Active Sky review

[RALF9636 2,031]

6 hours ago, Damian Clark said:

We understand that with precip some are not getting it as expected at the airport because the clouds are surrounding the airport sometimes, and not all over the sky.  We're looking at improving regional coverage and general cloud coverage, with precipitation, to be less variable and more global in nature, so you'll nearly always get precip as expected even if the cloud data and/or interpretation says the clouds should be more scattered or off to the side. 

Please don't do it. You will never be able to please all. I would appreciate if you would keep focussing on those with a basic understanding of meteorology and the concept of a METAR or TAF, not people who expect to see it raining all over the scene all the time with a report like TSRA FEW045CB. 

Edited April 28 by RALF9636

[MarcG 3,087]

KMKN right now this very minute;

Real Life = as per picture below - KMKN 280755Z AUTO 33006KT 10SM -TSRA OVC023 19/15 A2975 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT ALQS T01920147 - 29m
MSFS Default Live Weather = Heavy clouds, rain, no storm
AS Preset Control = Heavy Clouds, Heavy Rain, Storm

Yet again proof (as if we needed any) that MSFS default Live Weather is terrible at showing thunderstorms and has been for years, I'm so thankful to Damian just for this quite frankly - doing what Asobo have yet again failed to do, give us something that was working before they broke it and never fixed it!

Edited April 28 by MarcG

[MarcG 3,087]

I'm by no means a "must have Live Weather 1:1" junkie, for my personal needs as long as it closely represents real life then that's all that matters to me. So what I've seen with AS in my own personal testing & flying is it mostly (not without some faults of course) does a close representation of reality and in the case of thunderstorms a bang (pun intended) on representation where MSFS Default Live Weather has so miserably failed for so many years since the SU7 METAR update - and that's what grinds me the most.

Of course pre-SU7 the live weather was also not "perfect" and for the hardcore VATSim crowd it wasn't good enough, but for me and my casual flying it was just fine as it closely matched reality in more areas than just those with METAR coverage and as proven here they still get that wrong. I remember very well going onto windy.com pre-SU7, seeing some funky looking weather and going in Sim to enjoy it, since SU7 that all changed and now I can have that back thanks to AS.

It's a great shame Jorg/Asobo bowed to the vote harvesting VATSim crowd, they changed it so drastically - without proper beta testing and I quote MS "Due to some back-end scheduling conflicts, we will no longer have pre-release testing for Sim Update 7" which meant the initial issues were not reported and dealt with and here we are 3years 5months later still suffering from the same issues....and people expect MSFS2024 to be better? I honestly hope it is, I keep hearing about this new amazing weather engine, well it better be better than this default we've had since 2021 which has been just rubbish IMO.
 

[Fiorentoni 4,479]

11 minutes ago, MarcG said:

It's a great shame Jorg/Asobo bowed to the vote harvesting VATSim crowd,

This is not about Vatsim, anyone doing remotely realistic IFR flights needs the airport weather to be like in the METAR, online or offline. You can't approach a runway only to "see" (if you see it at all, that is) that the winds or visibility in MSFS are actually the complete opposite of the METAR.

[Alti 68]

hello,
you have to be fair and give Activesky the opportunity to show the weather.
if someone is bothered by the rapid transitions, then the smoothing rate can be adjusted. But be careful: if this rate is too low, AS has no chance of displaying the weather as it should be, because if you fly over it in a jet, you might leave the weather area faster than it could be displayed. 
There is only one compromise: accept fast changes, or choose passive mode and enjoy turbulence effects, which is my option.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[MarcG 3,087]

42 minutes ago, Fiorentoni said:

This is not about Vatsim, anyone doing remotely realistic IFR flights needs the airport weather to be like in the METAR, online or offline. You can't approach a runway only to "see" (if you see it at all, that is) that the winds or visibility in MSFS are actually the complete opposite of the METAR.

Yeah that's fine, I can understand the reasoning for METAR introduction, it's the main fact there was no proper public testing procedures of the Sim Update that has caused these issues and as proven above METAR is not working correctly in default live weather - 3years 5months later..., that's my main point. As Jorg in the Q&A that followed literally laughed off the idea of having a METAR and Original depiction, he failed to understand how much they changed Live Weather, we're not all hardcore uber flight simmers, casual fliers far outweigh those but we got stuck with something that wasn't as good visually and IMO not as good generally.

Anyway that matters not now, the damage has been done, it's not been fixed so thank you ActiveSky for resurrecting some aspects of what we had pre-SU7.

