9 hours ago, mmcmah said:

There is also a setting in ASFS which allows you to make Cloud Density Adjustments. Here are two shots just a few seconds apart from the lowest setting, followed by the highest setting. I feel like the highest setting is generally more representative of the clouds I see in real life.

https://imgur.com/a/fJBfgWy

I didn't know that was an option.  I'll check that out.  Thanks

11 hours ago, mmcmah said:

Ryan,

I know you say you don't use any of the after-market add-ons, but except for the fact that Active Sky doesn't show fronts due to the limitations of the sim weather injection, I have generally found ASFS to be MUCH better than the sim weather depiction. With your METAR information, I was able to get close in terms of the METAR that I could pull up and here is the weather depiction from the drone camera coming in over the lights into Runway 09 (your shot looks a bit different, so you might have some scenery that is different than the stock):

 

 

Interesting.  I think that's the main thing though they don't have live weather enroute really?  They just generate it at the departure and destination?  I guess that's probably than having real weather enroute.  Maybe I'll have to check it out.

1 hour ago, Krakin said:

He specifically mentioned weather radar and finally getting tilt and the other additions is a pretty big deal.

Oh for some reason I thought it was me being quoted.  Yes there is some radar variables in the change logs.  However most people aren't reading them even if they're in the beta hehe.  So I imagine most SU4 users wouldn't be reading them at all.

3 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

Interesting.  I think that's the main thing though they don't have live weather enroute really?  They just generate it at the departure and destination?  I guess that's probably than having real weather enroute.  Maybe I'll have to check it out.

That's not correct. En route weather is injected and you can set the time interval at which the weather is injected. There are tons of configuration options such as: for how long to keep the departure weather before changing it based on en route METARs, time interval for updating METARs online, time injection intervals, how to manage a change in weather if the destination weather is very different and you're in the approach, how quickly to transition between injections, etc. The only real downside is that you can't be flying and see a front in one direction or another because the weather that is injected is applied in a large radius around you. That is entirely the fault of MS/Asobo not allowing more sophisticated weather injection and limiting it to basically custom weather presets that change as you fly.

Also, you can input a flight plan so that the system better manages the weather that it is injecting as you fly and can interpolate more accurately between METAR stations. This is not necessary, but can be helpful if you know your route.

21 hours ago, Zimmerbz said:

Are these weather presets or the other ones?  

There are lots to choose...You can make your own but it takes time. Basically just laziness. LOL

21 hours ago, mmcmah said:

That's not correct. En route weather is injected and you can set the time interval at which the weather is injected. There are tons of configuration options such as: for how long to keep the departure weather before changing it based on en route METARs, time interval for updating METARs online, time injection intervals, how to manage a change in weather if the destination weather is very different and you're in the approach, how quickly to transition between injections, etc. The only real downside is that you can't be flying and see a front in one direction or another because the weather that is injected is applied in a large radius around you. That is entirely the fault of MS/Asobo not allowing more sophisticated weather injection and limiting it to basically custom weather presets that change as you fly.

 

I ended up buying this, thinking maybe they cracked the code or something.  But I am not seeing a huge difference... in fact I've seen some blatantly inaccurate weather too.  Perhaps there's a setting I've missed (I've set the updates to almost as short as possible).  I think Active Sky used to be the gold standard in FSX/P3D when they had better control of the weather engine.  But perhaps what I'm looking for isn't possible in MSFS 2024.

I don't mind harsh weather transitions especially if it's more IMC or close to... but for some reason it sometimes updates the skies to a very different situation than the METAR depicts.

So here's two pics coming into KBIS.  The METAR was basically 1/4SM R13/2400V4800 SN BLSN VV008 (I should have snapped a pic just for proof but I forgot - but these were the main elements).

First pic was kinda disappointing.  But I then hit active pause for a min or two and this cloud sort of moved over the runway so it's getting more accurate.  I then flew the same relatively short flight (KXWA - KBIS FL310 C700)..  real time about 20 min flight.  And got very different results (more accurate results even though the METAR visibility increased to 1/2SM)

After Active Pause for 1 min the vis dropped (still much greater than the metar 1/4SM though)

This is the second flight with 1/2SM - much more accurate imo...  The 2nd and third pics, swapped would be the most accurate.

