HiFi Developing Active Sky for MSFS

[RALF9636 1,911]

There is so much more to a weather engine than just getting live weather right. And so far Asobo hasn't given any clue that they are even thinking about adding anything to the current weather system apart from fixing the inaccuracies of live weather.

So the commitment by HiFi is highly appreciated.

 

[BillC 135]

As regards an AS wx model, my priorities are accuracy of live wx for online flying in particular at airfields which determines runway in use. Also interfacing with on board systems as currently happens with AS and PMDG aircraft so the FMS can load enroute wind and depict wx on the radar. The AS ability to source metars from Vatsim makes a HUGE difference because it keeps you on the same page as the ATC who will not, probably ever, have the MSFS wx in their systems.

Edited December 6, 2020 by BillC

[MarcG 2,929]

15 hours ago, snglecoil said:

Given his track record, maybe he’s earned it. 

Perhaps so, being a relative "Newbie" to this Flight Sim World I was just reading it how it was.

[MarcG 2,929]

14 hours ago, Jetman67 said:

Not sure how you come to that conclusion

the "toes stepped on" bit, it's no biggy I have no clue about his past, as above just reading it how it is.

[CFIJose 5,485]

9 hours ago, Cmcollazo71 said:

Why? How does that make any sense if Asobo got live weather working? Why are simmers so beholden to 3PDs? If they provided a good product and word gets around and it works fine, buy it. But why the redundancy?

It’s thinking like this that gets us mediocre products, poor support and incomplete sims. 

3PD definitely have a place, I used AS in P3D/FSX, but if fixed why still get it?

Would it be best to wait and see what is actually on offer.

“Past performance is no guarantee of future results.”

 

This sim is still a WIP. It seems that after every update something breaks. So the core sim, IMHO is getting worse.

AS is not just a weather generator. If Hi-Fi can pull this off and have a fully working "live weather" feature for the next couple of years, then it's a worthy investment. That's if they can issue patches after sim updates in a timely manner. I don't think that they would come on board if Hi-Fi did not think that they could live up to their reputation.

Good luck to them.

[Amon1973 1,421]

While in an ideal world I'd want Asobo to bring all the features and capabilities to the weather engine that we have got used to having from the likes of HIFI, I'm not sure if we'll ever see all this wanted flexibility solely from the core sim (I'm willing to be proved wrong Asobo).

However after seeing over the years the fantastic weather effects produced for us simmers from the likes of HIFI, with an old core sim that the legacy sims inherited going forward in their more modern iterations, what can HIFI produce with a next gen one? Over to you HIFI, time to get creative, and maybe think out of the box.

[Amon1973 1,421]

47 minutes ago, DJJose said:

This sim is still a WIP. It seems that after every update something breaks. So the core sim, IMHO is getting worse.

AS is not just a weather generator. If Hi-Fi can pull this off and have a fully working "live weather" feature for the next couple of years, then it's a worthy investment. That's if they can issue patches after sim updates in a timely manner. I don't think that they would come on board if Hi-Fi did not think that they could live up to their reputation.

Good luck to them.

To be fair to HIFI they've always updated their product whenever updates of P3D or Xplane11 broke their product in a timely manner. You can always rely on them to fix things, so I don't think they would be any different with MSFS.

[Nedo68 533]

i wonder what can we expect from Hifi, i mean the way weather looks right now, ive never seen anaything better in a flightsim.

[Tektolnes 184]

37 minutes ago, Nedo68 said:

i mean the way weather looks right now, ive never seen anaything better in a flightsim.

I don't think some people have an issue with how the weather looks as it's the best looking weather in any sim. For some players having the weather being very accurate is important to them for flight plan calculations, fuel calculations, etc. and right now the sim isn't meeting their requirements. For other players just having a decent representation of the weather is plenty good enough and a product like HiFi's probably wouldn't interest them. There's room in the sim for both. 

[Steve Dra 7,579]

1 hour ago, Tektolnes said:

I don't think some people have an issue with how the weather looks as it's the best looking weather in any sim. For some players having the weather being very accurate is important to them for flight plan calculations, fuel calculations, etc. and right now the sim isn't meeting their requirements. For other players just having a decent representation of the weather is plenty good enough and a product like HiFi's probably wouldn't interest them. There's room in the sim for both. 

Bingo.   The "look" of the weather needs little improvement in my opinion....however...what I can't do (and long to), is exactly what you said....use actual, real world weather reports to calculate and plan a flight, as you would do in the real world.  If you're not just throwing a load of fuel on, 50-60% more than you know you'll possibly need, actually doing all the calc's you'd do in the real world...loading your aircraft with the proper fuel load to get to your destination with legal reserves and a tad of contingency fuel...then a a situation like this below has no impact.
In this example, I have a huge tailwind...look at my GS! and the wind box (48 knot tail wind if its blurry)....imagine if I planned the flight without accurate weather, going the OTHER way, only carrying the legal fuel...I'd be running out of fuel way before my destination if calculated the flight with no winds. 😉 

Hope either HiFi brings this part of metrology to MSFS or MA/AS gets it working reliably.  Could you imagine in the real world logging into an aviation weather service, and the report was "Well...you may have a 48kt headwind, or maybe not....all depends if the real-world weather module is working right today...have a nice, safe flight...kick one of your passengers off and and bring a lot of extra fuel....just to be safe!" 🤣

[UKflyer 630]

will be interesting to see how they fix visibility if its not even an option in the sim 🙂

[DylanC 181]

2 hours ago, eaim said:

To be fair to HIFI they've always updated their product whenever updates of P3D or Xplane11 broke their product in a timely manner. You can always rely on them to fix things, so I don't think they would be any different with MSFS.

Agree, but the cadence of MSFS updates are of a much higher frequency versus the P3D or XPlane quarterly or bi-annual ones.  I'm certain it would be tough to keep up with.

[DylanC 181]

14 hours ago, Damian Clark said:

It is also very much understood that another chunk of users fully support our competitors and others bringing our weather add-ons, they just don't want HiFi getting involved at all.  We understand this is mainly just a competitive thing, they are trying to protect the developers they support and don't want them to have any competition. We also disagree with this, as competition has done amazing things in weather and all things in our hobby.  It pushes everyone forward.  As a matter of fact, I wonder, in all the years of Active Sky, have any of our features influenced any other sim or other add-ons features?  I'm thinking we've influenced at least a few.

I'm surprised no one commented on @Damian Clark's quote here.  For this very reason is why HIFI needs to join the fray.  

[desbean 357]

Asobo has said that they have no intention of opening up the weather to 3rd party because they consider it to be such an integral and important part of the program. If that's so then why do I still frequently have to reload the sim in order to get RW weather instead of clear skies and 3-knot wind? Not to mention iffy accuracy at times. And as some others have said, why don't we even have an FSX level of weather information inside the sim.

Edited December 6, 2020 by desbean

[Amon1973 1,421]

54 minutes ago, DylanC said:

Agree, but the cadence of MSFS updates are of a much higher frequency versus the P3D or XPlane quarterly or bi-annual ones.  I'm certain it would be tough to keep up with.

I think in time the frequency and the sim breaking aspects of MSFS's update will subside, as core bugs get fixed, with hopefully more testing before release, as they always planned to do going forward, this was the plan even in the tech alpha days, I'm not sure why this wasn't implemented from the general public release.