Regarding the comments above on the interface, well, what can I say if someone judges the quality of the product by the Interface, which in as far as I am concerned I would rather prefer to be exacthly the same one I use in XP12 and in P3D... without having to spend precuous time learning yet a new one...

I am sure that even with the atrocious limitations imposed by MS ASFS will SHINE !

3 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

MS / Asobo will more than likely carry over their current policy not to let third parties take control of their weather system.

 

Which is perfectly stupid... If they don't know how to do it, even having acces to precious data, then at least leave room for those who know it... and have proved they know and what they can do since decades ...

I'm just waiting for the new MSFS 2024 weather engine even if a lot of doubts still persist about it. But I still have a lot of hope also. As for 2020 and everything that revolves around it, there is total disinterest. In my eyes there will be no more revolution now regardless of the field.

Aside from the freebies and great performance of MSFS, it's been a rough almost 4 years for me and MSFS 2020 has become a simulator with too much external assistance software.We need to make it simpler.

I would have preferred 100 times an announcement of collaboration and integration from ASOBO with AS for the future.

26 minutes ago, jcomm said:

Which is perfectly stupid... If they don't know how to do it, even having acces to precious data, then at least leave room for those who know it... and have proved they know and what they can do since decades ...

It does seem stupid, but they quote their licencing agreements with companies such as Meteo Blue being a limiting factor.

I hold out hope that the 2024 weather system will be better.  If they can do Tornado's, surely they must be able to do Cirrus as well!  

I do miss turbulence in clouds, which Asobo say they have had a go at implementing (it seems to be just rising air currents to me), so hopefully there is space for third parties to implement this in 2020. 
For 2024 we need to see what Asobo have cooked first!

 

Unless this is outrageously expensive (which I doubt) or gets stunningly bad reviews (which it might, given the levels of accuracy lots of people apparently expect) I will almost certainly buy this, but really only to see what the clouds look like.

Weather is one of those things where I am actually extremely grateful that I am just a shallow visual experience kind of simmer! I guess I've just never had to deal with the effects of weather (crosswinds and other such things) on any of my "flights" as I'm never trying to actually replicate the flight (piloting) experience. And I'm not being snarky or negative here, I love the realism of MSFS but only in the visual sense. I'm always amazed at the level of detail people get in to when talking about the weather and its depiction/behaviour in the sim. I mean, I get it - I understand that the air and its condition is pretty important to flight <grin>, but I'm very grateful that I can dial all that down and not have to be affected by it myself.

But I do like a good looking sky! I've always had the likes of AS and Rex weather stuff in P3D in the past, and seem to remember flipping between them as new releases came along. So I will definitely be interested to see this, but only as an alternative to the various weather presets packages I currently use. If it has purty clouds it'll go on my shopping list.

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

• Will the Custom Weather come with a "Random Weather" Option? One thing I *hate* about current MSFS Presets is the fact it's the same weather everywhere, there is no way to fly in clear skies through a storm into haze etc etc.

In previous sims I used the historical weather option of Active Sky for this. Just choose any random date and time in Active Sky and there you go. That way you can even choose if you want the weather to be more like summer or winter.

 

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

• Historical Weather, Jorg Neumann couldn't get his head around this when asked countless times in Q&As, if this works as advertised then that's a big selling point for me.

Historical weather alone will be worth it.

 

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

• The UI matters not one jot to me, I fly in VR therefore I'll set it up and forget about it. If it does the job who cares what it looks like? You'll be busy flying in the Sim as will I, this incessant need to have pretty UI with the kids these days drives me nuts, I buy games/sims for the gaming/simming part not what the UI looks like!

Totally agree. Having the same interface we are used to from previous sims makes you feel at home right away and you don't have to spend time understanding the interface.

 

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

• If anything this is needed for Jorg & Co to get a kick up the backside to make sure MSFS2024 Weather is advanced as possible. They've screwed around with the current Sims weather integration too much, SU7 was a shambles when they introduced METAR and there's still issues remaining from that now. Hopefully ActiveSky might do some things that make them think "oh yeah we can do better" - everyone's therefore a winner.
   

If Active Sky for MSFS will be a success even inside the limits imposed by MS/Asobo that might finally convince them that they can only win if they open up the weather system for third party developers.

 

Historical weather? Instabuy.

27 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

If they can do Tornado's, surely they must be able to do Cirrus as well!

Tornadoes are a selling point to the masses, Cirrus clouds are not!

52 minutes ago, filou said:

I would have preferred 100 times an announcement of collaboration and integration from ASOBO with AS for the future.

Same here. The Working Title approach of integrating third parties as first party has provided a huge quality boost for the avionics. I would have loved to see a similar approach for Live weather, which in my eyes has become the most neglected area of the sim.

I can see this going two ways. It's either going to be a total game changer or a complete dud. Activesky was a must have back in FSX/P3D so I'm really hoping they can reach that level again. Will be interesting to see what PMDG and Fenix have to say about using the data to feed their wx radars. 

Active Sky in MSFS? check! wonderful news for me! I only fly with Historical Weather, so...

Now I need a good offline ATC program like Pro ATC-X (yes, I know PATC-X is available but seems "abandonware").

7 hours ago, Freq_flyer44 said:

We are basically coming full circle like FSX / P3D legacy again, where the 'base sim' is a best-effort and we need to load up 10 addons to make it any good.

Respectfully disagree. I only use REX AccuSeason to improve how MSFS looks. I think it looks darn good out of the box. 

As for ActiveSky, hmmmm. Skeptical was my first reaction. I used it for years in XP11 - but is there a need for it in MSFS? And why did they wait so long? I thought there was very limited access to the MSFS weather system (hence why REX “failed”). Did something change?

EDIT: I wrote the above before reading the FSElite article. There’s actually some exciting features there that MSFS lacks (historical data, thunderstorm turbulence).

Edited April 14, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

7 hours ago, Freq_flyer44 said:

We are basically coming full circle like FSX / P3D legacy again, where the 'base sim' is a best-effort and we need to load up 10 addons to make it any good.

Sorry what?! Are you sure you are flying with MSFS and not FSX? 

I do wonder, and feel sorry about what happened to those excellent clouds from the early days... Since then I have not really seen solid, to the horizon overcast layer to which i dive when I start to descent. Oh dear...

25 minutes ago, Juliett Alfa Romeo said:

Now I need a good offline ATC program like Pro ATC-X (yes, I know PATC-X is available but seems "abandonware").

That is in the old days, MSFS has now offeres from Real ATC and some other one (I forgot its name, salty something maybe) both use Generative AI to generate the ATC phrases and sounds.