Potential customer attempt to get an opinion 🙂

TIA to everyone who would respond.

I'd like to know as well.  I've been reading as many positive reviews as negative ones. I've owned every active sky version for xplane and fsx/p3d and everyone  was always extremely positive about them including myself.

 

Split 50 / 50 between people who love it and people who say it is word not allowed.

after about 600 responses in 2 threads there is no consensus.

The only way is to buy and try it would seem.

I like it very much.

 

1 minute ago, Ron Lefebvre said:

Split 50 / 50 between people who love it and people who say it is word not allowed

Yes, I have to agree from reading the two threads, it seems pretty much divided as to what AS brings to the table. Some like the cloudscapes it generates others are not so impressed; Some are willing to trade local/regional weather for a global present to get what they feel are better looking clouds; others cannot part from the depiction of "fronts". Same with the turbulence effects with some saying they are more "realistic" and others preferring live weather turbulence. 

From my own experience, I have played around with it a great deal and I find myself also divided; sometimes preferring one portrayal or the other. The product is new and developing so I am interested to see what comes next. What I hope mostly is that Asobo notes the discussion and that they are helped to further refine the live weather option.

I was hesitant to post my thoughts in the other threads since they seem to just be a battle of 'my screenshot looks better than yours' and end up being 40 pages.  I'll give you my summary after using it for 7-8 flights in the FNX A320.  Disclaimer...I have been a skeptic of the WX injectors since I have always been of the opinion that MSFS live WX is a huge leap forward from what we have had in the past and is very good (it obviously has issues).  I think 'Metar bubbles' are a relic from past sims that we should be moving on from.  I am mostly referring to the fact you can see the WX around you as you fly with default MSFS Live WX.  You can be in clear conditions and see a low layer of clouds ahead, storms, etc.  I do not care if conditions match Metar's exactly and that it doesn't look like it does on a LiveCam or what it looks like out my window. and this seems to be the contention in the reviews so far. Some are even showing static timelapses at an airport over 10 hours but this does not show what it is like flying from A to B. Metars have their issues and are a snapshot in time. I have taken off IRL with half the runway totally clear and near zero viz at the end of the runway.  I have also owned every version of ActiveSky since it came out in 2000-2001'ish so familiar with Damian's work and his ongoing updates.

The Good:

It does look nice.  Since it can use some different cloud types available in the sim you will see a pleasant looking sky most of the time.  One flight I did out of KJAX had the typical 'summer' cumulus clouds.  MSFS Live WX looked bad...it had the volcanic ash clouds which is my least favorite aspect of it.  I switched to AS and it looked fantastic. I did the flight to KORD using AS and did not notice any transitions in Preset Mode. (Using download interval of 15 minutes and smoothing on 30)  I also noticed some different lighting probably due to cloud thickness and humidity.  You do see more stratiform clouds which look nice from below and above and I did see several layers of clouds including 'cirrus'  They still don't really look like Cirrus clouds but we never see that due to how the clouds are generated.  The turbulence setting is also very good, much better than default.  I have had to keep MSFS on 'low' because it it very unrealistic above that but Low might as well be Zero.  AS does provide a more plausible movement in turbulence. I have not tested any Thunderstorms as of yet.

The Not as Good:

Half of the flights I did were in fair WX without many drastic changes along the way... no fronts, areas of low clouds, storms etc so did not notice any abrubt transitions with these flights.  The other half of the flights involved drastic WX changes.  One was out of KORD to KBWI.  A lot of rain in Chicago but a clear area over Ohio and West Virginia before forecasted low clouds in Baltimore. Once I got above the overcast it looked really nice.  All of a sudden, WX instantly went to clear and then back to a 'different' overcast, It then instantly went to clear WX as I moved on. I changed it to Passive at that point  Same thing happened on 2 other flights, some very drastic changes and it seems to be when going from an area of bad weather to good or the other way around.I also spotted the dreaded 'popcorn' cloud!  I will chalk that up to some cumulus clouds dissipating(?).   I did notice when under an overcast, there was a distinct 'circle' of clouds around me reminiscent of the older sims but I think that is exactly what the program does. We are flying from one WX bubble to another and AS attempts to smooth this out as best it can so you will not see the actual WX out ahead of you which to me is the biggest drawback but of course this is known and I bought it knowing this was the case.  I think in P3D you could set maximum visibilities so you could set that value lower and not see these rings around you.  AS does not do this (not sure if it will be able to in the future).

I think for me, I will default to 'Passive' mode when doing airliner flights which will provide the turbulence but you will still get the MSFS WX.  If the weather is fair along the route and no drastic changes expected, I will probably use the AS Preset mode for a bit of visual change.  For GA flyers that are not flying as high and far, Preset mode may work perfectly fine most of the time. I don't think there is a simple "which one is better" because its going to depend on the situation.  If you want to see a little different visual representation than what we are used to, AS will do that.  If you want to fly along seeing overcast to your right where a front lies and clear to the left matching the current real-time satellite conditions, MSFS default LIve does that very well and AS will not be able to depict that.

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 20242 yr by Flic1

I purchased ASFS a few days ago and uninstalled if after a few flights. To me the bottoms of clouds look terrible, like someone has chopped of the bottom of every cloud at the exact same altitude, like white word not allowed blobs on a plate.

I have re-installed it now though and plan to use it in passive mode for the time being. I will probably spent some time with and without it to make my mind up what I like best. MSFS default weather isn't bad and the closed weather engine makes it very difficult to improve upon that.

Edited May 2, 20242 yr by orchestra_nl

Copying what I wrote on MSFS forum:

I did several tests and comparisons between MSFS live weather and ASFS Preset weather flying in different parts of the world. Based on them, I came to the conclusion that MSFS live weather delivers more accurate and realistic weather than ASFS preset.

In the best case scenarios for ASFS preset, it essentially depicted the same weather as MSFS live weather. In some, it was slightly better, but there was no significant difference in favor of it. On the other hand, in scenarios where there was a significant difference between the weather depicted by ASFS preset and MSFS live weather, ASFS had always depicted the less realistic weather. In two cases, it was literally a night and day difference, with ASFS in both injecting clear skies when it was actually raining heavily in the real world and this being accurately depicted by MSFS live weather.

The only advantages of ASFS from weather depiction itself is injecting a greater variety of clouds, which stands out a bit over the ‘cumulus festival’ overinjected by MSFS live weather, better ground snow depiction and also by bringing back lightning, which has not been shown by MSFS live weather for a long time.

Unless Asobo opens the weather API to third-party devs, ASFS will have to live with the limitations of having to depict weather using preset. Preset is not a good way to do it. You’ll essentially be surrounded by a circle of the same weather and clouds wherever you look with minimal to no variation. All weather changes are made through transitions, which even though they have improved with the latest version, you are still limited in having to see the clouds nearby slowly disappear/appear when a weather change occurs instead of seeing a different weather a certain distance away like a front for example.

I believe the main selling point of ASFS, which is actually a point that has been largely ignored or overlooked in reviews, is the weather effects. I even think ASFS devs should create a separate, cheaper program that only provides weather effects on MSFS live weather. It would be similar to RealTurb, but it would have more effects like updrafts, downdrafts, microburst, windshear, wake turbulence, etc. These weather effects are decent and a very important point to consider if you intend to buy ASFS. If there was a program that only had these effects, without weather depiction, it would be much more accepted and perhaps even considered a ‘must-have’ like FSRealistic is by many.

TL;DR: Active Sky isn't that rubbish. It brings interesting features like weather effects. However, in weather depiction, it's limited by the weather in MSFS being restricted and cannot be accessed by third party devs, meaning it can't do much, having to live with workarounds and a inadequate weather implementation in MSFS. There may be very specific situations in which ASFS can stand out over MSFS live weather, but in most situations, MSFS live weather will be more suitable and realistic for a better weather depiction in MSFS, despite its limitations.

Edited May 2, 20242 yr by edu2703

Here we go again with the same old story, surelly is two long threads not enough, everything I have read in those threads I read here, please read the threads before starting a new one!!!!

 

I regret purchasing it, and for context have owned every AS since FS9 days.

Initially I had a few issues such as weather not updating after take off and weird aircraft behaviour (sudden speed changes and odd turn behaviour in the Fenix that went away the second I switched off ASFS). I reinstalled and tried some of the betas and it improved things somewhat, however I never got used to the fact that everywhere around me looked the same after seeing what MSFS can do with local weather models.

ASFS might be more accurate in some cases of depicting local METAR but at the end of the day it comes down to preference and as I mainly fly A320 ops I just couldn't get used to the way it paints the whole sky in the same weather again. MSFS is not perfect, it may be "overdramatic" as some have called it but to me it looks more natural and plausible than what ASFS produced on my system.

I still had regular issues with injection by ASFS such as updates stopped working halfway through the flight, sudden updates that rendered weird looking weather with low res cloud textures, odd looking clouds and clearly visible patterns in clouds or even all clear skies all of a sudden when there should have been cloud cover. I think a WX radar API would make me reconsider using it but that's been pretty much ruled out. Visually I much prefer MSFS over ASFS.

I tried active and passive modes but have since uninstalled ASFS and back to using MSFS default - very happy with it. MSFS24 will have historical weather (24 hours) and I'm hoping a few other overhauls to the default engine. I use RealTurb CAT with default MSFS and find this to be perfect to spice things up with some realistic turbulence. ASFS in passive mode didn't really add anything for me beyond that and it's one less programme running in the background.

As I've said before regarding this; the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Some YouTubers and streamers really didn't give it much of a chance, gave it a proper chance and were a bit too critical. However, I also find other people, especially a select few, oversell the product way too much, treating it like the second coming in weather. Seen some absolutely desperate upsells and pretending like it completely overhauled weather depiction. If it didn't have "Active Sky" in the name and riding that legacy, people would have treated it completely differently.

20 minutes ago, kurtb said:

Here we go again with the same old story, surelly is two long threads not enough, everything I have read in those threads I read here, please read the threads before starting a new one!!!!

 

That's probably what it will turn into which is why I tried to give my review early in the thread...hopefully it can help someone with their decision but by the time it hits page 7 it will be the same few people arguing back and forth...

23 minutes ago, kurtb said:

Here we go again with the same old story, surelly is two long threads not enough, everything I have read in those threads I read here, please read the threads before starting a new one!!!!

 

I’ve got a simple solution for you. Don’t read the thread if it offends your sensibilities.  Easy enough, no?

-B

I have many decades of flying in real life as a pilot, a passenger in a commercial aircraft and as a simmer.ASfs to me looks more like the real thing versus only CU clouds and no Lighting and T storms. Don't need 6 paragraphs to explain that 

 

Not another one... anyway me personally all I'm gonna say is that after 4 years of volcanish ash clouds, I'm happy to see something else (and more realistic).

I wish we could take the best features of MSFS and the best features of ASFS and combine them to make one ideal weather generator. In my opinion, MSFS handles global variations in weather better... there can be bad weather here but not there, for example, and you can go fly from one area to the other. I had the most amazing experience with MSFS native weather the other day. I was flying a jet into an airport between mountain ranges. The local METAR was reporting 1/2 SM in fog, ceiling 200 overcast, and yet what I saw from 30 miles away was clear blue skies. Then as I got closer, I saw a pool of clouds between the mountains, like the mountains were creating a bowl, and the bowl was full of clouds and fog. My destination was at the bottom of the bowl. So instead of expecting a visual approach, I prepped for an ILS to minimums, and sure enough, at about 4000 ft, we descended into IMC and it stayed that way until landing. It was everything you'd want from a flight simulator experience: immersive, realistic, and beautiful.

ASFS seems to take a different approach. Instead of different weather here and there, it seems to adjust global weather to meet its understanding of what the most appropriate main weather picture should be. I don't know what their algorithm does, but the effect seems to be smooth transitions to the whole globe all at once. When it goes from clear to cloudy, first there will be these little popcorn cloud spots all around the aircraft that blossom into an overcast over about 10 minutes, but it's not the sensation of flying into a region where there are more clouds, instead it's like watching the whole world fill with clouds.

That's my major gripe with ASFS.

As for the pictures it paints--I find ASFS to be more interesting and immersive than MSFS. In my opinion, native MSFS clouds are variations on one layer of hefty cumulous clouds, with lots of dark grey. Within that are infinite variations, but the theme is the same: hefty cumulous clouds, with lots of dark grey, usually in one layer.

In contrast, ASFS often has multiple layers, and it's not just heavy gray cumulous all the time. Also, ASFS does a good job of haze layers, where the visbility might still be 10 SM but still less than infinite. One example where ASFS got this really, beautifully right was a descent into an airport under a temperature inversion. The skies above 10000 feet were clear, with visibility all the way to the horizon, but below 10000 feet, it was hazy. The METAR still showed >10SM and it was, but there was a pronounced change from clear to haze. I never saw that in MSFS, which seems to have only one depiction for visibility greater than 10 miles... it's always infinite, without any other depictions.

In sum, it's a mixed bag. I would love to have the multiple cloud types and layers, and multiple interpretations of visibility from ASFS, combined with regional variation of MSFS.

Last thought: I may be taking a performance hit with ASFS, which is reasonable to assume since it adds more cloud layers and thus makes the system work harder. But nobody else seems to be complaining of this, so it could be an idiosyncrasy with my system. I don't notice fewer frames in general, but there are some big spikes where the CPU (and everything it's running) bog down for a half second or so. It seems to happen when ASFS transitions to terminal weather. But it could be my system, again, because other people don't seem to be talking about this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 2, 20242 yr by prolixindec