Active Sky review

[Reader 2,034]

5 minutes ago, Sethos said:

There's a big disparity between what every streamer, YouTuber and reviewer sees and what some Avsimmer sees I've found. When we actually see video comparisons, results are all over the place and not very impressive. However, some Avsimmers find it to be the most impressive thing they've ever seen apparently and lifts the sim to new heights, with lots of hyperbolic statements, which is weird. And then a lot of energy is spent putting down the people who made the actual video content, trying hard to dismiss their opinion.

For me, just under £24 is a small price to pay for something that was clearly and accurately described before purchase
and which for me, in a nutshell, makes worthwhile improvements.

I prefer to make up my own mind and I abhor the videos that appear almost immediately, promoting the unresearched 
opinion of anyone whose main purpose is to amass clicks and therefore financial gain.
No one can know what hidden agenda may lurk behind their comments and they need to be taken with the proverbial pinch of salt.
Similarly, the written opinion of someone whose main purpose is to justify having spent the money may well not be trustworthy.

How things look is totally subjective and the forensic dissection of cloud types is something best left to meteorologists,
though I am sure that there are as many armchair meteorologists as there are armchair pilots, both imagining that they
are experts in the real-world field.

[JaseMelbo 389]

I reckon with MS2024 around the corner, they missed the boat with this one.

Jase

[Tom_L 541]

6 minutes ago, Reader said:

How things look is totally subjective and the forensic dissection of cloud types is something best left to meteorologists,

100% agreed with the first part, but I have different thoughts on the second. There is a reason that MS hired the Working Title crew to bring the avionics to a more realistic level than before: because it is a simulator, and it should strive to simulate the real world as accurate as possible. I think people rightfully have high expectations for the realism of aircraft, avionics and scenery. So why should it be enough to paint a few cumulus-like clouds in the sky to simulate the weather? It's not just the optics: a warm front means extensive, layered clouds with the risk of icing, while the cold front is more likely to be associated with convection and turbulence. Due to the simplification of the weather representation, a whole dimension of real world aviation is missing. And we wouldn't accept it if there were only G1000 as avionics in the simulator, would we?

[bobcat999 8,489]

45 minutes ago, Sethos said:

There's a big disparity between what every streamer, YouTuber and reviewer sees and what some Avsimmer sees I've found. When we actually see video comparisons, results are all over the place and not very impressive. However, some Avsimmers find it to be the most impressive thing they've ever seen apparently and lifts the sim to new heights, with lots of hyperbolic statements, which is weird. And then a lot of energy is spent putting down the people who made the actual video content, trying hard to dismiss their opinion.

As usual, you speak complete common sense.

There are polarised views ranging from scam at one end, to jaw-dropping difference at the other, and I have come to expect this from a community that finds detail important, but also holds such wide ranging views on everything flight sim related.

As is often the case, I feel the situation is somewhere in the middle.  If I buy the product, it will be mainly for the turbulence effects in clouds and wakes etc. 
I used AS before in FSX and found it to be superb for this. 

As for the cloud / weather comparisons I have seen, my own opinion is that the AS / Asobo depictions are different, but I couldn't say if one was better than the other. 
In fact, if someone showed me screenshots, I would probably have difficulty telling you which was which.
I will say one thing - simmers expectations for 'accurate' weather depictions are far to high. 
It will never be perfect whichever way you do it, so expecting 100% likeness to the live weather cameras is expecting too much.
Both MS and AS seem to do a reasonably good job, but like I say, they just do it differently.

But in any case, as I stated, it will probably be worth the price for me just for me for the turbulence effects, and I dare say the product will continue to improve over time as well.

The weather effects will be improved to some degree in MSFS2024, so by then the product might not be compatible, or even necessary if MS / Asobo add better turbulence and cloud types as they seem to suggest they will.
However, we still have no release date on MSFS2024 yet, so if you don't want to wait, there is no option but to buy, and at that price I would not consider it a waste of money personally. 
If it was £50-70 I would have to reconsider, so I think the current pricing is sensible and about right.

[aniiran 432]

I bought it and think it is word not allowed.  It's basically a worse REX Weather force. 

Denver is having a storm and 30 minutes after I got off the plane from Denver,  I fired up active sky.  Although the weather was correct on the ground (low cloud deck at 500 in snow). once I got above 9000 feet the sky was clear.  But in reality there was a thick icy soup all the way up to 20000 feet and then another layer of altostratus at 24-28k feet. It didn't depict any of this.   

I then put on MSFS Live weather and it was much much closer with a thick layer of stratus to 15,000 feet and then another layer above that up to 30k feet. Not perfect but still better.  I have tried 5 times to produce a good result and just can't get a better result than MSFS live weather.

Tread Carefully.  If you didn't like REX weather force this is basically the same thing with less accurate depictions.  

[Bunchy 227]

3 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

I just watched that.  I was pretty surprised that his main critique of AS wx depictions was that the clouds were too flat, and lacked vertical development compared to MSFS.  

This surprised me because the images of the real world weather at the time was of a gray stratus layer.  I can understand a person's opinion of sky aesthetic being subjective, but shouldn't it count for something that the AS depictions were actually the more accurate of the two?

