ActiveSky FS Released

[MarcG 3,029]

54 minutes ago, Damian Clark said:

Then that's a brand new issue we haven't seen.  Sorry about that.  Please visit our support forums or open a ticket, we'd be happy to figure this out and get you running ASAP.

FYI I uninstalled, restarted PC, reinstalled (same custom location) and it's now working as expected (Historic Weather included). I've experienced this before with other programs on odd occasions so perhaps it's my Windows install acting up so put this one down to User Issue Resolved 😉I'#m now gonna have a proper play, thanks again 🙂

[psolk 3,053]

36 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

@Damian Clark

Been having some rather 'extreme' diving and climbing during approach during a mild storm so today went through all my ASFS settings.

I noticed there are two settings for MAXIMUM DOWNDRAFT RATE & MAXIMUM UPDRAFT RATE.

These were both set to 1500 fpm but the default value is clearly marked as 1000 fpm on centre of screen.

I have not changed these settings myself. This is from a 'default' install of the beta over the release version. I have reset them to 1000 and will see if that makes a difference.

If the app is fine tuned and tested to work well and airplanes are not too 'crazy' with the default 1000fpm then.....maybe if by accident ALL customers are actually starting off with the wrong defaults (boosted by 50% to 1500) then this MIGHT cause some of the sudden loss of control during flight they are experiencing?

My PMDG 739 lost all control during approach yesterday as I was about to start down the glideslope so had to land manually as trimming useless against such wild external varying forces. 

Can someone else check to see if their defaults are the correct 1000 or the 1500 mine were set to?

Sounds similar to what happened with me in the PMDG although mine was completely uncontrollable.  

It was fine with the original ASFS build so I think something is amiss.  So far Fenix users have reported issues, LVFR reported a similar behavior now it's starting to look like the same thing with PMDG. Going to turn all the wind settings and effects to 0

Edited April 20 by psolk

[sloppysmusic 264]

23 minutes ago, psolk said:

Going to turn all the wind settings and effects to 0

Yes turning everything OFF and then ON again one slider at a time will hopefully reveal the culprit.

[AnkH 2,282]

Finally someone made a video why all external weather engines lack compared to the default: 

 

While local weather might look way better with AS or even REX, the impossibility to draw weather fronts is the reason I never use REX or AS for non-locally restricted flights. For me, proper depiction of those weather fronts is just too important.

[MarcG 3,029]

12 minutes ago, AnkH said:

While local weather might look way better with AS or even REX, the impossibility to draw weather fronts is the reason I never use REX or AS for non-locally restricted flights. For me, proper depiction of those weather fronts is just too important.

You make a good point for Airline type flying and maybe it's something that can be worked on, personally as I mainly do GA and only on average 1 hour flights I'm only interested in the immediate vicinity weather. So doing away with the magic Asobo cumulus and having clouds that actually depict real life around me is all I'm really after (well that and proper thunderstorms but I've yet to test this with AS), so far in my testing this morning AS has simply been better with this regard but I've only been floating about in the Drone so not done any actual flying as of yet, however first impressions for me are very good.

I will add I think it's a great shame I needed to buy something that essentially "fixes" (to a degree) what Asobo broke with SU7 and what they still haven't bothered to amend, it was this reasoning and with their poor Quality Control record (in general) that I have little faith that MSFS2024 Live Weather will be that much better...but; I would love it if I was proved wrong, time will tell on that one of course. In the meantime AS will repair that hole and I'll certainly get my monies worth from it and long before MSFS2024 arrives.

[Fiorentoni 4,303]

27 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Finally someone made a video why all external weather engines lack compared to the default: 

 

While local weather might look way better with AS or even REX, the impossibility to draw weather fronts is the reason I never use REX or AS for non-locally restricted flights. For me, proper depiction of those weather fronts is just too important.

