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Damian Clark

Commercial Member
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About Damian Clark

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    Developer

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  • Website URL
    http://www.hifitechinc.com
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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    California, USA
  • Interests
    Making realistic and educational weather simulation

Flight Sim Profile

  • Commercial Member
    No
  • Online Flight Organization Membership
    VATSIM
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  1. Jose, Yep, we already address that with the last update(s): Update 010324 - Fixed issue with cumulus clouds creating precip always (related to SDK cloud types) This results in nearly complete elimination in rain in clouds when precip is not expected, however, in some cases, there are rare momentary periods (seconds) of in-cloud precipitation using the ASXP12 modulated cloud types that may trend towards cumulus (where full cumulus clouds are currently causing the rain issue - we use slightly less cumulus specification to manage this). As far as I am aware, yes, and this is due to us controlling temp/pressure in an ambient fashion, based on the existing data, inherently accounting for geopotential height in altitude calculations. But I am not very knowledgeable about XP12's effect simulation and details here, other than the very limited SDK documentation and experience with a very dynamic and initially problematic interface and/or understanding of its effect use (getting better). It's a bit of a work in progress. If you are aware of any issues or documentation/references regarding any required specialized implementation in XP12 despite our ambient controls as described, I'd appreciate you forwarding that to me and I'll take a look. Thanks!
  2. Yes, here is the changelog below. Update 013024 Applied alternate tropopause temperature handling to prevent out of range values causing crashing/issues with some aircraft including HotStart Challenger 650 Fixed bug in previous turbulence changes causing excessive turbulence (translational forces) in some cases Update 012624 Adjusted snow coverage depiction to not display snow when surface temps are greater than 5C, to reduce snow depiction when lower snow depth data resolution/processes can indicate snow where it is not expected Added basic smoothing for snow depth (depth changes more slowly, over about 2 minutes minimum to maximum) – some instant terrain snow coverage shifts between certain levels are normal Update 012524 Fixed problem with ground snow conditions persisting incorrectly, which caused snow where there should not be Adjusted conditions representation in all depiction modes for more intuitive weather conditions reporting Adjusted map to display proper variable weather instead of globalized current weather at infinite distances, regardless of depiction mode and XP12 connection status Adjusted turbulence effect based on feedback Reduced turbulence effects overall Fixed issue with excessive vertical force by up/downdraft, turbulence or thermals Update 012324 Changed ground snow control method, allowing proper runway friction depiction (per current conditions) regardless of snow depth – Also allows ground snow control during hybrid or passive weather control modes Added new Passive weather control mode, which uses XP12 live weather mode for weather depiction in the simulator, while all other AS features are enabled including weather reporting, planning, mapping, air effects, turbulence, ground snow control, etc. – Requires Live wx mode and overrides Hybrid wx mode when enabled Update 012024 Fixed issue with download failure detection and auto switchover to DataNet that would cause download failure if METARs failed from NOAA Added new experimental Control ground snow conditions feature/option, using GRIB snow depth data, forcing ground snow conditions (via runway_friction dataref) accordingly in XP12 when GRIB data indicates – This is defaulted ON – Use Map and hover over user aircraft, or the debug screen to see ground snow level information Tuned apparent visual snow depth based on snow depth level Updated documentation
  3. Yep! I have fond memories of working on the PMDG 757 and 767 Fly! Airliner series in 1997-1999 IIRC. Regarding RSR, I've got to back him up a little here... While he can say the wrong things at times, and sure he's got an ego (ever met an accomplished pilot who didn't? 🤣), he is extremely passionate and really cares, possibly more than anyone else I've ever met, about his customers, products, and their quality and fidelity. I think this gets interpreted poorly many times (and he's got to own this, and I think he has - a work in progress). This business can get tough and demanding, the effort to create new products is immense, and emotions can get the best of us. I'm not excusing anything, but just giving a little alternate perspective.
  4. I think it's pretty clear that weather write access will not be coming any time soon. I do think they considered it quite a bit at different points, but public sentiment is so vocally against it, I would not blame them for dismissing this. Of course contractual issues may be the reason as has been suspected. Who knows. Using "extra-SDK" techniques aka hacking to control weather is likely all we will ever have IMO. So unfortunate. It could have been so great! Maybe if the tide turns and public sentiment is more favorable to weather add-ons, or some contractual factors change, we'll get another chance (as users). HiFi will likely be long gone by then, of course, but it will still be great for everyone to have this one day.
