Active Sky review

[Eclex 102]

I believe that all topic response volumes should be limited to 40 pages in length.

[Stearmandriver 2,333]

8 hours ago, Cognita said:

But, do they move is straight lines at a constant speed?

Easy to test.  Prop your cell phone up and take a hyper lapse of the sky, or look one up. 

Yes, like someone else said, clouds don't *technically* move in a straight line because winds change over distance via synoptic scale features... But that's small changes over hundreds of miles.  From a person's perspective, clouds move in straight lines with wind.  They've always looked pretty good in MSFS; movement wise.

[Cognita 1,114]

41 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

Easy to test.  Prop your cell phone up and take a hyper lapse of the sky, or look one up. 

I had never really thought about this until I saw the depiction and then started wondering if, indeed, clouds move in straight lines. I did look at a couple and yes basically straight but there seems to be a lot more internal movement in the clouds than I can see in the simulator.

[vgbaron 3,724]

10 minutes ago, Cognita said:

I had never really thought about this until I saw the depiction and then started wondering if, indeed, clouds move in straight lines. I did look at a couple and yes basically straight but there seems to be a lot more internal movement in the clouds than I can see in the simulator.

I agree - unfortunately I haven't seen internal cloud  movement in either sim. IIRC, the closest was some of the fancy stuff HiFi did in P3d. I'm guessing that the processing needed to render internal "boiling" clouds might be a strain on some systems.

 

[Stearmandriver 2,333]

40 minutes ago, Cognita said:

I had never really thought about this until I saw the depiction and then started wondering if, indeed, clouds move in straight lines. I did look at a couple and yes basically straight but there seems to be a lot more internal movement in the clouds than I can see in the simulator.

Agreed, I'm sure there are sim limits to this kind of thing, but also it does matter what kind of clouds you're looking at.  Cumulus clouds (the puffies w vertical development) are created by convection, vertical air movement.  And so they "boil" like VgBaron says.  Because that looks cool, that's often the type of hyper lapse cloud video you'll find.  Stratus clouds on the other hand have very little internal turbulence (hence why they're often smooth to fly through) and so a hyper lapse of those will often show a smooth linear movement.  But that doesn't look as cool so it might be harder to find 😉.

[Cpt_Piett 4,833]

It would definitely be very cool to have internal cloud movement modeled. I think it’s possible with modern GPUs, but I have no idea how complicated it is to implement this. But as realism is ever-increasing, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to get this at some stage.

[RALF9636 1,999]

5 hours ago, psolk said:

In addition to the weather depiction ASFS is definitely making exaggerated lighting changes from what I can see.  Today at KEWR was relatively overcast but that type of bright overcast you almost needed sunglasses.  Loaded up the sim and before ASFS set the weather it was the appropriate level of brightness then ASFS kicked in and it almost turned to night.  Almost as soon as I got into the clouds on departure it brightened up but anything under the cloud base was way too dark.... I've noticed this a few times now and it's also evident in the pics a page or two earlier... 

Latest ASFS Build, no shader mods of any type in MSFS.   

In the Beta we had people saying it was too dark while others said it was not dark enough. So this seems to be highly subjective. Most probably it also depends on the monitor (HDR capability) and monitor settings. Also the aircraft and the tint of its windows come into play. And even  your camera position and zoom factor and the brightness of the cockpit colours influence the lighting because of the eye-adaptation feature of MSFS (which seems to have weakened in one of their latest updates).

I recommend using the Geforce filters, in particular the HDR toning setting. Create three different presets so you can easily choose the one that you like best in the actual lighting conditions in the sim.

Edited May 1 by RALF9636

[vgbaron 3,724]

Don't forget the sim itself has some glare effects - when it's bright outside and you scroll down into the cockpit, the panels sometimes are unreadable until MSFS adjusts the lighting. I think a combination of factors produces those results, not just AS.

[Ron Attwood 3,517]

1 hour ago, vgbaron said:

Don't forget the sim itself has some glare effects - when it's bright outside and you scroll down into the cockpit, the panels sometimes are unreadable until MSFS adjusts the lighting. I think a combination of factors produces those results, not just AS.

If you're going to start being reasonable you'll take all the fun out of it.

[eslader 1,819]

I dunno. Either I'm doing something very wrong, or there's something wonky with AS's weather depiction at the moment.

Flying through a SIGMET area with tops above FL450, embedded TS and hail, the works. All of that info is in AS's map view.

The storm is currently tornado-warned with a radar-indicated approx 40kt rotation. A live chase on YT is showing fairly decent CB formation, lots of lightning, a significant hail core, etc. And as I type this, a tornado appears to be forming visibly.

In-sim the MSFS weather shows some wispy clouds, which is lame. AS is better in that cumulus clouds cover the area, but they top at about 12,000 with a 5,000 base. No lightning, no turbulence, no hail, and certainly no towering CBs in this supercell. Very strange. In p3d, AS would be busy trying to tear my airplane apart right now. Any idea what gives?

 

 

[mmcmah 447]

37 minutes ago, eslader said:

I dunno. Either I'm doing something very wrong, or there's something wonky with AS's weather depiction at the moment.

Flying through a SIGMET area with tops above FL450, embedded TS and hail, the works. All of that info is in AS's map view.

The storm is currently tornado-warned with a radar-indicated approx 40kt rotation. A live chase on YT is showing fairly decent CB formation, lots of lightning, a significant hail core, etc. And as I type this, a tornado appears to be forming visibly.

In-sim the MSFS weather shows some wispy clouds, which is lame. AS is better in that cumulus clouds cover the area, but they top at about 12,000 with a 5,000 base. No lightning, no turbulence, no hail, and certainly no towering CBs in this supercell. Very strange. In p3d, AS would be busy trying to tear my airplane apart right now. Any idea what gives?

 

 

Are you on the latest beta? It's been released on their Downloads page.

[Bobsk8 12,871]

19 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

Are you on the latest beta? It's been released on their Downloads page.

I was notified that there was a new version today, don't think it was a beta.   8883

[edu2703 281]

2 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

I was notified that there was a new version today, don't think it was a beta.   8883

8883 was the last beta version, which became a release version.

[eslader 1,819]

1 hour ago, mmcmah said:

Are you on the latest beta? It's been released on their Downloads page.

No, newest official, downloaded this afternoon.

 

[filou 2,769]

I have been using Active Sky for a week on every flight and I am very very happy with it, I like the overall representation, the smooth transitions and turbulence as well as the changing visibility.