base, like we can do now with wind speed. Maybe that's asking too much, but the data is all there, if they're loading a flight plan and know the destination airport METAR.

I dont argue with your wishes. But better tell them that maybe in the official forum 🙂

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

More testing needed, but I haven't seen any preview shots of an anvil-head CB with this version.

Doesnt have to test much more, its a visual cloud replacement atm that is based on XP11 cloudpuff system. Thats the reason you can choose any cloud you want with it if that one is a replacement that replaces XP clouds. Visual enhancements that add things that are not already in come with an extra product like ASCA, or at later versions. At least thats what they announced if i read that right.

 

53 minutes ago, Adrian123 said:

I've loaded perhaps a dozen flight plans from Little Nav Map .fms and it works well.

Same here but seems he doesnt want to change the planner (not that i dont understand it). Probably it a good idea but like mentioned, things like this you have to suggest them in the right place. The other way around would be that PlanG makes an ASXP integration 🙂 Like littlenavmap did or like Simbrief did. But thats nothing i can tell you who should do what. Ijust know that there is an ASXP API out there that devs can use to do things for ASXP.

ASP loads flightplans in standard XP format. FMS that is.


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13 hours ago, Senchai said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by lencarne

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Apologies if it's been answered before but will xp activesky import vatsim weather like activesky for P3Dv4 does?? 

Cheers 


 
 
 
 
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7 minutes ago, tooting said:

Apologies if it's been answered before but will xp activesky import vatsim weather like activesky for P3Dv4 does?? 

Cheers 

In the settings of ASXP there is a checkbox for VATSIM weather online. Default is unselected. I have not used it myself but I guess it works just as in P3D.

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10 minutes ago, Glenn_C said:

In the settings of ASXP there is a checkbox for VATSIM weather online. Default is unselected. I have not used it myself but I guess it works just as in P3D.

Thank you very much 


 
 
 
 
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10 hours ago, Senchai said:

Doesnt have to test much more, its a visual cloud replacement atm that is based on XP11 cloudpuff system. Thats the reason you can choose any cloud you want with it if that one is a replacement that replaces XP clouds. Visual enhancements that add things that are not already in come with an extra product like ASCA, or at later versions. At least thats what they announced if i read that right.

Regarding CBs and Supercells, it's more than just the visual cloud depiction I'm concerned with.

Big, anvil-head CBs are discrete systems, that can occur in chains. Aircraft in the lower flight levels have to steer around and avoid them, which requires a 3D modeling of the systems in a flight sim. I see a storm over there visually or on my weather radar, so I alter my flight to avoid it. 

What I'd like to know (and want to experiment with), is to what degree, if any, ActiveSky is modeling CBs to this degree. Or as with default XP weather, are you just suddenly surrounded with the CB weather effects when the METAR info is updated, so you can't steer around it. You're just suddenly "in" the severe weather. 


X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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