I'm starting to think a lot of these reviews are being offered by people who have spent very little time looking at clouds in the real world, and perhaps none at all looking at them in flight.  It's like we've got a generation of folks who think they've learned what the sky should look like from MSFS, vs going outside every once in a while and looking at it (to say nothing of studying weather fundamentals and understanding a bit of the difference in clouds you get with a stable vs unstable atmosphere.)

Depiction of the clouds and accuracy of the metar are separate issues in my humble opinion.

I have no issue with the depiction of the metar/weather, however even the cumulus clouds have flat bottoms and when you get a few together all the flat bottoms create a pattern of lines which look like banding which is unnatural.

Looking at the clouds from above, they do look better but not as defined as the default MSFS clouds, they are bland and lack the same level of contrast.

I just did an approach into LGAV and what I saw matched the metar. However, the scattered cumulus over the water had flat bottoms and it looked they were intersecting with the water. It looked totally unrealistic, even though it was correct cloud type and coverage according to the metar.

I'm a little surprised it hasn't been mentioned more.

Stu

[wim123 763]

1 hour ago, aniiran said:

I bought it and think it is word not allowed.  It's basically a worse REX Weather force. 

Denver is having a storm and 30 minutes after I got off the plane from Denver,  I fired up active sky.  Although the weather was correct on the ground (low cloud deck at 500 in snow). once I got above 9000 feet the sky was clear.  But in reality there was a thick icy soup all the way up to 20000 feet and then another layer of altostratus at 24-28k feet. It didn't depict any of this.   

I then put on MSFS Live weather and it was much much closer with a thick layer of stratus to 15,000 feet and then another layer above that up to 30k feet. Not perfect but still better.  I have tried 5 times to produce a good result and just can't get a better result than MSFS live weather.

Tread Carefully.  If you didn't like REX weather force this is basically the same thing with less accurate depictions.  

rolls eyes, and just from one flight you make your conclusions?

 

[Piotr007 167]

I have issues. Running clear skies or live, activesky weather is not forcing itself into the sim. Restart during sim session does not reconnect with connector... wth is going on?

Edited April 20 by Piotr007

[Bobsk8 12,807]

20 minutes ago, Piotr007 said:

I have issues. Running clear skies or live, activesky weather is not forcing itself into the sim. Restart during sim session does not reconnect with connector... wth is going on?

Several things to check, go to the Active Sky forum. https://forums.hifisimtech.com/forums/asfs.57/

[Fiorentoni 4,273]

1 hour ago, aniiran said:

Tread Carefully.  If you didn't like REX weather force this is basically the same thing with less accurate depictions.  

A bit premature judging from one specific single case, don't you think so?
Anyway what was the METAR for KDEN? If METAR didn't mention no clouds above 9000 (which it rarely does), AS has to interpolate other data or even make a plausible guess about clouds at that altitude. MSFS live weather can use the Meteoblue data, which for higher cloud layers is indeed more accurate than METAR data.
The general accuracy however depends on what you're looking for: Accuracy to real life outside the window (MSFS default might be better here) or accuracy to the METAR (AS might be better here).

[Noel 4,531]

Clouds and weather are for me a critical part of the most basic elements of a complete flight sim so I'd far rather have it contained fully, not outsourced to any 3rd party.  Everything above the ground falls in this domain.  I'm rallying for MS/A to take it to the next level and now that they have greatly improved multithreading for 2024 they know what they can get away with in terms of voxel density and cloud morphology.  Would it benefit MS/A to hire HiFi as a consultant?  Perhaps, not sure.  Or maybe it's a case of working with MeteoBlue to develop further what we already have in the context of that better processing power in 2024.

[DavidP 1,420]

4 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

I think many Sim Pilots think they are real pilots. obvious from some of their posts.😉

Yes, to the point that they will argue with people who actually are experienced real pilots and tell them they are wrong 🙄

[vgbaron 3,701]

3 hours ago, aniiran said:

 

I then put on MSFS Live weather and it was much much closer with a thick layer of stratus to 15,000 feet and then another layer above that up to 30k feet. Not perfect but still better.  I have tried 5 times to produce a good result and just can't get a better result than MSFS live weather.

 

Considering that MSFS does not display stratus clouds this is interesting.

[Bobsk8 12,807]

Just now, vgbaron said:

Considering that MSFS does not display stratus clouds this is interesting.

A couple of thousand flights in MSFS, haven't seen a stratus cloud until Active Sky, two days ago. 

[lwt1971 7,441]

8 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

Considering that MSFS does not display stratus clouds this is interesting.

The MSFS core weather engine can definitely render stratus clouds but only in manually configured weather (the only cloud type I believe the core MSFS weather engine cannot render regardless of live or manual weather is Cirrus, AFAIK). MSFS default live weather is not able to feed the engine the right data (from Meteoblue + METAR blending) for stratus I guess unlike pre-SU7, but add-ons like AS which basically just control the sim's manual weather certainly can.
 

Edited April 20 by lwt1971