  5. Hi Guenter, really great to hear from you! Of course.
  6. Despite the denial of such, there is a pretty big campaign against us or other wx developers EVER being allowed to participate in MSFS again. It's a huge problem for this very small, very vocal group of people. My theory is that they blame weather add-ons for stifling weather development in the other simulators of the past, and misguidedly believe that exclusion is best for everyone, so that they force the sim developer to handle it themselves. Or to put it another way, they want everything Active Sky ever did (and every thing it ever worked on for future) to be completely free, totally integrated, and only other add-ons other than weather shall be allowed to do anything beyond the scope of the internal simulator, so that MSFS2020 weather evolves to completion. Fair enough, that can be understood. Now that MSFS2020 does a lot of what AS did, eliminating the need for AS legacy, perhaps those folks might consider, is it OK now that weather add-on developers can be considered for inclusion? We'd love to release a new AS for FS. We'd love the opportunity to participate too. We've got lots of features in mind that you aren't even imagining yet, that would greatly improve your flight sim experience. MS/Asobo can't/won't do everything that everyone wants. That's what add-ons are for. Historical is just one small possibility. There are many more.
  7. We "call up" weather how the sim depicts it. 3D clouds in P5, P6 and XP12. Surface data, aloft data, grib, sigmets/airmets, TAF forecasts, storms, whatever, it all can be stored in temporal snapshots at whatever resolution(s), and resolution is really the only factor here that makes it more complicated depending on the end depiction considerations. If we were allowed to control weather using SDK/API, we could easily implement such. Kind of like we did in XP12, P5 and P6. The only reason we can't is because we have no access to wx writes by policy as you know (which as you also know I at least partially credit to public sentiment against such). Now, we can in theory provide preset weather control, like some others have, with historical weather, and we might. But that's globalized weather, without regional variation as per live weather, and of course many don't want that. The very negative criticism of that approach that we witnessed has prevented us from it thus far. But we are still considering it.
  8. There was an NOAA data issue with METAR cache today, but it should be corrected now. It affected many things across many platforms.
  9. Thanks very much for your support, and thanks for the support from all our customers. It is tremendously appreciated.
  10. Looks like a drone with a costume to me... similar to the LAX jetpacks. The "costume" appears completely rigid with no movement or flex, and the flight path looks consistent with a drone (static mostly, with some smooth change of altitude only).
  11. FYI, new updates posted: Update 011024 (B8775) -Fixed issue with temperatures forcing to 0C in some cases, causing invalid temperature simulation as well as potential flight stability issues Update 010424 -Fixed issue related to historical downloads older than 10 days on DataNet resulting in download failure
  12. Thanks for your feedback. We have had significant issues with mass e-mails and users false flagging for spam/abuse (despite never ever once in 20+ years sending a single spam) causing our mail sending capability to be suspended, which, given our e-mail based account verification system, causes much disruption. So as a policy we don't send mass e-mails, and since implementing that policy, we have had no suspensions. We do understand other developers do this despite the suspension risk, but it is not something we can afford. So instead we provide news and updates in the app directly, including upgrade offers. We also announced it on our facebook page, HiFi forums, here on AVSIM, and several other social-media locations. The vast majority of those who did not learn of the free upgrade offer until it had expired had obviously not used ASXP nor visited our forums nor AVSIM during the time we announced this. We sympathize with that it did not intend to "leave them out", and that's why we're looking at ending free limited upgrade periods and instead using long-term paid upgrades instead moving forward.
  13. We offered a free upgrade for a limited time that most ASXP owners took advantage of. We could not continue to offer free upgrade beyond the period we did, due to major business challenges we face, we could not provide a further discount beyond that. We are trying our best to stay in business so we can continue weather development. The time and costs required are significant, and we must have at least some compensation to offset things. With that, we've learned that offering a free limited time upgrade is something that many users do not appreciate. So we'll probably eliminate that moving forward, favoring traditional discounted upgrade paths instead. Thanks for your feedback.
  14. FYI, ASP6 open beta update with v6.1 compatibility has been posted....
  15. Note that we did find an issue relating to add-on folder path selection and installation looping, if you uninstalled the previous build then installed 8600. Please uninstall once more, get B8603 just posted, and the problem should be resolved. Thank you.
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