Here's the rollout with 1/2SM SN BLSN which looked pretty good!  The first flight was basically nearly VFR when I reached the runway... not impressed

Now I'm on a different flight in a different location (southern MN), for all of these I've loaded a direct flight plan, even adding the RNAV fixes used on the IAP.  This airport's METAR was 2SM BKN005.  This is what I got at first

(I almost have 5 mile vis but I did break out close to the ceiling... maybe 300 ft early... not too bad at all).  I am fully aware that especially asos/awos at uncontrolled fields such as this can wildly vary.  But if the metar is given why couldn't ASFS read out the metar and decode it correctly?  2 vs 5 miles?  Way off.

I then did the same thing in active pause but waited about 3 minutes and then the conditions changed to something that looked a lot more accurate

So there seems to be an issue based on weather updates...  but so far I'm not just impressed.  Destination weather is the MAIN thing I care about.  Departure, sure...  nice to have similar winds and usually it's doing a good job with that, depicting the winds and weather.  But that's the first time the app loads and injects the metar.  It seems to be struggling with the arrival portion.  This was also a short flight (about 25 minutes with the full procedure IAP - so I thought it would have time to generate new weather)

Today flying from PCW to BTL in the Kodiak.  In between layers seemed reasonable but the clouds are still very transparent even though I set my slider to 100 in ASFS.  After a few minutes it did thicken up.  So maybe it's a rendering thing vs an ASFS thing.

And then suddenly my sim changed to bright and sunny hehe...  which was weird cause the weather, even while enroute, was more accurate than this!  At this point I was about 15 mi south of KBTL - should have been either IMC or in between layers.

This time I forced an update via switching to Historical then back to Live and here we are with a very accurate weather depiction finally....  So if you have any suggested settings that I'm missing or questions about my setup let me know.  I'm just not being wowed by anything special here.

 

 

 

On 4/2/2026 at 4:17 PM, ryanbatc said:

1) Clouds still far too transparent.  Sadly it seems with the current "voxel" method of rendering clouds we can't get truly opaque ones anytime soon because it takes a lot of processing power.

Flying through clouds can obscure your aircraft but it has became very rare.

Here an image I took in MSFS2020 back in 2023

I've also seen it in 2024, but I can't find an image.

Edited April 4Apr 4 by Tuskin38

2 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

Wasn't the case in early 2020. Flying through clouds would obscure your aircraft, but at some point they changed the weather rendering and it became very rare and I have seen it happen in 2024 as well, but as with 2020, it's extremely rare.

I don't have any MSFS 2024 screenshots, but here's one I took in 2020 back in 2023

 

IMO Asobo changed clouds to be more transparent to support (and favor), the Xbox.  As making an opaque cloud requires more computing power, Xbox cannot handle these types of clouds.  So that's why I'm guessing Active Sky can't do anything about it, even though there is a slider to increase cloud density.

That part of MSFS 2024 has been a bit frustrating.  Why own a 9800x3d with RTX 5090 if the sim is only built to it's lowest common denominator?  Matt from WT has said we only have a sim because of Xbox.  I guess meaning that a PC only sim wouldn't have survived - probably why we have a lot of bloatware on the Marketplace...  I'm dovetailing now though.

I think from my only 2 days with ASFS it's clear that the program can't do anything incredible with the weather.  I cannot say it's worth the money based on what I've seen so far.

22 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

IMO Asobo changed clouds to be more transparent to support (and favor), the Xbox.  As making an opaque cloud requires more computing power, Xbox cannot handle these types of clouds.  So that's why I'm guessing Active Sky can't do anything about it, even though there is a slider to increase cloud density.

That part of MSFS 2024 has been a bit frustrating.  Why own a 9800x3d with RTX 5090 if the sim is only built to it's lowest common denominator?  Matt from WT has said we only have a sim because of Xbox.  I guess meaning that a PC only sim wouldn't have survived - probably why we have a lot of bloatware on the Marketplace...  I'm dovetailing now though.

