Skip to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

The AVSIM Community

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.

Active Sky review

Featured Replies

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.

Andrew Crowley

  • Replies 791
  • Views 138.4k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Most Popular Posts

  • Damian Clark
    Damian Clark

    It's very popular to hate me and Active Sky, and by extension, those who support me, our development team or the product.  I've mentioned (harped on) this before but that's also generated criticism so

  • ok, I am going to go through and delete links to one of the videos posted, I suspect you can guess which one. Opinions on a product are individual but we will not allow any direct developer bashing. T

  • Stearmandriver
    Stearmandriver

    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 be

Posted Images

  • Moderator

@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

 

RIG#1 - I9 14900K MSI Pro z790 RTX 5070Ti
40" 4K Monitor 3840x2160 

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?

Andrew Crowley

  • Moderator
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.

 

RIG#1 - I9 14900K MSI Pro z790 RTX 5070Ti
40" 4K Monitor 3840x2160 

14 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

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

 

spacer.png

Seen it numerous times in default weather.

Baber

 

My Youtube Channel http://www.youtube.com/user/HDOnlive

40 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

Seen it numerous times in default weather.

MSFS presets, maybe.

Default MSFS Live Weather, almost never.

AMD Ryzen 5800X3D; MSI RTX 3080 Ti ; 32GB Corsair 3200 MHz; ASUS VG35VQ 35" (3440 x 1440)
Fulcrum One yoke; Thrustmaster TCA Captain Pack Airbus edition; MFG Crosswind rudder pedals; miniCockpit FCU; CPFlight MCP 737; Logitech FIP x3; TrackIR

MSFS; Fenix A320; A2A PA-24; HPG H145; PMDG 737-600; AIG; RealTraffic; PSXTraffic; FSiPanel; REX AccuSeason Adv; FSDT GSX Pro; FS2Crew RAAS Pro; FS-ATC Chatter

15 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

MSFS presets, maybe.

Default MSFS Live Weather, almost never.

Heavy clouds like that are rare, above 36000 ft.

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.

AMD Ryzen 5800X3D; MSI RTX 3080 Ti ; 32GB Corsair 3200 MHz; ASUS VG35VQ 35" (3440 x 1440)
Fulcrum One yoke; Thrustmaster TCA Captain Pack Airbus edition; MFG Crosswind rudder pedals; miniCockpit FCU; CPFlight MCP 737; Logitech FIP x3; TrackIR

MSFS; Fenix A320; A2A PA-24; HPG H145; PMDG 737-600; AIG; RealTraffic; PSXTraffic; FSiPanel; REX AccuSeason Adv; FSDT GSX Pro; FS2Crew RAAS Pro; FS-ATC Chatter

1 hour ago, F737MAX said:

MSFS presets, maybe.

Default MSFS Live Weather, almost never.

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

 

 

 

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...  

Have a Wonderful Day

-Paul Solk

Boeing777_Banner_BetaTeam.jpg

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.

Frank Patton
Corsair 5000D Airflow Case; MSI B650 Tomahawk MOB; Ryzen 7 7800 X3D CPU; ASUS RTX 4080 Super; 
NZXT 360mm liquid cooler; Corsair Vengeance 64GB DDR5 4800 MHz RAM; RMX850X Gold PSU;; ASUS VG289 4K 27" Display; Honeycomb Alpha & Bravo, Crosswind 3's w/dampener.  
Former USAF meteorologist & ground weather school instructor. AOPA Member #07379126
                       
"I will never put my name on a product that does not have in it the best that is in me." - John Deere

  • Moderator

@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."

 

RIG#1 - I9 14900K MSI Pro z790 RTX 5070Ti
40" 4K Monitor 3840x2160 

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.

Rhett

7800X3D 96 GB G.Skill Flare  Gigabyte 4090  Crucial P5 Plus 2TB

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.

i913900KF (5.8GHz) | Case: Fractal PopAir RGB I Gigabyte Z790 UD AX| MSI Gaming RTX 4070Ti Super 16GB | Kingston Fury Beast 64GB DDR5 5200Mhz | SOLIDIGM P41 Plus 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD | Samsung SSD 870 EVO 2TB | Thermalright Frozen Notte 240 MM Liquid Cooling | LG EVO 42" Monitor 3840 x 2160 120Hz | Honeycomb Alpha & Bravo | Logitech G Pro pedals | Tobii EyeTracker | 850W Thermaltake 80+ GOLD |

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.

Andrew Crowley

Create an account or sign in to comment

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.