Active Sky review

[jozeff 95]

20 minutes ago, Peter Webber said:

Africa. Where's that place? Africa? Oh! It's the continent MSFS has not yet discovered. Active Sky Review? Hello? Anyone try Africa? Are all reviews around the so called "1st world". Do you think this only applies to that zone? Maybe it greatly enhances "unknown" continents? Makes me question the focus of these forums. That would be the true test of Active Sky...

I know it's 2024 but I sincerely hope we will not start geopolitical discussions here. Flightsimming is a way for me to escape from reality;)

 

[Mace 1,960]

8 minutes ago, jozeff said:

I know it's 2024 but I sincerely hope we will not start geopolitical discussions here. Flightsimming is a way for me to escape from reality;)

 

He wasn't talking about geopolitics.  Where did you get that from?

@Peter Webber earlier in this thread I flew in the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, which is a fairly remote area in the Gobi Desert, and gave a mini-review.

[Ray Proudfoot 9,041]

I’ve hidden the daft post from someone who should know better. A two day holiday should have the desired effect … hopefully.

[jkeye 158]

So I purchased Real Turb and found it increased the realism of MSFS which I'd given up on for many years because everything had felt like it was on rails.I then bought ASFS with zero expectations and am pleased to say these two add-ons have got me using MSFS again.I am using ASFS in passive mode at the moment and it seems to add enough to make me want to keep using and experimenting with it till Asobo get the atmosphere right.

[Bobsk8 12,862]

19 minutes ago, jkeye said:

So I purchased Real Turb and found it increased the realism of MSFS which I'd given up on for many years because everything had felt like it was on rails.I then bought ASFS with zero expectations and am pleased to say these two add-ons have got me using MSFS again.I am using ASFS in passive mode at the moment and it seems to add enough to make me want to keep using and experimenting with it till Asobo get the atmosphere right.

Passive mode is using Asobo's weather. Active Sky preset is using Active to generate the weather, and everything else. 

[jkeye 158]

1 minute ago, Bobsk8 said:

Passive mode is using Asobo's weather. Active Sky preset is using Active to generate the weather, and everything else. 

Yes I know :-)

I find passive mode is good enough for the effects until I have time to try the active mode over the next few days

[F737MAX 5,738]

3 hours ago, blueshark747 said:

The audacity of some folks here trying and come down on certain content creators YOU NEVER SUPPORTED ANYWAY

Not supported because some of them are the equivalent of the National Enquirer.

We need a chart similar to this for flight simming:

 

Give me BlackBox711, 320 Sim Pilot, Into The Blue Sim, V1-Sim and even A330 Driver (when speaking about the 737). Insightful, useful and break down a complex subject matter into something most of us can follow.

Those are the content creators worthy of support.

Edited April 29 by F737MAX

[Mace 1,960]

Last night I spawned my little Piper Tomahawk into the Hayti Mid-Continent Airport -- pronounced HAY-tye -- and it was a daunting scene, CB's (thunderstorms) and lightning all around.   The only time I've seen that happen post-SU5/7 was in a hurricane.  At least now we can have the option of some proper depiction of thunderstorms.

What I want to do now is find a scenario where I fly INTO a line of CB's for example.  

I flew into weather in China, in the Erenhot-->Beijing flight, but it was only light rain showers and not CB's with thunder and lightning.

[UAL4life 242]

23 hours ago, MPL said:

Shame on them, Asobo then for not using the one of the best available resources!

Asobo has always been third rate and amateurish, although they have been getting better…

What they don’t get is that 3rd party weather developers do not want access to MeteoBlue’s data or servers, and just want access to the relevant simulation files to inject their own weather. 
 

But if perhaps MeteoBlue in fact does have a license restriction allowing that (perhaps utilizing a non-compete clause?) then that is just asinine and just proves Asobo does not understand what the community wants to even agree to something so restrictive. 
 

/rant

[Bobsk8 12,862]

Approaching KEWR, accompanied by lightning and Thunder,,,,😁

[vgbaron 3,715]

Y'kmow, I was scanning through the 35 pages of this thread and something jumped out at me - if you throw out the avid AS fans and toss out the avid AS haters, the meat of this thread is people posting  individual posts that they tried AS and it increased their enjoyment or simple statements of what some really like about AS without badmouthing MSFS/Asobo or anyone else.

