Active Sky coming to MSFS

[KERNEL32 500]

On 4/16/2024 at 7:52 AM, VHOJT said:

I have flown towards increasing cloud before and the weather has deteriorated as expected.  It is not random.  It is in accordance with what I might expect - flying into an overcast area from a relatively nice day.

On an unrelated note, I have valued the accuracy of the ASFS depictions, something MSFS is not so good at as far as accuracy at airports goes.

The other evening - WMKP Penang had a thunderstorm on top of it according to the METAR.  Default MSFS weather - nothing - just some fluffy fair-weather cumulus cotton balls as far as the eye could see.  A pleasant, mostly sunny afternoon.  Nothing at all like the actual conditions reported there.  ASFS, however, correctly depicted the thunderstorm and crappy weather around the airport.  Even the MSFS METAR said TS but it was not presenting anything even remotely like it. Just a nice afternoon.

Yah, typically and sadly. MSFS Live weather has a very hard time "detecting" isolated thunderstorms. It USED to be able to do this much better PRE-SU5 and this is what I've been talking about because they borked it when adding in METAR and it never recovered. The live weather depicts weather systems pretty good - but not the typical pop up thunderstorms or even clusters of them.

I still say the live weather accuracy is much better now than ever though - just needs to be "turned up" a few notches.

If MSFS somehow incorporated real-time lightning into their engine they could 1) Display lightning as it happens which would be cool! and 2) They could most certainly utilize the lightning data to know that cumulonimbus and very likely a thunderstorm is present in said area. https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;y=0.0879;x=0.0879;z=3;

[Damian Clark 1,272]

25 minutes ago, carlanthony24 said:

I might have missed something but do we just keep MSFS weather active if using direct MSFS integration? 

When using ASFS it will control everything for you.  You can adjust internal MSFS turbulence to your liking to work along with ASFS turbulence (I use low turb in MSFS), but everything else is automatic and not required to adjust.  It will switch modes depending on your ASFS depiction settings and handle everything.

Edited April 17 by Damian Clark

[carlanthony24 577]

9 minutes ago, Damian Clark said:

When using ASFS it will control everything for you.  You can adjust internal MSFS turbulence to your liking to work along with ASFS turbulence (I use low turb in MSFS), but everything else is automatic and not required to adjust.  It will switch modes depending on your ASFS depiction settings and handle everything.

Perfect thank you for the reply.

[mmcmah 413]

17 minutes ago, Damian Clark said:

When using ASFS it will control everything for you.  You can adjust internal MSFS turbulence to your liking to work along with ASFS turbulence (I use low turb in MSFS), but everything else is automatic and not required to adjust.  It will switch modes depending on your ASFS depiction settings and handle everything.

Damian,

When the Fenix or other mods request METAR or winds data, where will they get the info from, especially if using historical weather? Simbrief will also have an option to tie into the historical data?

[Damian Clark 1,272]

 

7 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

Damian,

When the Fenix or other mods request METAR or winds data, where will they get the info from, especially if using historical weather? Simbrief will also have an option to tie into the historical data?

There are some ambient reads available for winds that they might be using, which should be accurate, or they can use the ASFS API which includes winds and much more.  I'm not sure as I'm unfamiliar with that add-on (not for long). 

SimBrief supports AS data already, and it can auto load transparently, although we've had reports of some processing timeouts due to recent AS changes in all products for NOAA data download duration (a bit longer than previous).  We are awaiting a SimBrief update to adjust timeout and resolve that occasional issue.  The manual load works regardless, however.

Edited April 18 by Damian Clark

[Tuskin38 6,563]

On 4/15/2024 at 5:15 AM, F737MAX said:

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

That exists in the sim already, but it broke in live weather ages ago, I think when they switched to METAR.

Though I have had it occasionally come back, Guess I was outside of METAR range when it happened.

