Active Sky review

[Stearmandriver 2,332]

1 minute ago, VHOJT said:

Let them know at Hifi - if they don't already 🙂 

I did; there's a thread over there that's dedicated to visibility, though it seems most folks on it are more concerned about the amount of bloom around the sun lol.  But I get the sense that these depictions are in flux, so hopefully improvements coming.  Perhaps it warrants another option or slider - I'm personally perfectly content with all the sun bloom in the world as long as visibility distances are rendered correctly.

  I imagine it's a minority of simmers who enjoy low vis flying or are concerned about it, but to my mind, a sim being able to accurately depict the requested visibility is just a basic function, something any weather depiction system really needs to be able to do.  It's infuriated me since MSFS released that you cannot set visibility manually; I mean, you could do this in FS98 and earlier.  It's just a ridiculous omission.  But I will say that when MSFS live weather renders fog for a METAR specifying very low vis, it does an absolutely superb job.  I guess the trick is finding a way to make presets mimic that.

[vgbaron 3,716]

@Stearmandriver  that's strange. My main way of flying is to search for low vis approaches and I've busted minimums on a few. I've found the vis to be great for this. I'll try some test flights again with 8888. I've been mainly testing TS so it is possible that something changed between versions. Won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. Did your visibility settings in ASFS change? Perhaps you clicked easy mode button  by mistake? Either case, if it's off I'll post in the beta forum.

 

Thanx

[Stearmandriver 2,332]

1 hour ago, vgbaron said:

@Stearmandriver  that's strange. My main way of flying is to search for low vis approaches and I've busted minimums on a few. I've found the vis to be great for this. I'll try some test flights again with 8888. I've been mainly testing TS so it is possible that something changed between versions. Won't get a chance until tomorrow afternoon. Did your visibility settings in ASFS change? Perhaps you clicked easy mode button  by mistake? Either case, if it's off I'll post in the beta forum.

 

Thanx

I was in easy mode simply because I already had the sim starting up when I clicked on hard mode and it said a restart was required, which meant a sim restart was required, so I didn't t do it.  The way I read the rm manual though, there's nothing in easy mode that should have affected visibility.  I went through each option one at a time anyway and set everything to fastest refresh etc.  Present pos conditions said it was rendering 1/4sm, 1/8sm etc correctly per Metar but that's sure not what I was seeing. 

Now I did read in 8888 (the only version I've used) they disabled the generation of the lowest cloud layer in fog conditions; I did wonder if that was related?

[vgbaron 3,716]

8 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

I was in easy mode simply because I already had the sim starting up when I clicked on hard mode and it said a restart was required, which meant a sim restart was required, so I didn't t do it.  The way I read the rm manual though, there's nothing in easy mode that should have affected visibility.  I went through each option one at a time anyway and set everything to fastest refresh etc.  Present pos conditions said it was rendering 1/4sm, 1/8sm etc correctly per Metar but that's sure not what I was seeing. 

Now I did read in 8888 (the only version I've used) they disabled the generation of the lowest cloud layer in fog conditions; I did wonder if that was related?

That's a good possibility.  Will have to look at that. I'm not at my system right now but IIRC when you switch from easy to real you just need to restart AS not MSFS.

Damian will get it sorted when we nail down the issue.

[Baber20 1,478]

14 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

Flight Level  F 360.  Clouds below me, above me, and at my level.  Never saw that in default weather.

 

Seen it numerous times in default weather.

[F737MAX 5,738]

40 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

Seen it numerous times in default weather.

MSFS presets, maybe.

Default MSFS Live Weather, almost never.

[StoneDoor 92]

15 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

MSFS presets, maybe.

Default MSFS Live Weather, almost never.

Heavy clouds like that are rare, above 36000 ft.

[F737MAX 5,738]

34 minutes ago, StoneDoor said:

Heavy clouds like that are rare, above 36000 ft.

True. Though, seeing high-level clouds with MSFS Live Weather is extremely rare.