The comparison in the video is a bit flawed, though. While using AS normally one would not enable it only during cruise. One would enable it from the start and then in the cruise, a (as slow as you want) transition to the overcast status would occur, which makes it seem as one would be "flying into" another type of weather.
There will be no real fronts or weather cells, no, but the feeling of flying towards another type of weather can still be there with AS. This is not shown in the video (he just turns it on during cruise), so it doesn't mirror the whole experience you get with AS.
I've done two IFR flights so far and flying over larger distances really did not "feel" different from MSFS default in that regard. It organically felt like crossing different cloud formations and weather zones.

All that said your personal preference is totally valid, of course.
 

Edited April 20 by Fiorentoni

[Bobsk8 12,826]

4 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

The comparison in the video is a bit flawed, though. While using AS normally one would not enable it only during cruise. One would enable it from the start and then in the cruise, a (as slow as you want) transition to the overcast status would occur, which makes it seem as one would be "flying into" another type of weather.
There will be no real fronts or weather cells, no, but the feeling of flying towards another type of weather can still be there with AS. This is not shown in the video (he just turns it on during cruise), so it doesn't mirror the whole experience you get with AS.
I've done two IFR flights so far and flying over larger distances really did not "feel" different from MSFS default in that regard. It organically felt like crossing different cloud formations and weather zones.

All that said your personal preference is totally valid, of course.
 

I flew yesterday from two airports about 500 miles apart.  I took off in IFR weather, 500 foot ceiling into a solid overcast. climbed above it at around 12,000 feet. Approaching the destination, the weather changed slowly, becoming VFR at destination, with scattered clouds at 3-5000ft.  AS generating weather all the way. Nothing different, then one would see in real life on a commercial jet. 

[AnkH 2,282]

16 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Nothing different, then one would see in real life on a commercial jet. 

If you are blind, yes. At least here in Europe, especially during April, weatherfronts are THE predominant skies. Heck, you often have the situation depicted in the video visible from AGL = 0, not even speaking from cruiselevel, where you can see weatherfronts miles ahead. Add a mountain range to the scenario where you often have one sky on one side and a complete different one on the other side. Clearly visible while flying above the mountains. Nothing AS can do, also REX is unable to depict that anywhere near realistic.

[Alti 68]

1 hour ago, RALF9636 said:

That's not true. I use it all the time on COM2 in the Fenix.

Are you sure you have COM2 turned on properly in your aircraft? And probably you need to deactivate any auto-comm features of the sim or any other addons.

Hi, in my PMDG737 it works now also with COM2.
My Problem was the automatic Copilot from MSFS, he set alwas frequency back to center.
i have deactivated the virtual copilot and now the METAR Voice from Activesky works in PMDG also on COM2.

[RobPol471 173]

A little while ago with this METAR at the Fort Worth airport in Texas:

KFTW 201158Z AUTO 04014G19KT 2SM R16/5000VP6000FT +TSRA BR FEW006 BKN029 OVC037 14/14 A3005 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT ALQDS PRESFR P0005 T01390139

I saw the differences between the MSFS 2020 and ASFS weather with the plane on the runway.

The main ones concern that ASFS displays lightning that also illuminates clouds very well while they are completely absent in Msfs 2020 while Msfs displays much more rain than ASFS.

[daan_vb 37]

3 hours ago, Damian Clark said:

Thanks everyone for your support, feedback, encouragement and constructive criticism.  From my side, I've found that the vast majority of those who've actually tried ASFS are very favorable and positive (with some exceptions of course), while the vast majority of negative feedback is seemingly from those who haven't and won't, and it just looks like they are trying to influence others to stay away.  I'm personally focused on the feedback from those who've actually tried it and actually want further ASFS development, and there's a ton of great feedback there.  There's definitely some issues and adjustments we need to take care of, and we're working hard on that.  We're also working on lots of new features.  We have a big list of items we were hoping we'd get a chance to work on, and thanks to you, we've been given that chance.  It's clear that AS has successfully provided many with the features and solutions they've been looking for, and I wanted to thank everyone who's given it a try and given us an opportunity, once again, to continue further development.  Without your support, we simply could not continue.  Thank you so much for giving me and the HiFi team the opportunity to keep doing what we love.

