1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

Active Sky is not necessary for MSFS whereas it was for the legacy sims.

MSFS does a decent job some of the time....  Not sure where you fly but still in the midwest of the USA the metars don't match at times...  and the server issues happen somewhat frequently where you just get clear skies instead of your local weather.

So I'd welcome HiFi back if they can really nail the metar weather.  What I'd also like to see is fixes for the semi transparent clouds... there's times where you can easily see right through an overcast layer to the ground (which obviously happens irl with an extremely thin stratus layer)... but I'm speaking of a few hundred feet to a few thousand feet thick.  

And another issue I see with MSFS stock is the visibility.  They still don't have a great way to set it.  Subsequently I can be flying along to my destination where it's 1/2SM vis real world and in the sim it's like 5 mi vis.... boring!  I want to shoot approaches in IMC with accurate METAR.  

12 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

How much did your graphics card cost? 😉

I know and yes moaning about the cost of software becomes slightly ludicrous when compared to the hardware we’ve all splashed out on but MSFS provides marvellous weather out of the box.

Forty? Hmmm…

Plus the obvious; Asobo will keep developing. The sims weather will keep improving.

The only thing i would like from Asobo is 

More Variation in the cloud types (Cough Cirrus!!!) 

24 hour historical weather. ( I don't need more than 24 . maybe 48 hours) and no i don't need to relive any great historical wx event so 24/48 hours will do.) 

Nail those two + improve wx server reliability and im satisfied  ( at least for me) 

22 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

I know and yes moaning about the cost of software becomes slightly ludicrous when compared to the hardware we’ve all splashed out on but MSFS provides marvellous weather out of the box.

Forty? Hmmm…

My comment was tongue in cheek but once you’ve paid for a weather program there are no ongoing charges. If you fly 300 days a year and keep that sim for 5 years the cost is 40/1500 or 2.6 pence a day.

I won’t bother calculating the cost of the graphics card. 😁

Bear in mind too the exchange rate affects the GBP price.

I used ActiveSky in FSX and P3D. Would not fly without it. 

I think the current weather depiction in MSFS is pretty good. If HiFi could improve on it I wouldn't think twice to buy the addon, no matter the price. 

The current weather depiction is very good in MSFS of course.

The problem is, for people like me who have to work; and can only fly at night, I'm stuck having the night time weather and temperatures while trying to simulate a flight at daytime, which is just stupid. Yes, I could use a weather theme, but then the conclusion would be like "real weather is not available in MSFS", which is a shame, don't you think?

The absolute best feature of Active Sky is the turbulence slider, which I always set to zero, so I don't get sick with real time weather. I would buy Active Sky just for that feature if it ever were to be available for MSFS.

Edited March 9, 20233 yr by Ron279
grammer (was -> were to be)

9 minutes ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

I think the current weather depiction in MSFS is pretty good

Really? MSFS has 'gamefied' weather. There are at least 16 cloud types in the real world. MSFS has max 2 plus fog/vis.

If they are not willing to open up the weather API they should at least work on more realistic weather, without sudden changes that make the AP disconnect, wrong/no humidity depiction, very limited cloud representation, etc.

They are a long way from 'pretty good' in my opinion.'

ActiveSky would be a welcomed addition as they did a 'pretty good' job in past sims!

great asset to P3D etc,  and i used it every flight for almost ten years but weve moved on now , really not sure if AS and ASCA ( remember that ) is needed anymore . maybe ASOBO could employ HIFI to fix the unruly turbulance and give them the atmospherics to do !

One of the many reasons that MSFS appeals to me over my previous P3D and XP experiences is not worrying about add-ons upon add-ons to improve a subpar default experience. MSFS weather simulation & depiction is very good in its default state, and always being improved. Sure, if they open it up for 3rd party injection that'd be good, but it's by no means a high priority item in the grand scheme of things (and perhaps not possible given legal/contractual issues with Meteoblue I thought?). Yes, historical weather would be good and probably the main reason for this kind of add-on to hold any appeal for me, but I can certainly live without it. Outside of historical weather (which I imagine would have to be completely served up from Active Sky servers), not sure how 3rd party weather injection of any sort would even work, having to also reconcile with weather being served up from MSFS/MeteoBlue servers in a client/server sim like MSFS.

If HiFi can improve upon MSFS default weather in whatever ways without needing injection API access then by all means let's see what they have and if it's worthy of purchase.  But given the choice of dev effort on Asobo's part to allow 3rd party injection vs them sticking to current path of continuously improving default weather, I'll take the latter any day.
 

Edited March 9, 20233 yr by lwt1971

12 minutes ago, Ron279 said:

The absolute best feature of Active Sky is the turbulence slider, which I always set to zero, so I don't get sick with real time weather. I would buy Active Sky just for that feature if it ever were to be available for MSFS.

And that kind of control of turbulence is coming in MSFS SU12 soon.

1 hour ago, pmb said:

the daytime/nighttime issue is annoying imho. Either Asobo/MS tackle this, or a 3rd party with historical weather.

 

45 minutes ago, kiek said:

Yeah it is a pity that MSFS does not support the Simconnect weather API.

[...] I cannot set the historical weather, that comes with RealTraffic, in MSFS. 😡

It would be such a big improvement for those of us who care about such differences. And for those who aren't interested, the good news is, it wouldn't be compulsory.

Because I use PSXT and real World live traffic, I also use REX Weather, but only on departure or arrival and where there are large time differences. (Or when MSFS live weather isn't working properly).

For the most part, MSFS' weather is acceptable and certainly better than using REX for an entire flight. A weather add-on that can look back 24/48 hours, displays entire weather systems and also plays nicely in MSFS, would be a definite purchase.

2 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Active Sky is not necessary for MSFS whereas it was for the legacy sims.

There is a lot of truth to that.  Since we've morphed into voxel based volumetric clouds the game has changed dramatically and I would have to wonder just how far any 3rd party can take cloud depiction--the primary issue to me is low resolution (voxels/cubic area) cloud depiction and that will be determined by the base sim, be it MSFS or XP, presumably.

I feel kinda bad saying this as Active Sky was such a huge part of my enjoyment of FSX and P3D, but I honestly don’t see myself buying a weather mod for MSFS at this point.  Weather’s not perfect but certainly well good enough for my needs and immersion.