ActiveSky FS Released

[vgbaron 3,687]

3 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

My guess, he didn't know how to set it up.  Wouldn't be the first time a Youtuber did a review about a new product, and was clueless. 

Yup! I recall a youtuber who got a free copy of MSFS2020 AND a Honeycomb Alpha yoke - didn't have a clue and decided it didn't work. This :streamer" also doesn't have a clue,

[Dreamflight767 314]

Thank you for bringing this product to MSFS.  Many, many years ago (while using another sim platform), I remember one day flying and thinking how boring it was using the same generic, bland, VFR weather over and over again - that sim either didn't have weather or it didn't work well, can't remember.  I decided to do a quick internet search and discovered Active Sky.  I bought Active Sky and it blew my mind away.  I remember that day and how much adding real world weather to my flying made me fall even more in love with this hobby.  The sounds, the color of the sky, the clouds just sucked me in, I was amazed.  I'll always be grateful to Active Sky for that day...or, maybe I should be mad because of all the $$$$ I've spent on simming since.  LOL.  

[RALF9636 1,978]

19 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

You should deactive RealTurb, since you cannot turn on terrain turbulence only and will therefore have cumulated wind turbulence. I've already emailed him though so he updates it and enables the use of *only* terrain turbulence.

I have made several flights with turbulence by both ASFS and Realturb during the Beta. There were no issues. Realturb and ASFS enhance each other. I found no adverse effects of using them together.

[Fiorentoni 4,257]

1 minute ago, RALF9636 said:

I have made several flights with turbulence by both ASFS and Realturb during the Beta. There were no issues. Realturb and ASFS enhance each other. I found no adverse effects of using them together.

Did you have cloud and CAT turublence set to 100% in RealTurb? I'd imagine it would just double up then.

[lwt1971 7,425]

44 minutes ago, Purr said:

I'm still not understanding why they can't look at this or changing to a different weather source provider? Maybe their contract with Meteoblue was for like 10 years or something so they can't change...

In any case, I wonder where we can vote / post on the MSFS forum specifically to rant about this chronic MSFS limitation of not opening up the weather api?

What MS/Asobo really need to work on, given that they messed it up since SU7 (but also have made it better since to be fair) is how they reconcile METAR data with global Meteoblue data. The blending is not good as it could be yet, and for someone like me who doesn't really care too much about METAR I found the purely global weather simulation pre-SU7 to be pretty darn good and immersive, and miss it 🙂 

At least the core MSFS weather engine is clearly capable of rendering and doing things properly (i.e. clouds), as manual non-live weather shows, and as these sort of weather add-ons show (since they basically just control manual MSFS weather in a fine-grained ways with their own weather data).

I am waiting to see what MSFS 2024 improves in METAR and global weather blending, maybe they might even provide an option for pure global vs METAR+global, etc.. in addition to this, there's also what they'll improve in the core weather engine in visual rendering capabilities. What they've spoken about as coming in v2024 seems promising like better simulation of thunderstorms and super cells, actual simulation of tornadoes, etc (all of which would require core weather improvements at the least). What'll be interesting is in live weather if they're actually able to show these thunderstorms, supercells, etc given their current not-so-great blending of METAR data with global weather data.

That's what I'd want them to focus on first before spending effort to open up weather writing APIs (just IMO of course). If they're able to both improve the core sim's METAR blending as well as open up weather writing APIs, then even better.

In any case, good on HiFi and other devs for putting out these kinds of add-ons working within the confines of what MSFS currently allows in terms of weather writing. It just increases the choices for users.. and like I keep saying, no add-on is ever going to hurt the sim, so more the merrier 🙂
 

Edited April 18 by lwt1971

[RALF9636 1,978]

5 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

Did you have cloud and CAT turublence set to 100% in RealTurb? I'd imagine it would just double up then.

Yes, default settings.

They are different kinds of turbulence effects. It's not just doubling the same effect.

To me the effect of both together looked good.

Just try and play around with the settings and see if you like it.

Edited April 18 by RALF9636

[Soulflight 97]

40 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

You should deactive RealTurb, since you cannot turn on terrain turbulence only and will therefore have cumulated wind turbulence. I've already emailed him though so he updates it and enables the use of *only* terrain turbulence.

Ok, in the settings you could in theory set all other turbulences to 0% intensity except terrain turbulence. could have thought about that myself actually....

[abennett 172]

If we want to use fully AS for both rendering of the weather and the air effects etc. What setting do we put for the weather in the sim?

[Fiorentoni 4,257]

6 minutes ago, Soulflight said:

Ok, in the settings you could in theory set all other turbulences to 0% intensity except terrain turbulence. could have thought about that myself actually....

No, you can't. Minimum is 20% unfortunately. It does not accept 0%.

[Fiorentoni 4,257]

5 minutes ago, abennett said:

If we want to use fully AS for both rendering of the weather and the air effects etc. What setting do we put for the weather in the sim?

Doesn't matter. AS will overwrite.

[Bobsk8 12,774]

Does it matter where you install this program?

[vgbaron 3,687]

53 minutes ago, Soulflight said:

AS working fine for me, together with flow. Still experimenting with both live weather modes.

 

But, my question remains: what about the turbulence additions by other apps, FSRealTurb CAT and the low alt turbulence options of FSRealistic. I used both. What should i better deactivate now? Are there any known conflicts?

During testing I had FSR running and had no issues. I just left FSR as I had originally.

[Sky_Pilot071 580]

Gaming interfaces are needed to support  gaming input devices.

sp

[Fiorentoni 4,257]

So did my first flight with historical weather. Who would've thought I'd ever see 17 degrees celsius in Brazil in MSFS 😄 (when I fly it's always high noon over there). Really great feeling.
At my destination Sao Paolo - Congonhas (GREAT scenery by PauloRicardo, 100% recommended) I switched over to live weather and compared AS live weather with MSFS live weather and then with a live webcam from the airport. AS cloud depiction was much closer to reality. MSFS showed almost no clouds, just some kind of fog. AS showed broken clouds. METAR is 6000 BKN010.
In the webcam it was non-foggy but very cloudy.

Edited April 18 by Fiorentoni

[vgbaron 3,687]

5 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Does it matter where you install this program?

Nope, I have mine on my E drive.