2024 ActiveSky Weather Program Main Thread

Come back REX, all is forgiven.

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I founded Darkspace-weather-enviro in Community folder, I was checking in the wrong one!

Finally it works! I’ll do my first GA flight in a minute! :airplane: :thought_balloon: :partying_face:

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Interesting that 122 ATIS still works in Live WX + AS mode. I unchecked some of the other regions because the voices were just too accented for CONUS ops where I am most of the time heh.

I’ve submitted a ticket. That’s 5 hours of my life I’m not getting back. I’d love to sound less glum but I was really looking forward to this after a dreadful, stressful week at work.

Hopefully the live weather in MSFS 2024 will be good enough not to need TP add-ons.

All of these reports really remind me of AS with FSX. I have the feeling they simply ported it to MSFS without really developing it any further.

I honestly like the way weather is depicted in MSFS. It’s not perfect, but I enjoy it anyhow.

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This scenario was great. Spoilers masked below if you want to see one solution to it.

I wouldn’t try this in a Normally Aspirated 172. Good thing I took the JT-A, when you need absolute immediate power and excess of it, the Turbodiesel delivered. Basically - you’re going to run into a bunch of hazards. What I did was set up a flight as per the scenario - left Reno headed to Merced using Live Weather and climbed to 12,500 and leveled off. Hit the Scenario button. Situation changed after a few seconds. First hazard is icing - the only clue is OAT - by that point you should be near your most obvious alternate, which is KTVL. You can wimp out here or you can do the macho (stupid) thing like I did - heh. I cut East into the Valley and set waypoints for M45, POYSN and O22 which gave me the lowest clearance profile around to stay out of icing altitude. Great - except it all falls apart as you approach the last mountain range - everything from wind shear, heavy rain, thunder and lighting. The works. At one point, Wind Shear pushed me down into the range that I could not see - all I know is the Wind Shear warning (inserted by AS) and the 500’ were awesome. Thank goodness for NXi - I kept switching between Topo and NEXRAD looking for holes in both the range peaks and the front overhead. Really awesome. Looking forward to seeing (morbidly) what the JFK Spatial scenario is like.

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I tested the ā€˜Microbust encounter’ scenario and it was very disappointing. I tried three times and in all of them, it was an uneventful approach, without any scares. Even with the audible windshear warning, nothing unusual happened.

ā€˜Wake Turbulence’ on the other hand was pretty scary. I thought nothing unusual would happen in this scenario as well when out of nowhere, my aircraft inverted and dived towards the ground.

Spatial Disorientation scenario was underwhelming. Ground lights clearly visible at 3500’. No conspiracy theories here please - you can send those to Discussion Hub > Real-life Aviation Thanks.

Disclaimer: I am not a meteorologist or a real life pilot.
I am still on the fence on this product, I did buy HIFI TECH Active sky 2012, which was fantastic..but I feel this is no different to REX, which I dont use at all. I only fly real time and real weather, presets do not interest me or scenrios.

Interestingly received an email from //42 for SimFx which is not compatible with Activesky at present.

I just expected more and was very optimistic now very disappointed, however I do not feel Asobo/MSFS will ever allow 3rd party to have a overhaul with regards to weather. I really dont think MSFS 2024 will be any different, just preset weather. However like most people on this forum it is just speculation. I will be so happy to be proven wrong on release.

Ending on a positive note.
It is what it is, dont think it will ever change, I still enjoy my career modes with MSFS.
I

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If hiding the idiotic toolbar makes this program not work, I will never purchase it.

I have seen already some videos comparing AS with the default MSFS weather and I am personally not convinced about getting AS at this stage. I think is fairly priced though.

If they managed (which is in their development plans) to depicted the weather in radar systems I think I would proceed to buy it.

For those that have got this - what are your initial thoughts? As a long time AS user myself I am considering this

I’ve been using it for two days and so far I’m satisfied.

As I said in a previous comment, I’m more interested in weather effects than weather deciption itself. Unless there is a significant discrepancy between the real world weather and the decipted weather in ASFS, this won’t bother me.

At least, from what I’ve been able to test and compare, ASFS weather depiction is very accurate and sometimes even better than MSFS live weather. Yesterday, I did a flight over my city. It was overcast with a light rain. ASFS showed this very accurately which really impressed me. MSFS live weather on the other hand, showed partly cloudy weather.