Remember that you can give us direct feedback, suggestions and bug reports at our forums (http://forums.hifisimtech.com) and our support helpdesk (http://hifisimtech.zendesk.com).  Thanks all!

I did watch a couple of the streams and I thought the criticism was grossly unfair and it became mob mentality to attack the product that they didn't really know how to work and didn't give it a fair crack. It did leave a bit of a sour taste as I do like some those streamers. I have been flying with Active Sky since its release and I have to say its been great. Nicer variety of clouds, excellent turbulence effects, I like the public PIREP feature which I feel not many people know about. I'm really looking forward to further updates and can't wait to see what you have up your sleeve.

I'm still tweaking the transition and update time to get it a bit  smoother as I sometimes see abrupt changes rather than smooth transitions so not sure if its a config thing or it needs to be tuned a bit. (I have update 15 mins/transition 50). Also I find that rain isn't always depicted even though its in the metar

I think maybe a tutorial video to go through the configuration settings and features and demonstrate their effects might be useful. Also could we have an option to turn off the metar update reports in-sim please

Edited April 20 by daan_vb

[vortac 5]

I've purchased and did my first flight with ASFS. It's a good product overall, I would say.

I notice very sudden change on the clouds durıng enroute. I did not change any default settings on ASFS. So, transition was 50 with 30 mins of download interval. When I was enroute, all clouds around were disappeared. Appx. 5 mins later new clouds started to inject slowly. Within this 5 mins time frame, everywhere was CAVOK. There was no change/affect on wind and temperature. They were both smooth and stable.

Then I've reduced transition setting to 30. After this reduction, clouds were gone suddenly and re-appeared as before. But all clouds were OVC even the cloud radar shows somethıng BKN or SCT.

I believe cloud transition or injection needs to be tuned as not disappeared and appeared suddenly. Or does anyone has any settings suggestion to make cloud injections more smooth?

Thank you.

 

[daan_vb 37]

5 minutes ago, vortac said:

I've purchased and did my first flight with ASFS. It's a good product overall, I would say.

I notice very sudden change on the clouds durıng enroute. I did not change any default settings on ASFS. So, transition was 50 with 30 mins of download interval. When I was enroute, all clouds around were disappeared. Appx. 5 mins later new clouds started to inject slowly. Within this 5 mins time frame, everywhere was CAVOK. There was no change/affect on wind and temperature. They were both smooth and stable.

Then I've reduced transition setting to 30. After this reduction, clouds were gone suddenly and re-appeared as before. But all clouds were OVC even the cloud radar shows somethıng BKN or SCT.

I believe cloud transition or injection needs to be tuned as not disappeared and appeared suddenly. Or does anyone has any settings suggestion to make cloud injections more smooth?

Thank you.

 

Yes I'm seeing something similar

[fsiscool 251]

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

ne would enable it from the start and then in the cruise, a (as slow as you want) transition to the overcast status would occur, which makes it seem as one would be "flying into" another type of weather.

It is not only about flying into "different weather". It also about flying alongside "different weather". On a typical long haul flight you cross boundaries between different weather maybe 5-10 times but almost during the entire flight different weather can be recognized to both side along the route.

I have bought ASFS too and many aspects about it are very nice, but we should not forget that seeing different weather zones while cruising is a feature, that is only offered by default live weather. I will maybe provide some screenshots of what I mean.

[mikeklimek 158]

Quick question (forgive me if the answer is obvious and I'm just missing it):

Let's say I have the update intervals and smoothing set the way I like it and the last update occurs just prior to entering my arrival airport's airspace, i.e., a metar prior to the arrival airport.  When I make the approach to the arrival airport, will that airport's conditions reflect the last metar the app updated to, or the actual arrival airport's metar? 

Put another way, will I be landing with winds from the last metar update or the airport's metar?