It's boring to always be far above the highest cloud layer. ASFS rectifies that, even if it doesn't quite get it right.

[Bobsk8 12,863]

1 hour ago, F737MAX said:

MSFS presets, maybe.

Default MSFS Live Weather, almost never.

I never have used Presets in MSFS. Always Live weather. 

[psolk 3,057]

2 hours ago, F737MAX said:

MSFS presets, maybe.

Default MSFS Live Weather, almost never.

In the US with live weather I frequently was in the clouds even at FL360...  Absolutely something that was there with default weather.  

Landed in Newark yesterday and Metar indicated -RA but the rain didn't start until 10 minutes after I landed when I got to the gate.  I'll have to check my transition times with the latest build...  

[fppilot 4,397]

3 hours ago, psolk said:

In the US with live weather I frequently was in the clouds even at FL360...  Absolutely something that was there with default weather.  

Landed in Newark yesterday and Metar indicated -RA but the rain didn't start until 10 minutes after I landed when I got to the gate.  I'll have to check my transition times with the latest build...  

There have always been delays even in the best weather injection addons.  Just consumed by the process of acquiring the weather from sources and then positioning the weather information in the sim.  I use my iPad and Fltplan.Go when I fly.  Have done so since at least 2016.  So I am able to compare what I see in the sim to radar echos from the live aviation/weather app.  I believe that with FSX/P3D, AS16 may have used a projection model of some sort as occasionally here in the USA I would be attempting to laterally stay ahead of a moving line of thunderstorms but would find the AS16 weather was a bit ahead of live radar.  Only happened occasionally.

BTW, on Saturday, mid-day, as I was starting a flight from KTYQ in Indianapolis, Active Sky FS was presenting me with a very nicely depicted area of thunderstorms with in-cloud lightening (as opposed to cloud-to-ground) and occasional thunder.  All I feel they need to adjust, based on that experience, is to add some variable-length delays to the thunder.  It seemed like the same interval after each flash.  There are occasions where in normal life, especially at night, we can see lightening but not hear the resulting thunder due to distance.  And in most occasions the length of time between the lightening and thunder varies to a good extent.  The lightening is not always the same distance away, and that affects time to hearing the associated thunder.

[vgbaron 3,716]

@Stearmandriver  JIC you didn't see Damian's response re the visibility issue -

"We're aware of potential inaccuracies at that level between 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2SM as well as a few other ranges between this and 10SM. We're working on improving things there through alternative visibility obscuration methods. Thank you."

[Mace 1,960]

35 minutes ago, fppilot said:

There are occasions where in normal life, especially at night, we can see lightening but not hear the resulting thunder due to distance.  

I've heard that called "heat lightning" even though all it is would be distant storms.  It's a local-yokel term I think.

[TomCYYZ 219]

1 hour ago, fppilot said:

 

BTW, on Saturday, mid-day, as I was starting a flight from KTYQ in Indianapolis, Active Sky FS was presenting me with a very nicely depicted area of thunderstorms with in-cloud lightening (as opposed to cloud-to-ground) and occasional thunder.  All I feel they need to adjust, based on that experience, is to add some variable-length delays to the thunder.  It seemed like the same interval after each flash.  There are occasions where in normal life, especially at night, we can see lightening but not hear the resulting thunder due to distance.  And in most occasions the length of time between the lightening and thunder varies to a good extent.  The lightening is not always the same distance away, and that affects time to hearing the associated thunder.

Agreed, thanks for your insight...That would be awesome, not a biggie for some but a nice touch.

[Stearmandriver 2,332]

3 hours ago, vgbaron said:

@Stearmandriver  JIC you didn't see Damian's response re the visibility issue -

"We're aware of potential inaccuracies at that level between 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2SM as well as a few other ranges between this and 10SM. We're working on improving things there through alternative visibility obscuration methods. Thank you."

I did, but thanks for adding it here.  I know we're still in the tuning phase; as long as he's aware, I'm confident it'll get sorted.