Hello all,

When I had FSX I had Active Sky Next and used it when flying with my VA, so it was flying in real time with the actual weather outside, which in the winter provided some interesting foggy approaches on the Lapland extras. Over time my PC lost interest in trying to keep up FPS, it got old and a couple of years later I return with a new machine and P3D v4.5

I was wondering whether to get Active Sky Next, but I read a few opinions saying that REX Sky Force blows ASN out of the water. The UI looks brilliant but takes some time to figure out. I went on a flight from London to Exeter, more less passing over where I live, at 16,000 feet I had scattered clouds and could see the ground...out my window all I could see was clouds, not a peep of sky or any planes overhead. A few settings tweaks I think I have it, not totally convinced but not had a total overcast day here since that test.

So the other day I started out at City, loaded REX and set to import flightplan, set up my Q400, 5 minutes later tuned into ATIS, runway 27 in use....really? REX says the wind is pushing from the east, surely not departing with a tailwind, not a low wind speed either.
Then QNH was 2992 (1013), well I know somethings wrong here! I set Follow Aircraft on REX, it found my location, but nothing happened.

I quit REX and Prepar3D, reloaded REX and import flightplan, and then sim, set up the Q400 again and tuned into ATIS, runway 09 in use, and a QNH reading at 1021, that's better! Set to follow aircraft again.

Today I did a flight from Guernsey to City, using REX with the appropriate flightplan loaded, and set to follow aircraft, set off from runway 09 as it would be, and VoxATC later gave me the NEVIL 1C approach. I tuned into City ATIS for the QNH, and it said runway 27 is in use...eh? Should be 09...Altimeter 2992...oh it's defaulted to 1013 again! I was wondering why ATC was sending me east of the airport. So changed the ILS course, checked REX was on, it had an update stamp so it was clearly live, I clicked un-follow aircraft and tried again, nothing happened, oh well so I followed the STAR for Runway 27. I get's over Southend way near the holding loop, then I get the REX weather injected message, and it suddenly updates the weather...This managed to break VoxATC as it got stuck and wouldn't give me any direction, probably City was now back to using runway 09. So checked ATIS again for the QNH which I got, then opened the charts to do an approach over the airfield using the ILS descent chart.

I've had a handful of other flights with no problems of it seemingly disconnecting, and still not sure if I have the settings right to have a true real live weather look. Injections aren't smooth, much like ASN IIRC, if there's a bit of haze it suddenly disappears and becomes clear for a few seconds and returns to how it was.

 

Is Active Sky Next still as good as it was? I never really had any problems with it and I believe it's good for ATIS if your ATC program doesn't have ATIS? (I know VoxATC does but looking at replacing it with something as I have AIG traffic installed). 

Or am I using REX wrong? I assume to get real live weather you load up REX, click Import Flightplan, then it comes up with a map, then load up the sim and that's that, then it injects the weather when you start (as confirmed by the green bar)

 

Any help appreciated!

James.

I used rex too .... i got one question though !
Every time i load it i get this weird effect that, clouds or something like fog, cmpletely covers my sun !
have you noticed anything like this ?

It will be interesting to see how both REX and HiFI approach the external injection of weather into P3d5. Both their weather products use SimConnect to communicate with the sim and at least HiFi does include some low level access to the P3d libraries, bypassing the P3d SDK. This is why ASP4 usually needs an update with every new P3d version and hotfix that LM releases. It takes HiFi time to figure out where the specific addresses are in a DLL for the low level access. The P3d5 library weather.dll has 104 exports that allow low level access to the weather system. But for anyone other than LM programmers, it's a guess as to how they work. Many of these exports are easily accessed via either the SimConnect API or the Prepar3d PDK, but a few are used by the sim itself.

The SimConnect API has always allowed a wide range of access to the P3d weather system:

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv5/sdk/simconnect_api/references/world_functions.html

The question with P3d5 is, will SimConnect provide the same level of access to the trueSky atmospherics? LM for some time now, has recommended that 3rd party developers move away from SimConnect and use the newer P3d PDK instead. The PDK weather service  has two distinct weather classes, V430 and V500:

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv5/sdk/pdk_api/service_providers/group__weatherservice.html

V430 is less detailed than V500, which is the P3d5 version. There is a lot of overlap between the two classes, so that's why existing weather engines like REX SkyForce seem to more or less work, even though they aren't designed for P3d5.