Edited April 28 by MarcG

[GSalden 4,723]

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

KMKN right now this very minute;

Real Life = as per picture below - KMKN 280755Z AUTO 33006KT 10SM -TSRA OVC023 19/15 A2975 RMK AO2 LTG DSNT ALQS T01920147 - 29m
MSFS Default Live Weather = Heavy clouds, rain, no storm
AS Preset Control = Heavy Clouds, Heavy Rain, Storm

Yet again proof (as if we needed any) that MSFS default Live Weather is terrible at showing thunderstorms and has been for years, I'm so thankful to Damian just for this quite frankly - doing what Asobo have yet again failed to do, give us something that was working before they broke it and never fixed it!

Still you see the same weather when looking around... Preset mode...   🥱

I remember when MSFS came out how happy everyone was that we final got Local Live Weather and when you looked left the weather could be different than we you looked right.  

Btw : where are the screenshots to "prove" what you are claiming...?   🧐 

 

[MarcG 3,087]

4 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Still you see the same weather when looking around... Preset mode...   🥱

I remember when MSFS came out how happy everyone was that we final got Local Live Weather and when you looked left the weather could be different than we you looked right.  

Btw : where are the screenshots to "prove" what you are claiming...?   🧐 

 

I can't take screenshots of lightning that isn't there 😆 the proof is in the reality of what I saw at that specific time, if you choose to disbelieve that then that's your problem.

Why you can't just be happy with live default and leave those of us who enjoy AS to carry on I'll never know 🙄 you've contributed nothing to this thread.

[GSalden 4,723]

5 minutes ago, MarcG said:

I can't take screenshots of lightning that isn't there 😆 the proof is in the reality of what I saw at that specific time, if you choose to disbelieve that then that's your problem.

Why you can't just be happy with live default and leave those of us who enjoy AS to carry on I'll never know 🙄 you've contributed nothing to this thread.

Just relax. I believe what you saw. 

The only thing I wanted to do was adding a vid with comparisons, no more no less, and then people jumped onto me 🤕

The moment AS controls Live Weather too I will be the first one to buy 2 licenses.

In P3D I used ASP3D on both pc’s. AS is the best weather program out there 

I totally agree with you that it all comes down to what each of us is happy with 👍

Edited April 28 by GSalden

[sloppysmusic 341]

5 hours ago, vgbaron said:

Hopefully this will resolve the misinformation that AS doesn't create clouds above 12k. Can't really do much except show pictures.

 

Pure misinformation yes. I was cruising at 39000 yesterday (Lear I recall) and there was layer of thin clouds at least 5-10k above me. I took screenshots but... Do we need to prove everything we see with our own eyes and report here? 👀

[DD_Arthur 1,115]

59 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Why you can't just be happy with live default and leave those of us who enjoy AS to carry on I'll never know 🙄 you've contributed nothing to this thread.

So this isn’t a review thread but merely a cheerleading thread?

No discussion or criticism allowed? Any dissenting opinions are not welcome? So far it seems anyone with anything negative to say is either a fool or a crook or is beaten into submission….

 

[MarcG 3,087]

Just now, DD_Arthur said:

So this isn’t a review thread but merely a cheerleading thread?

No discussion or criticism allowed? Any dissenting opinions are not welcome? So far it seems anyone with anything negative to say is either a fool or a crook or is beaten into submission….

 

Nope, you'll see we've been openly stating what's wrong with AS but it's in constant development so there's little point berating the apps shortcomings that may well get fixed soon.

It seems those against this app are doing so without any consideration to what AS can actually succeed at when their hands are tied due to the closed off SDK nature Asobo have set. 

It's very apparent it needs work, it's very apparent it's succeeding in areas that default MSFS fails at. But it seems the vast majority of anti-AS don't even own the app and have set it their agenda against it, I don't see this in other threads for other apps, so why such attitudes here? (Rhetorical question).

At the end of the day I'm happy with the app, is it perfect no, will it be no, but it does enough for my needs and shows Asobos shortcomings that I've had to live with for 3+years and there's been plenty of threads on their live weather's issues...

 

 

[reecemj 155]

15 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

So far it seems anyone with anything negative to say is either a fool or a crook or is beaten into submission….

🤣🤣🤣 No not beaten!

[Bobsk8 12,959]

1 hour ago, sloppysmusic said:

Pure misinformation yes. I was cruising at 39000 yesterday (Lear I recall) and there was layer of thin clouds at least 5-10k above me. I took screenshots but... Do we need to prove everything we see with our own eyes and report here? 👀

I had an overcast at FL 340 yesterday. 

 

[Fiorentoni 4,479]

It's tiresome. Just fly and use what you want. That's for both sides.
And if you really want to make objective criticism in this thread, at least get informed (or try it yourself) before stating wrong things like "flat clouds are unrealistic" or "AS does not show clouds above 12000 feet".
It's the right - no the duty - of anyone to correct objectively wrong facts. This has nothing to do with censoring or suffocating discussion. Wrong is wrong.