I have been using active sky for years and have no real complaints. I bought Rex Skyforce on sale because I read that the clouds look better. So I have been using Skyforce clouds with Active Sky weather and it seems fine. I decided just to try Skyforce weather and I got to see different clouds than I have seen with Active Sky but the transitions are terrible. Cloudy skies then boom clear skies when the weather loads. This looks horrible and takes away from the experience. Now I don't fly anything, I am strictly an ai spotter but I use Super Traffic Board to watch flights. So watching a long flight really looks bad when clouds are just popping up every 10 minutes or so. Have any of you experienced this and Is there anything to do to fix this. I thought by now that it would be better but it seems not unless I am missing something. Thank you.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.  If AS + SF works why are you messing around?

 

Vic

It's because skyforce has some different cloud formations that I have never seen before using Active Sky. I also would think that the weather engine would work better within the same program.

Unless there is a very recent change that I'm not aware of (and I checked, and don't see one)...

The weather engine with Sky Force is pretty bare bones and when I did my comparsion between Sky Force and ActiveSky weather engines, I noticed a lot of problems with REX Sky Force weather interpolation, resulting in some erratic aircraft behavior and some problems with visual depiction.  Only REX Sky Force textures were used in my comparison, while ASCA and Eventex/EvenShade textures were used with ActiveSky.

Even prior to Sky Force being released, REX had planned to change the weather engine from what was provided in release.  I have no idea if or when this is planned.

ActiveSky is darned hard to beat as a weather engine, and while I was a HUGE fan of REX Essentials and I still believe those were the best weather textures ever created for flight simulation, I've yet to be a fan of the Sky Force weather textures. After a lot of comparisons, today I use ActiveSky, ActiveSky Cloud Art (ASCA) and Eventex/EvenShade and I couldn't possibly be happier!  Something else to remember is that HiFi has a high end texture package in the works for us!

My very best wishes!

 

Hi Dave,

I looked around for news about the "high end texture package" you mentioned but didn't see it on the hifi website. Do you have a link with more info on this?

Disregard, Its in their development roadmap for 2019-2020. Not very detailed but I encourage folks to give it a look. I will only speak for myself but generally, REX products over the last few years have been a lot of hype and then release of a product that doesn't entirely deliver as promised. My understanding is that Skyforce is the 1st of several products that are slated for release that would ultimately end up being an entire weather sim tool. Part 2 would be Weatherforce: a dynamic texture engine and shader engine, and shader/processor enhancer. 

For me, I find that ActiveSky + ASCA + ENVTEX clouds do the trick and look absolutely astonishing.

Thanks,

-B

Edited March 8, 20197 yr by Bt103504

Hi Dave, thanks for the detail information on Active Sky and Skyforce 3D.  I also have Sky Force and notice the same issues with erratic airplane behavior.  It's too bad cause I really like Sky Force.  Active Sky for P3D/FSX is on sale now and might just pick it up the P3D 4.x upgrade version since I have Act Sky Next and it would just cost me $20.00 for the upgrade.

 

Thanks again!

Edited March 8, 20197 yr by egguzman

Slightly off topic but I tend to often get big puffy cumulus clouds up at higher altitudes ie FL18-25 sometimes FL300. Does anyone know if this is an AS or REX issue or internally with how P3D displays clouds? Those clouds should normally be much lower. Even if the metar is reporting say bkn040 i still get a layer of clouds much higher

I'm not sure why exactly but the cloud / weather renditions are not ready for primetime.  I'm not talking about the cloud textures but rather the cloud / weather depictions.

bs

On 3/8/2019 at 5:35 PM, DaveS said:

Slightly off topic but I tend to often get big puffy cumulus clouds up at higher altitudes ie FL18-25 sometimes FL300. Does anyone know if this is an AS or REX issue or internally with how P3D displays clouds? Those clouds should normally be much lower. Even if the metar is reporting say bkn040 i still get a layer of clouds much higher

Same for me and it definitely looks like it's Sky Force's fault (I also use Active Sky as the weather engine), because before installing Sky Force I never had this issue of "always high" cloud layers. I'm also seeking for a solution, still.

I use Aktive Sky for weather, Rex Environment Force for shaders and colors, as well as Rex Texture Direct for the rest and am satisfied. 

People should actually play their sim instead of endlessly twiddling and tweaking around in order to reach some entirely unreachable goal of "perfection".

I like the above addons because with the three I mentioned, it's pretty much "set it and forget it".

1 hour ago, Ricardo41 said:

I use Aktive Sky for weather, Rex Environment Force for shaders and colors, as well as Rex Texture Direct for the rest and am satisfied. 

People should actually play their sim instead of endlessly twiddling and tweaking around in order to reach some entirely unreachable goal of "perfection".

I like the above addons because with the three I mentioned, it's pretty much "set it and forget it".

Me too, but there's this inconvenience of having pretty much always high altitude cumulus clouds. They're never again closer to the ground, after installing Sky Force (I don't have Environment Force). Doesn't it happen to you?

What happened to Weather Force?

1 hour ago, Wanthuyr Filho said:

Me too, but there's this inconvenience of having pretty much always high altitude cumulus clouds. They're never again closer to the ground, after installing Sky Force (I don't have Environment Force). Doesn't it happen to you?

No, but I'm using Active Sky as my weather engine

9 hours ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

What happened to Weather Force?

what happened to SIMAIR? 

I tried the weather engine out last night to see how it is. Terrible the reloading of the weather is like going back to FSX days before AS.

I will look at if we ever see it, weather force but.....MSFS makes all this weather textures, weather engine look a thing of the past.