Also, any weather-related phenomenon that is shader-based has previously been fair game for 3rd party developers. The shader source code was included with the sim, allowing a developer to fiddle around with certain aspects of the weather, like for example the color of rain and snow. Because of licensing considerations, the shader source code for trueSky is not included, but I assume that doesn't stop a developer from buying a trueSky license and experimenting. It's probably not a necessity to mess with the shaders, but it is likely that both REX and HiFi will try to figure out how LM implemented trueSky in P3d5. A further concern is whether the user has an nVidia GTX graphics card or an RTX model. Both can do raytracing (which is integral to trueSky), but the latter is far more efficient in doing so.

That's more than you wanted to know but obviously not all there is to say. So when you all are banging on the F5 key for an update. Keep all this in mind, as the puzzle solvers at REX and HiFi are busy trying to produce the best initial weather injector that they can.

 

I love REX products (and over the years have used most of them) but the consensus regards the weather engine is that it's quite mediocre, so I've never used it.

I use AS for weather, REx Environment Force for shaders and other lighting effects and REX Texture Direct for cloud and other textures. I'm satisfied.

https://hifisimtech.com/asp3d/

Active Sky 3D, an appropriate name for the add-on. It's a limited time free upgrade and has some control over trueSky features. What's important is that the beta version injects weather into P3d5.

But as I stated  in my previous post in this thread, it's going to take a while for HiFi to do much more than just inject weather.They seem to be implying that LM will provide more access to the trueSky implementation through the PDK, but I guess we'll have to wait to see on that.

i can say that i was never dissapointed by AS. The weather it created on "live weather" was always what i could see out of my window in the real world and was creepy fitting with the real world situation in terms of temp, and cloudgeneration, even very locally. I hope this will be continued with the new version

I wouldn't say never. Their XP11 effort has been a bit disappointing. But given their caveats about not having worked with XP before, it's not too surprising. 

@james37611 

14 hours ago, james37611 said:

but I read a few opinions saying that REX Sky Force blows ASN out of the water.

Where did you read that?

First of all you are comparing apples with oranges:

- ASN is JUST a weather engine and there is nothing like it on the market today.

- REX SF is a texture addon (clouds, sky, etc) which has a weather engine included BUT it's a basic version of a weather engine (verry poor). It's engine should have received an update called Weather Force a while ago...it has not yet been released....

1 minute ago, GEKtheReaper said:

@james37611 

Where did you read that?

First of all you are comparing apples with oranges:

- ASN is JUST a weather engine and there is nothing like it on the market today.

- REX SF is a texture addon (clouds, sky, etc) which has a weather engine included BUT it's a basic version of a weather engine (verry poor). It's engine should have received an update called Weather Force a while ago...it has not yet been released....

Nothing to prevent one from using Rex cloud textures with AS as the weather engine. I’ve heard good things about Rex clouds, but I don’t think there is a better or more accurate weather engine than Active Sky... especially when it comes to accurate cloud depictions when flying over oceans or other areas without nearby METAR reports. In addition to winds and temperatures aloft, I’m pretty sure HiFi extracts humidity, cloud cover and precipitation information from the NOAA worldwide GFS forecast model for remote areas. One of the advantages of operating their own dedicated server for customers to download current weather data.

5 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

Nothing to prevent one from using Rex cloud textures with AS as the weather engine.

No Jim that`s correct but if you read the subject of this topic and OP's first post then you would have noticed that the OP clearly asked weather he should use REX SF or ASN.

So my answer was intended to explain him that he's comparison is off 😉

Thank you guys!

I forgot to say I went for Sky Force in the end, as it was discounted so for the price it was worth the shot, sounds like it's worth keeping if going for ASN at least 🙂

I shall get ASN soon, I can't get the upgrade price as I got it on Steam originally, but I don't mind that, I should have spent more time looking it up really! 

I jumped in assuming it was an alternative live weather engine rather than a detail overhaul, but I'll keep it for that purpose. I can't find where I saw the post now, it may have been on Steam, Reddit or some other forum I'm not on, I had a flick round on Google which came to a post that someone who had REX Sky Force for some time had a list of ASN faults like

"Want seamless weather injections? REX will not do that unlike ASN" and "REX hasn't let us down, unlike ASN"

Thanks for clearing up this for me now I understand the two products, hence I said 'or' in that I assumed REX and ASN were doing the same thing, but I understand the differences now!

I shall look forward to using ASN and using REX for the textures as well 🙂

 

James.

On 5/6/2020 at 7:10 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

That's more than you wanted to know but obviously not all there is to say.

Thanks for taking the time to write this post Jay. That was very informative and interesting.

Ted