Active Sky coming to MSFS

[AlexMD11 15]

Saw on Facebook a post from Just Flight earlier today saying that the release date is apparently “fairly imminent” - so just hope we’ll get some more proper videos very soon to showcase what’s it’s capable of so we can all make up our minds! 

Edited April 16 by AlexMD11

[MrBitstFlyer 3,896]

18 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

But the typical cold front is the opposite. It is wedged under the lighter warmer air, forcing it rapidly upwards (compared to warm front, the cold front gradient is steep) with convective clouds and showers as result.

Describing a warm front as an example,  doesn't mean the software doesn't know the differences to a cold front or the way to depict it.  Default or addon isn't going to be perfect, but so far, the addon weather engines are doing a better job with cloud depiction than default live weather.

Ah, those early days when I would open MSFS and spawn ahead of a front and fly towards it.  No point these days because it will just be slightly different cumulus.  At least the addons return lovely varied cloud types/layers to the sim.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,896]

15 minutes ago, HUSSAR said:

That's exactly what I was thinking when I was testing ASFS.

Would be great, with the real traffic navigating around storms you'll see in sim!

[Fielder 3,742]

[HUSSAR 272]

13 hours ago, MarcG said:

Overall that video is cool, but those thunderstorms lack height. I've never ever seen a thunderstorm with such few clouds with such a low cap height. 

The overcast scenes were good, not seen anything like that in live weather since SU5! I just hope they've fixed the opaque clouds as well, that'd be nice. 

Anyway, thanks to others reports recently I'm sold, price dependant.

Hello Marc,

TS and CB's are a big ticket item for me as well. Fortunately I think that HiFi has a really good basis to make incredible improvements. The program will need a little time to bud; with feedback from users it will eventually blossom into something that will be unforgettable.

Robert

Edited April 16 by HUSSAR

[HUSSAR 272]

15 minutes ago, AlexMD11 said:

Saw on Facebook a post from Just Flight earlier today saying that the release date was apparently “fairly imminent” - so just hope we’ll get some more proper videos very soon to showcase what’s it’s capable up we can all make up our minds! 

I am sure that you will see lots of great video's Alex. Hang in there for a little bit.

Robert

[turbomax 3,307]

2 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Perhaps things would be different if I had an active PPL license. 

I can guarantee it would. most likely you would mostly fly the same type GA aircraft you flew in real life instead of airliners. 😀

[mobiel 74]

How about the cloud layers with ASFS, do they rise when you get on higher altitudes aswell or are we able to see real layers which are on lower altitudes?

[reecemj 152]

6 hours ago, kiek said:

Finally we can have historical weather together with PSXT and RealTraffic in time shift mode!

In the Beta it work great together! 

[scotchegg 4,240]

I just like the idea of being in a global weather system, one where I can see weather in the distance and watch it approach or recede, or for me to go nearer or further away. Even though it makes no practical difference to my flight in Czech that the weather in Tanzania is different but part of the same framework, it helps my immersion to know that it is, and impedes my immersion to know that the weather I'm experiencing in one place is being repeated the world over.

Daft, I know...

[abennett 177]

The video looks like it has the same poor quality clouds to me sadly.

[spearmint_flyer 580]

5 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

My memory might betray me, but I think that's how AS already did it on P3D back then.

Early in FSX and P3D, yes. However later on with P3D and AS Force, we had fronts. It was a major selling point of upgrading from Active Sky Next and Evolution. From what I remember in the later versions of P3D they had jerry rigged the weather engine to provide additional “layers” of weather that allowed for transitions of the current weather, seamlessly. This all changed of course with the integration of TrueSky, because of it being a global volumetric cloud system and you couldn’t do things like towering clouds.

Back then I remember they played with the transition model of volumetric clouds. All they had control over was the slowing of the transition. Which combined with no transitions over the descent phase allowed for a low amount of awareness that it was transitioning. I remember it being noticeable for me  the same way that I would always look at a scratch on my phone screen after I spot it.

Other than a lack of lightning I really have a hard time finding a low variance of weather systems with the MSFS weather engine. I can clearly see fronts and weather systems when I leave them and enter others.  I’ve seen icing and see the snow on the ground accumulate.  The only complaint I have “which Seb acknowledged on the last dev update “ was the lack of towering clouds up the to stratosphere and lightning .

It seems to me that the audience for this is clearly the historical weather community, the local flyer, the person that doesn’t mind the “preset” based weather who may not mind setting things up and changing them up for a new flight.  
 

For me at this point it’s not seamless enough. So I’ll see when it releases  

 

[ThrottleUp 630]

On 4/15/2024 at 4:15 PM, 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 would be nice too.

MSFS clouds look great (a fantastic free addon is Floyds Epic Clouds). However I'm just not getting the sensation like I'm doing Mach 0.84 as I skim a cloud deck during cruise.

On an Emirates 777 flight we skimmed just under a high alt cirrus layer and it was awesome as they blasted past.

[Damian Clark 1,273]

Thanks for the interest everyone.  I was hoping to answer a few questions.

Advanced radar is not something we are including in this release.  It's something we're working on and hopeful that we can provide in the future.  The ASFS preset control depiction system is preset-control based, as the product page and depiction specs indicate.  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.  We hope you'll agree, but we do know that some are not satisfied with anything but localized variable weather.  That's why we've added a Passive depiction mode where you get nearly all other Active Sky features outside of weather depiction control (for live mode only, of course).

We've recently updated our product page, features list and pricing.  We appreciate all the support and encouragement and look forward to the opportunity to grow and expand ASFS far beyond our already exciting v1.0 release.

Thank you!

 

[carlanthony24 579]

43 minutes ago, Damian Clark said:

Thanks for the interest everyone.  I was hoping to answer a few questions.

Advanced radar is not something we are including in this release.  It's something we're working on and hopeful that we can provide in the future.  The ASFS preset control depiction system is preset-control based, as the product page and depiction specs indicate.  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.  We hope you'll agree, but we do know that some are not satisfied with anything but localized variable weather.  That's why we've added a Passive depiction mode where you get nearly all other Active Sky features outside of weather depiction control (for live mode only, of course).

We've recently updated our product page, features list and pricing.  We appreciate all the support and encouragement and look forward to the opportunity to grow and expand ASFS far beyond our already exciting v1.0 release.

Thank you!

 

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