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.