Active Sky coming to MSFS

[fluffyflops 1,865]

2 hours ago, brucewtb said:

The same here!  These are all my reasons for being a close to day 1 purchaser.  I wish HiFi all the best for this new endeavor and thank them for their past support of our hobby over many years.

Bruce

Agreed.  When they said a couple of weeks ago they'd not made profit for 2 years I felt really bad for them.  You know this community is shafted when captainsin and aerosoft are making money and hifi are not.

[Afterburner 374]

4 hours ago, VHOJT said:

I will be purchasing for the following reasons:

Another reason that makes this add-on a buy for me is that it allows you to quickly look up the weather at a station and get information about upper winds and temperatures. They are important if you fly long routes that include step climbs. Active Sky also features a nice flight planner that allows you to calculate the flight time based on those upper winds / temperatures and your chosen flight level / cruise speed along the entire flight route. And the fact that the add-on runs externally means that you can do the checks and calculations on the flight without the need to access the menu of MSFS.

[VHOJT 184]

Another issue I think ASFS will get better is accurate depiction at airports.

Had a look at WMKP yesterday in MSFS live weather.  Metar says TS.  Just a few fluffy cumulus and otheriwse a sunny afternoon.  No sign of any TS.

[RobJC 2,073]

22 hours ago, Claudius_ said:

No more miriad apps running in background for me, I like the default weather system, it's not perfect but it works well.

I am with you. One of the big selling points of MSFS was not having to run all these apps in the background. I even resist buying airports. Default are fine. Weather is perfectly fine imo. 

[RALF9636 1,999]

2 hours ago, RobJC said:

One of the big selling points of MSFS was not having to run all these apps in the background.

That has always been just an illusion made up by some who wanted to believe. I have to admit that I had hoped for this as well - but it has never been true.

On the contrary there has never been a sim that was so predisposed for addons to be further improved by. In previous sims I've spent most of my time trying to keep all the addons compatible with the sim and foremost with each other. They kept breaking each other and fiddling around with settings and files was my daily fare.

None of that has ever been necessary with MSFS and all its addons. I run dozens of addons that make MSFS so much better and never had any major issues with them.

I'm glad that soon Active Sky will be one of them.

 

Edited April 15 by RALF9636

[RALF9636 1,999]

1 hour ago, Afterburner said:

Another reason that makes this add-on a buy for me is that it allows you to quickly look up the weather at a station and get information about upper winds and temperatures. They are important if you fly long routes that include step climbs. Active Sky also features a nice flight planner that allows you to calculate the flight time based on those upper winds / temperatures and your chosen flight level / cruise speed along the entire flight route. And the fact that the add-on runs externally means that you can do the checks and calculations on the flight without the need to access the menu of MSFS.

Yes, that has always been a great feature of Active Sky. Also you could easily check the METAR for any airport and for any given time or day in the past (within the coverage). And you don't even need to run the sim for that.

I have always used the Active Sky weather map and its clouds and visibility overlays to plan my VFR flights. And if I saw that the weather wasn' feasible for my VFR flight I just changed the time or day to find better conditions. How I miss that in MSFS!

 

[MarcG 3,041]

I have 32gb, I run MSFS in VR and have at least 5 apps/programs sometimes perhaps upto to 7/8 running in the background for the Sim alone mostly loaded through Add-Ons linker for quick seamless loading, plus winamp for music, browser which is always open, steam of course, MSI afterburner, Joy2Key & others then all the windows background stuff - never been an issue.

Whilst I agree some Sim background apps could be done away with through better default options in game, but to get the experience I want I need all those running.

I can see the point about simply not wanting to run much if anything in the background, but if you have decent RAM you really have nothing to worry about.

So personally, one more open running app isn't going to be an issue.

[ThrottleUp 630]

Looks interesting, I wonder if they will be able to simulate the "clouds whipping past at high speed" effect.

We've all experienced this on airlines as we leave the clear sky behind and begin a descent into the crud. They whip past giving a sensation of speed.

Edited April 15 by ThrottleUp

[Nemo 1,305]

4 minutes ago, ThrottleUp said:

I checked out that link and this is one of the pics posted there:

I was wondering if someone could tell me what plane that is? Thanks 🙂

TBM 930

[roi1862 611]

Only reason i will purchase it for is if they manage to make variable visibility and not unlimited visibility all over the world when outside metar coverage 

Edited April 15 by roi1862

[jcomm 6,021]

2 hours ago, roi1862 said:

Only reason i will purchase it for is if they manage to make variable visibility and not unlimited visibility all over the world when outside metar coverage 

Let that not be, the *only* reason 🙂

ASFS will start, at least for me, as a way to "feel at home again" regarding interaction with simulated weather in a simulator where progress has surely been achieved regarding weather, but the results while sometimes acceptable, can't cover all of the features that can make weather a factor in aviation...

The same has happened with ATC, which has progressed but still had me buying an external program for AI aircraft injection and control... 

The only thing that is still lacking in the base platform are the necessary hooks, a decent API allowing for weather to be custom defined / edited by applications capable of fine tuning it to give results closer to RL...

Active Sky FS is a step towards the ideal setup. I would really like to see MS / ASOBO being able to follow the example of a dedicated 3pd who was able to, against all odds, create, again, THE REFERENCE in weather injection for our flight simulator 🙂

I was missing it !!!

Edited April 15 by jcomm

[F737MAX 5,738]

3 hours ago, VHOJT said:

Had a look at WMKP yesterday in MSFS live weather.  Metar says TS.

 

2 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

Also you could easily check the METAR for any airport

Just to say, METAR is only a snapshot of the exact weather at the specific time the reading was taken.

As long as there’s no dramatic changes (e.g. FG when reported CAVOK, or VCTS, or wind direction reversal), there can be upto one hour’s worth of weather variance until the next METAR is issued.

Having weather exactly match a METAR for the entire 30 or 60 minutes the report's validity is not realistic, especially if there are strong-ish winds that could blow in new weather.

[F737MAX 5,738]

1 hour ago, ThrottleUp said:

I wonder if they will be able to simulate the "clouds whipping past at high speed" effect.

That and 'wing fade' effect (where the wing dissappears from view when the aeroplane is in a thick cloud), would up the immersion factor.

[RALF9636 1,999]

4 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

 

Just to say, METAR is only a snapshot of the exact weather at the specific time the reading was taken.

As long as there’s no dramatic changes (e.g. FG when reported CAVOK, or VCTS, or wind direction reversal), there can be upto one hour’s worth of weather variance until the next METAR is issued.

Having weather exactly match a METAR for the entire 30 or 60 minutes the report's validity is not realistic, especially if there are strong-ish winds that could blow in new weather.

Of course you are correct. I have mentioned that many times here myself, when the Vatsim crowd demanded exactly this. Unfortunately MS/Asobo listened to them and implemented METAR matching into MSFS ruining their formerly promising weather system.

 

[Keirtt 593]

I think this pretty much puts to bed the answer on the weather radar for PMDG.