I think from my only 2 days with ASFS it's clear that the program can't do anything incredible with the weather.  I cannot say it's worth the money based on what I've seen so far.

IMO, what it does better is the way it portrays inclement weather. More realistic ...imo.

Just now, 0stones0 said:

IMO, what it does better is the way it portrays inclement weather. More realistic ...imo.

Well according to my pics here it's not much better than msfs default.  Especially the sunny pic that was supposed to be IFR (2 1/2SM RA)

I had a really nice IFR into KPVU the other day with default live.  Convinced default live is the way to go these days.

Typical Weather depictions reminded me of P3D.

dd

Edited April 4Apr 4 by Sky_Pilot071

40 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

Matt from WT has said we only have a sim because of Xbox.

I think this is very, very true. And we should be grateful that Asobo has put all the work into making that possible, not only for x-box but now for PlayStation. Without this work there would be no MSFS period and we will all be on X-Plane or P3D, struggling to figure out how to set the affinity mask! Yes, visual fidelity is not as high as it could be if everything was designed for people with leading edge hardware, but it is a lot better than P3D and X-Plane, visually and functionally. If the franchise can keep going hopefully over time it will increase. For now, at least for me, it is a perfectly acceptable and reasonable compromise. 

 

48 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

That part of MSFS 2024 has been a bit frustrating.  Why own a 9800x3d with RTX 5090

Yea, so true. I just kind of leaned into fact last year when I bought my new PC and deliberately choose a less capable and much cheaper machine knowing that a 9800 and 5090 would not make such a dramatic difference. I saved in the vicinity of 2,000 dollars and am very happy with MSFS performance to quality relationship. For me this has been a benefit of MSFS, I have saved a fortune over the old P3D days when the latest hardware mattered much more.

14 minutes ago, Sky_Pilot071 said:

I had a really nice IFR into KPVU the other day with default live.  Convinced default live is the way to go these days.

Yea, I have come to the same conclusion and when I reinstalled MSFS a while ago did not install AS. I am just kind of ok with the default weather and have stopped obsessing over it.

What puzzles me about weather in MSFS is that it only takes a very light wind to move my PMDG 737 around like it is made of paper. Surely that cannot be correct? It is one of the reasons why I always fly in very calm conditions.

Edited April 4Apr 4 by Christopher Low

4 minutes ago, Cognita said:

I think this is very, very true. And we should be grateful that Asobo has put all the work into making that possible, not only for x-box but now for PlayStation. Without this work there would be no MSFS period and we will all be on X-Plane or P3D, struggling to figure out how to set the affinity mask! Yes, visual fidelity is not as high as it could be if everything was designed for people with leading edge hardware, but it is a lot better than P3D and X-Plane, visually and functionally. If the franchise can keep going hopefully over time it will increase. For now, at least for me, it is a perfectly acceptable and reasonable compromise. 

 

Yea, so true. I just kind of leaned into fact last year when I bought my new PC and deliberately choose a less capable and much cheaper machine knowing that a 9800 and 5090 would not make such a dramatic difference. I saved in the vicinity of 2,000 dollars and am very happy with MSFS performance to quality relationship. For me this has been a benefit of MSFS, I have saved a fortune over the old P3D days when the latest hardware mattered much more.

Very good words on both points.  My now dated 12700K and (still decent) RTX 4080 is doing pretty well.  I did add 64GB ram (well I added 32) and that does help smoothness with all the streaming.  But if you really want to enjoy 4k or higher res or VR, then you do still need the high end GPUs and CPUs imo.  I use HP Reverb G2 but I have to dial a lot of settings down to get smooth performance (and that headset is only 4k per eye).

But in "pancake" mode my system is powerful enough to handle basically everything on Ultra with my 1440p monitor.  I also use MSFS AutoFPS so I can crank the TLOD for more rural flying... 600 looks amazing hehe.

And it is true we'd be stuck with P3D still... XP12 is actually quite good now (can look even better than MSFS 2024 at times).  The only things they really need are a stable streaming source for aerial/imagery - something more comparable or default to what 2024 can do.  And they need much better AA, I still get crazy shimmers on leading edges and some scenery objects and it's quite nasty at times.