Active Sky for MSFS

[davidtsw1906]

Unexpectedly, HiFi released their legendary Active Sky weather engine for MSFS. I was holding off initially but what I saw in a few live streams looked good enough to me and I pulled the trigger on AS today. Just completed my first flight across the Channel and it's light years ahead of the default weather engine. Much closer to METAR too. And it makes the whole sim look better. Take a look at a few screenshots, I'll let you guess which one is the shot without AS on METAR was showing few + scattered at 3600 and 4400 feet. I mean it's not even close and puts the default weather engine to shame.

P.S. I heard the price of AS was going to go up after a few days. Not sure if this is true but you might be able to save a bit by getting it sooner rather than later.

[AKar]

I've never been too a big fan of ASN, which would be the previous implementation, even if it is, and with a margin, the best weather engine for P3D. And, interestingly, that is, for a big part, precisely because of it religiously matching the METARs instead of having any sort of apparent understanding of the weather as a system.

And METARs are among the worst possible sole sources for creating a dynamic weather picture from.

Anyways, I'll surely try the new one out at some point and see what I think of it myself.

-Esa

[davidtsw1906]

Are you sure AS relies solely on METAR? Where is this information from? I don't know how it works exactly but what I'm seeing in the sim is light years ahead of MSFS weather.

I took the Twin Star back across the Channel to Shoreham. Same story. AS weather was exactly like in the METAR in Calais and then in Shoreham. Went from 2 layers of scattered / overcast to few clouds to cavok at destinations. Again, just like in the METAR and in accordance to what the AS app weather map was showing. Check the screenshots for reference.

There are settings for weather update intervals and transition smoothing that I'm playing with. It's looking very promising.

[Skycat]

I bought it on release day and there has already been an update. My experience with it has been mixed. Sometimes ASFS in active live weather mode seems more accurate for my local conditions, but usually the default MSFS weather seems more accurate. I've settled on the passive ASFS mode for now, which is essentially an enhanced version of the MSFS live weather.

I've yet to try the Historic Weather feature, which honestly may be the best reason to buy ASFS. In the winter it gets dark here before I get home from work, and I have to set my sim to daylight hours for enjoyable VFR.

[Bones]

I used ActiveSky in FSX and P3D, and always loved it, great product and support. Question: is Milford Sound with AS covered in snow year-round like it is with the default weather?

[davidtsw1906]

Let the images speak for themselves.

There are issues though. I've seen people report abrupt weather changes, delayed/no weather updates and not the latest METARs in use. I've experiences all of it in the last couple of days too. They're investigating, pretty sure this will be fixed soon.

[Bones]

Let the images speak for themselves.

There are issues though. I've seen people report abrupt weather changes, delayed/no weather updates and not the latest METARs in use. I've experiences all of it in the last couple of days too. They're investigating, pretty sure this will be fixed soon.

Thank you so much for that! I bet the folks in Milford are thrilled to be out of their four-year freeze.

[Mantock]

So...

Is it worth it over the default MSFS live weather at this point do we think? I'm still on the fence about it having heard all this and others saying its not what the active sky next products were in P3D

[davidtsw1906]

So...

Is it worth it over the default MSFS live weather at this point do we think? I'm still on the fence about it having heard all this and others saying its not what the active sky next products were in P3D

I've been testing it quite a lot over the last few days and it's a mixed bag right now, but with a very good ratio of pros to cons IMO

+ better looking clouds: individual clouds look denser and with more volume. You don't see nearly as many thin, undefined clouds as you do with default weather. Less of the weird popcorn clouds too. Cloud formations look significantly better too. It's night and day difference once you switch between AS and default (can be done within seconds without having to reload the flight or the sim so it's very easy to see). You get properly arranged layers at the right altitudes. Whatever the conditions, FEW, SCT, BRK or OVC, clouds always look better with AS on

+ better visibility depiction: I'm not sure how this works but I can definitely tell the difference. The whole lighting system benefits from this too, and from the clouds

+ in my testing AS wins every time I compare it to the default weather and check with the latest METAR, at every airport I've tried. Again, the default weather looks so disappointing most of the time once you see how AS depicts the scene

+ flight planning with detailed weather reports available, also in voice. It's opened a whole new aspect of simming to me that as a non-pilot I didn't know much about

+ turbulence / wind effects: AS adds clear weather and in-cloud turbulence and these effects are really good. It feels very natural and not jerky at all like the default weather can be. I'm also using RealTurb Global which came out before AS and this addon improves how wind/turbulence affects the aircraft too. Now they're working together beautifully

+ thunderstorms are much better!

+ very good support from the devs and, as they suggest, many updates to come

now the cons, probably only temporary

- some stutters / lower fps have been reported and I've seen this too. Clouds do look better though so it's no wonder it eats up a few more fps (3070ti + 5700x3d here)

- there are issues with abrupt weather changes. Normally weather changes happen gradually, and you have a slider to control how gradually this happens. But I've had a few weird weather resets, also reported by others. This is the main problem for me right now but I'm pretty sure they'll work it out at some point.


I never used the older AS versions for P3D/FSX so I don't know how good they were, but what ASFS offers is so much better than the default weather that I think it's absolutely worth the very reasonable price. And they intend to offer an update once MSFS 2024 is out, either free or paid depending on how much rework is necessary. Sounds fair to me.

Check out these 3 shots from Lisbon. I can't look at default weather anymore, just like I couldn't fly anything else once I tried the Comanche.

[Ron Attwood]

Forgive if I've missed something/not RTFM properly, but do you need to mess with MSFS for AS to display, or just fire up AS et voila! And, does AS override A2A's turbulence etc.?

Think that's about it.

[davidtsw1906]

I'll do some flying in the Comanche and let you know. The Twin Star has kept me busy

And you don't do anything with the default weather options, other than change the time if you want. There's a neat app that runs in the background where you control everything, check weather etc.

[Ron Attwood]

A complete evening of Comanche/AS goodness. I found, as you said, that AS takes over completely. no meaning with anything. As far as interfering with A2A's turbulence etc. it didn't appear to make any difference.

So far, so very good.