[JRBarrett 3,094]

4 hours ago, Damian Clark said:

There are limitations, but we've also found a lot of ways to curate and present the changes to make this work very well and we are confident this will be a great experience for most realism and weather enthusiasts and of course for traditional Active Sky fans.  While it doesn't provide precise control of variable localized conditions, the cloud scene with the transitions and smoothing system appears very similar. 

A big question regarding preset weather. What about locations far removed from any current surface reports - like during a mid Atlantic oceanic crossing?

[Damian Clark 1,272]

6 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

A big question regarding preset weather. What about locations far removed from any current surface reports - like during a mid Atlantic oceanic crossing?

The further you get away from surface observation and forecast data the more the global forecast aloft data becomes weighted.  Essentially all oceanic areas (far from stations that provide METAR) are served entirely by the global grib data, providing cloud, temp, dewpoint, precip, snow depth (not really useful over the ocean!) and convective data through the air column that we analyze and prepare a weather condition depiction theme for accordingly.  The global forecast data also supplements areas that do have surface/METAR data, but it is currently weighted fairly heavily towards METAR conditions when you are closer to those stations.  We also have sigmet/airmet area influence here which is also blended into the depiction.

Edited April 18 by Damian Clark

[MarcG 3,014]

"Introductory pricing for ASFS is 23.00 EUR + Taxes/VAT. See your preferred reseller for more information on final pricing with currency conversion and tax. Pricing is subject to change!"

Sold, looking forward too it.

[AlexMD11 15]

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

"Introductory pricing for ASFS is 23.00 EUR + Taxes/VAT. See your preferred reseller for more information on final pricing with currency conversion and tax. Pricing is subject to change!"

Sold, looking forward too it.

 

That’s a better price than I was expecting, pending reviews and videos might be worth it for just enhancement of effects in passive mode. 

[Sethos 4,371]

Yeah, I really gotta see a review or a breakdown of it, as these descriptions of preset-control that and passive-depiction this, with a lot of 'you gain this but lose that' sounds like some murky descriptions that tell me little. Need a visualization of what it actually means.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,882]

2 hours ago, Sethos said:

Yeah, I really gotta see a review or a breakdown of it, as these descriptions of preset-control that and passive-depiction this, with a lot of 'you gain this but lose that' sounds like some murky descriptions that tell me little. Need a visualization of what it actually means.

I understand your point, but this is Active sky being discussed.  If somebody recommended a Ferrari for your next car, you wouldn't need to see it to know it's going to be good.

Same thing applies with ActiveSky. 😁☺️😋

 

[Sethos 4,371]

7 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I understand your point, but this is Active sky being discussed.  If somebody recommended a Ferrari for your next car, you wouldn't need to see it to know it's going to be good.

Same thing applies with ActiveSky. 😁☺️😋

 

I get your point and I own ActiveSky for every sim but I don't give blind faith to anyone. An artist is only as good as their last work and releasing a product to something with a very closed down API, that has lots of roundabout ways of getting it to work means this isn't Active Sky at its best and there is bound to be compromises. So I definitely need to see what they've come up with.

Edited April 18 by Sethos

[sloppysmusic 260]

This particular 'artist' has produced excellent work in the past and provided good support for it. I miss his products in the current sim. I understand the 'wall' of restrictions the sims devs and sponsors have put on 3rd party addons especially regarding weather. If, despite all the restrictions, this artist is confident enough to develop, promote and release a new product in his name and trademark I'm highly motivated to support him. I will purchase AS for MSFS the moment it is available (directly of course).

It also helps that the proposed purchase price is an absolute pittance IMO! Good luck Damien many of us are rooting for this project to succeed.

[SimeonWilbury 220]

I will be following this with great interest

Am one of those who previously has opted to stick with P3D - partly because I fly mostly in historical weather (and also I fly the 747-400 and FSLabs Concorde a lot).

Not 100% sure when I will pick up MSFS, or if I will wait till 2024 has settled in, but this is looking like the main barrier keeping me from upgrading so far being removed finally.

Edited April 18 by SimeonWilbury