People on AVSIM have also been posting comparisons images between ASFS, MSFS live weather and live footage. In almost all of them, ASFS seems to show something closer to live footage than MSFS live weather. I believe this is due to ASFS injecting a better variety of clouds while MSFS live weather only seems to inject cumulus clouds.

Anyway, it’s not guaranteed that ASFS will always inject something much better or close to reality everywhere. MSFS live weather is accurate and most of the time, will provide you with a weather that is very close to reality.

If you buy Active Sky ONLY with the expectation that it will always provide weather that is much more accurate with the real world than MSFS live weather, there is a high chance you will be disappointed, as MSFS live weather is already good enough just to that.

The purchase must take into account other things Active Sky FS will provide besides weather injection, like weather effects. General turbulence effects, in-cloud turbulence, updrafts, downdrafts, microbursts, wake turbulence from AI traffic, etc. Most of these effects MSFS either severely lacks or doesn’t have at all. These effects will give you a much greater immersion in your flights compared to default experience or even any other weather addon can provide.

I find it bizarre these effects are being overlooked or even forgotten when discussing ASFS. It seems like almost everyone is just focusing on weather injection, like ASFS only does that.

Anyway, I believe ASFS is receiving a lot of unfair criticism, many even from those who didn’t buy the product or from those who bought it and didn’t read the manual and don’t even know what it is or what it does. Much of the criticism is based on the false impression that since the weather API is closed, ASFS cannot work proprely.

Others are greatly overestimating Meteoblue, saying that it is ā€˜something out of this world’, ā€˜a revolution in weather assessment’, that it will never be equaled or surpassed by a weather addon, and because ASFS uses METAR data, it is extremely limited compared to Meteoblue.

Meteoblue is just a forecast model like any other. MSFS live weather actually does use METAR injection around airports, precisely because it is more accurate than Meteoblue model data. So trying to claim that model data will ever be more accurate than actual observation data is not only false, but ignores the way MSFS default weather actually works currently.

Meteoblue, like any model, is only run a few times a day. So, if you’re viewing weather produced strictly by Meteoblue model, you’re simply viewing a forecast that is up to 8 -12 hours old. This could produce weather in the sim that is entirely different from what that location is currently experiencing in reality. This is specifically why MSFS started blending in METAR injection starting with SU5.

Furthermore, ASFS also uses a forecast model (GFS), that is, it does not simply religiously inject what a METAR from an airport far from where you are is indicating, working in almost the same way as the overrated Meteoblue.

That’s my opinion. It’s up to you whether or not Active Sky FS is worth it for you.

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The problem is one of flight-planning. METAR-to-METAR results in very uneven and inconsistent transitions (even with latest version and transition rate dropped very low), and you just simply travel from sector to sector, accepting whatever is there. A moving front across your flight plan represents an entirely different story, and requires some consideration rather than just plowing along. I want to know if I can beat that front to destination, or should I try to overfly, hold and wait for it to pass, or go for the alternate now. Don’t get me wrong - it’s beautiful - I’ve spent the last day or so trying the heck out of this program.

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I have to say i broadly agree with your view.
It does a really nice job of depicting weather, to me it looks better than MSFS depictions. It feels like the clouds and lighting is better. When i fly over my town, it looks more realistic and similair to what I can see out the window. A flight over near Catalinia and in land proved some impressive views.
Its one downside is of the 8 or so flights i have done, twice the weather changed abruptly (one time the clouds just disappeared, the other they started growing from nothing very quickly and unrealistically (i have set the slowest smoothest transitions) I wont give up on Active Sky - will see what the developers can do.
Also trying to work out best setting for downloading forecasts - not sure if shorter intervals will mean more sudden changes




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Have you experienced more turbulence with AS? Or any other effect?

Ehhh I’ll stick with default weather and preset mods for now…these screenshots just aren’t making AS look any better. Ceilings look terribly flat.

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You mean like IRL? :wink:

fair enough - i do think it depends on the weather - I am flying out of Portland (added a new screenshot) now and the clouds look very different. But i take your point. :slight_smile:

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Still not working for me and to be honest I have had enough want a refund :rage: