I'm looking to fire up Active Sky for FS2024.  

I've been flying for a while now in 24, and while happy with the sim overall, the weather just feels a bit lifeless, a bit drab.  There is no real jeopardy and no real point to checking the weather.  

How is Active Sky at the moment performing, and are people using it and enjoying it?  What settings should I be looking at?  One thing that did put me off was the weather suddenly transitioning, snapping.  Has this been attended to?  I'd like the weather to reflect what happened in SIM time, not real time live weather.  

Edited May 7, 20251 yr by Langeveldt

With AsFS you'll have access to historic weather and or fs2024 date/time weather, or Real World weather.

You will also be able to opt between two main operation modes, active / passive, where the weather feed and depiction will be completely done by AS itself or, alternatively, you can "paint the skies" using MSFS weather engine and AS will then create additional effects to enhance your experience since, as you say, at present those effects are rather tame or totally inexistent in MSFS...

For me ASFS is still a mandatory add-on if I'm up for the best possible weather simulation, even if still within the limitations imposed by the rather limited tools that ASOBO made available for third party weather injectors.

Edited May 7, 20251 yr by jcomm

Does it cure the bugged snow coverage? And can it finally depict weatherfronts or is it still morphing between two different skies when flying from one to another?

I think yes it fixes the problems with snow coverage.

Regarding the morphing unfortunately it still has this limitation sometimes, mostly due to the fact that there's no way for it to control depiction in a better way due to the lack of support from ASOBO, I guess... No decent SDK yet for weather 😕

Love AS for MSFS2024.  Works great and has more accurate weather, in my opinion than default weather in the sim.

I use primarily for historical weather and it works great.

I've had a couple of instances when ActiveSky didn't interpret a low-visibility METAR correctly. Those instances have all been in Japan, where they've given a METAR that's essentially VFR but then said noted low visibility in fog at the departure end of the runway. ActiveSky has missed that second part and just put the whole airport as VFR. No worries, though, it's one click to toggle the 2024 native weather, which to it's credit can correctly interpret these complicated METARs. After takeoff, I've just switched the weather (again, one click) back to ActiveSky.

What keeps me flying with ActiveSky despite issues like the one above, is that it depicts the weather more beautifully. When it's cloudy, there are usually multiple layers, and it looks more real and lively than native 2024 weather. So I use it every flight now. Definitely a worthwhile purchase. Plus, the developers are very responsive on their forum.

7 hours ago, prolixindec said:

I've had a couple of instances when ActiveSky didn't interpret a low-visibility METAR correctly. Those instances have all been in Japan, where they've given a METAR that's essentially VFR but then said noted low visibility in fog at the departure end of the runway. ActiveSky has missed that second part and just put the whole airport as VFR. No worries, though, it's one click to toggle the 2024 native weather, which to it's credit can correctly interpret these complicated METARs. After takeoff, I've just switched the weather (again, one click) back to ActiveSky.

What keeps me flying with ActiveSky despite issues like the one above, is that it depicts the weather more beautifully. When it's cloudy, there are usually multiple layers, and it looks more real and lively than native 2024 weather. So I use it every flight now. Definitely a worthwhile purchase. Plus, the developers are very responsive on their forum.

When you say you change with one click you are referring to changing to passive mode, right?

Edited May 8, 20251 yr by Alvega

8 minutes ago, Alvega said:

When you say you change with one click you are referring to changing to passive mode, right?

Correct. 

Is there anywhere a good description about this passive mode? Might be exactly what I look for. Because full AS weather is just a no go for me unless I do VFR flights in a very limited confined space around the departure airport. 

I was thinking of asking this exact question.  Last weekend, my local weather was overcast and low ceilings for days.  I was walking my dogs, watching planes pop out of the clouds a few hundred feet above ground level.  It was like this for at least 3 straight days.  

Yet in 2024 (granted 2020 seemed to have similar issues in the past, but I didn't have it installed to try), no overcast.  No IFR.  Basically it was partly to mostly cloudy, with the occasional low cloud that wasn't even blocking the view.  I wanted to practice IFR and the conditions should have been perfect, but instead I'm seeing the runway from 10 miles out.  The sim would not produce IFR conditions.  I know it can, it sometimes does, but it seems really rare.  

I'm not even talking about severe weather, it was just overcast and dreary IFR.  

I'm a minute drive from Buffalo, not the largest of airports, but a major data point for weather.  Not a timing issue either as it was like this for days (I know it can be tricky to time being in thunderstorms when there's a lag in the data).  

Granted, I don't like the traditional sudden weather changes that I've seen from weather programs.  2024 (and 2020) does seem to do a good job with changing conditions.  In the past, you hit the area near the next city and suddely, pop, you have different weather.  

In 2024 I've been able to fly over and around weather at times.  Maybe this is just one of those "bad data" days.  Again it isn't a new issue to 2024.  

Last night I looked all over for overcast and finally found one airport socked in, and it was overcast in the sim.  Still, it seems "hard" to find bad weather.  

Edited May 8, 20251 yr by kerosene31

49 minutes ago, kerosene31 said:

I was thinking of asking this exact question.  Last weekend, my local weather was overcast and low ceilings for days.  I was walking my dogs, watching planes pop out of the clouds a few hundred feet above ground level.  It was like this for at least 3 straight days.  

Yet in 2024 (granted 2020 seemed to have similar issues in the past, but I didn't have it installed to try), no overcast.  No IFR.  Basically it was partly to mostly cloudy, with the occasional low cloud that wasn't even blocking the view.  I wanted to practice IFR and the conditions should have been perfect, but instead I'm seeing the runway from 10 miles out.  The sim would not produce IFR conditions.  I know it can, it sometimes does, but it seems really rare.  

I'm not even talking about severe weather, it was just overcast and dreary IFR.  

I'm a minute drive from Buffalo, not the largest of airports, but a major data point for weather.  Not a timing issue either as it was like this for days (I know it can be tricky to time being in thunderstorms when there's a lag in the data).  

Granted, I don't like the traditional sudden weather changes that I've seen from weather programs.  2024 (and 2020) does seem to do a good job with changing conditions.  In the past, you hit the area near the next city and suddely, pop, you have different weather.  

In 2024 I've been able to fly over and around weather at times.  Maybe this is just one of those "bad data" days.  Again it isn't a new issue to 2024.  

Last night I looked all over for overcast and finally found one airport socked in, and it was overcast in the sim.  Still, it seems "hard" to find bad weather.  

Yeah, I've been flying non stop around east Asia and Europe for about three months in 2024, and I haven't once seen lightning, really nasty weather, or had to use an autoland on a CAT III because I couldn't see anything.   

Granted, I could just have been lucky.  But I want to shake things up a bit and see something other than "slightly cloudy with a few bumps" which it seems to be using the SIM weather.  

2 hours ago, AnkH said:

Is there anywhere a good description about this passive mode? Might be exactly what I look for. Because full AS weather is just a no go for me unless I do VFR flights in a very limited confined space around the departure airport. 

The MSFS live weather uses METAR data at airports and Meteoblue model forecasts in between. Although these forecasts will show frontal boundaries, they are still simulations and the location of the boundary may not match real time data. There's really no way for the sim to exactly match near field weather as the worldwide monitoring network is too sparse. 

31 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

There's really no way for the sim to exactly match near field weather as the worldwide monitoring network is too sparse. 

Correct, but MSFS live weather is capable of depicting more than one theme per sky resulting in much more realistic appearance (at least here in Central Europe, where weatherfronts is THE predominant weather theme), even if the boundaries are not perfectly located. This you will miss with every external weather tool basically just inject presets. And this is a major drawback imho, which I can only cope with if I fly locally restricted. For any longer flight, I would not like to miss the weatherfront capability of default MSFS weather engine. 

That is why back in MSFS2020 days, I used REX for local VFR flights and Default MSFS weather for any IFR flight longer than just about 50-100nm. 

5 hours ago, Langeveldt said:

Yeah, I've been flying non stop around east Asia and Europe for about three months in 2024, and I haven't once seen lightning, really nasty weather, or had to use an autoland on a CAT III because I couldn't see anything.   

Granted, I could just have been lucky.  But I want to shake things up a bit and see something other than "slightly cloudy with a few bumps" which it seems to be using the SIM weather.  

Dude you would love Active Sky then. One bonus is there is SI integration. I just got done doing a Brazil tour in a DA40 and if I don't feel like I escaped with my life. It just so happened it was raining season in Brazil and flew through some insane weather saw plenty of lightning and I mean ALOT. Towards the end I was fighting some "gethereitis" because Fenix was talking about a BFU and whatnot. Took off from SBRJ in some seriously wild conditions. I love ActiveSky and im pretty sure you will too. This was in 24 BTW mostly night ops because I always fly real-time and have a demanding job.