To repeat an earlier comment, it's far from perfect but if it suits your style of flying, it adds a bunch to MSFS.

[btacon 1,850]

1 hour ago, vgbaron said:

Y'kmow, I was scanning through the 35 pages of this thread and something jumped out at me - if you throw out the avid AS fans and toss out the avid AS haters, the meat of this thread is people posting  individual posts that they tried AS and it increased their enjoyment or simple statements of what some really like about AS without badmouthing MSFS/Asobo or anyone else.

To repeat an earlier comment, it's far from perfect but if it suits your style of flying, it adds a bunch to MSFS.

THIS. Thank you for concisely stating the only facts in this thread.  All the rest is opinion not fact.

-B

Edited April 30 by btacon

[OneOfMany 317]

4 hours ago, UAL4life said:

just want access to the relevant simulation files to inject their own weather. 
 

As someone who never dug into the data files of this or any other flight game, just a question to your request. 

In other games, where the weather was generated on the user's  local system, it would make sense that the relevant files to modify would also be on the user's system.

In MS2020, with the weather being generated on Ms servers and I belive streamed (as multi-player can see the same clouds/fronts), are there actually the same weather files on the user's system that can be modified? If not, then it would be unlikely that anyone would be allowed the server side exposure to the apis used. 

 

 

[Cpt_Piett 4,824]

Passive mode (MSFS in control of the clouds):

Preset mode (ASFS in control of the clouds):

The difference is quite significant - and I can't say which one is more realistic as I don't have access to the weather data that ASFS and MSFS uses. 

Location: Motiti Island, 11nm off the coast from NZTG Tauranga, 86nm from NZAA and 234nm from NZWN. Not sure if ASFS is able to access the NZTG METAR data (as most NZ METARs are not globally accessible). It might use either nearby METARs (NZAA and NZWN), GFS Forecasts, or a combination of both. So it's a bit of an interesting case, I think. 

ASFS conditions: 

Quote

@POS 300040Z 13504KT 9999 -RA FEW040 BKN118 17/09 Q1021 RMK AS DEPICTED
(Cloned by: NZTG, closest weather station when the aircraft was on the ground)

FEW040 extends to:11557 feet (Cloud type:CU, Turbulence:None, Icing:None, Shear:Gradual, Cloud shape:Flat).  Previous cloud: None, next cloud: BKN118 (Through extended weather data grid)
BKN118 extends to:19614 feet (Cloud type:CU, Turbulence:None, Icing:None, Shear:Gradual, Cloud shape:Flat).  Previous cloud: FEW040, next cloud: OVC388 (Through extended weather data grid)
OVC388 extends to:42614 feet (Cloud type:CI, Turbulence:None, Icing:None, Shear:Gradual, Cloud shape:Flat).  Previous cloud: BKN118, next cloud: None (Synthed Cirrus)

Surface winds calculated from the closest data grid point

Surface temperature calculated from the closest data grid point

This station has complete visibility information. No interpolation needed
Altimeter interpolation based on:
  -NZWN 234nm SW (Q1020), NZAA 86nm NW (Q1021)
This station has complete Precipitation information. No interpolation needed

NOTE: Clouds, visibility and precipitation reported are the ones from the active cell weather

 

[Cognita 1,113]

1 hour ago, OneOfMany said:

are there actually the same weather files on the user's system that can be modified?

There may be weather parameters on the client system, but I am confident Microsoft is never going to give write access to those fields, much less to anything on its servers, as this would open a security vulnerability. It could be mitigated but this would likely require work to the architecture and would require ongoing active threat monitoring and I just do not see them doing this; even with mitigation efforts and monitoring there is still a vulnerability there and they are not going to risk their infrastructure to allow a third-party developer to generate weather on a 60 dollar game -- no matter how many people complain and express their hopes and wishes on AVSIM. Maybe they will take a different approach in 2024, but from what I can determine about 2020, that is just not going happen.