This is an FYI about “replay” options for whatever it’s worth…
For those who simply want to replay their landings or such, any of the replay options for MSFS will work fine. But for those who make MSFS videos, there are particular issues that need to be addressed. I have obtained and tested the following MSFS replay options:
Built-in MSFS Replay (free)
Flight Recorder (free)
Flight Control Replay ($15)
Sky Dolly (free)
After having thoroughly tested and used these products I even went to the trouble of creating a spreadsheet comparing their functions/features and ability to meet my needs. This video was created with MSFS Replay. This video was created with Sky Dolly.
The result of spending time with these replay options is that I have chosen Sky Dolly as my preferred tool for creating videos. MSFS Replay was broken between SU8 and SU9. After being fixed in SU9, my intent was to go back to using MSFS Replay as I had done on my first two videos. But after being spoiled by Sky Dolly’s ease of use and functionality, I found MSFS Replay to be cumbersome and lacking in needed functionality. Sky Dolly can do things no other replay option can do, and because of it’s user friendliness can meet my needs with the highest productivity. I have shared many emails with it’s author, who is very willing to help, is responsive, and open to suggestions for improvement (of which I find almost none needed). I would say that creating a video with Sky Dolly is about half the workload of creating one with MSFS Replay. Also, it is very efficient, having almost no impact on FPS. The one thing it can’t do that MSFS Replay can, is record a strictly drone flight (and neither can the others). But for this use I’ve discovered that just recording “live” (no replay) works fine.
I have purposely avoided comparing the options feature by feature because that is not the intent of this thread. I hope this information is useful to those looking for a good tool to use for replay, no matter what their goals.
Do any of the other replay options also replay weather? It’s unfortunate that in some instances with Sky Dolly I can’t capture the same scene for landings as my actual landings because even in the space of minutes it can be obvious that conditions are not the same during the replay as they were during the landing
The replay programs do not record video. They only record instructions for MSFS to fly the plane. It’s kind of like MIDI vs. Recording for music. It’s only a list of instructions. So the computer generated stuff you see on screen is regenerated each time you “play” the “fly like this” (fly) instructions. In fact you can change aircraft and still use the same fly code/file. All of the “AI” stuff like vehicles, weather, ground crew, pilot movement, etc. is randomly regenerated with each replay. That’s why you don’t see the same weather. Having said that, not all of the replay solutions record all of the things that can be recorded. For example, MSFS Replay does not record what it takes to generate aerobatic smoke (smoke on/off), tire smoke/dust, etc. Sky Dolly (SD) saves and plays back everything that MSFS allows. Also, it’s the only one that automatically saves the replay files in a data base that greatly simplifies choosing what to replay. Also, you can position in the timeline and record from there (but I digress). The fact that MSFS can replay drone-camera-only is because they have an inside track on the code, that isn’t provided in the SimConnect data that other replay solutions use. To get the true live recording of what you see on screen you have to do a screen record. FCR has this built-in. SD does not as there are screen recorders (such as GeForce Experience) that operate a the “root” video level and thus are more efficient (less hardware overhead) resulting in smoother and more accurate recordings.
P.S. When doing screen recordings for videos, be sure to set the Time-Of-Day to be the same on each clip you replay for screen recording. Otherwise the shadows/sunlight in your clips will not be consistent. Unfortunately MSFS does not save the date and time when you save a weather configuration (oh bother).
Well, “live weather” is just that: “live weather”. It is in its very nature that it changes by the minute. But it should also become obvious that storing each such “weather state” would require a humongous amount of data. Essentially each parameter that influences “cloud formations” - to pick a random example - would have to be stored, for every given location and time in the past (or at least for the duration of the recording).
So what about “weather presets” then? Well, the entire SimConnect API concerning the “weather” is deprecated (which means for us developers: “Don’t use in new code!”). (*).
This is of course because the weather simulation has fundamentally changed in MSFS (as compared to previous versions, such as FSX etc.).
However it is possible to programmatically save and load (via the SimConnect API) the initial flight conditions - “the flight”. Just like it is interactively possible on the world map in MSFS itself. However it is my understanding that this would reload a flight “from scratch”. But this is something I might be considering in future updates of Sky Dolly (as an option).
But even then the weather is essentially “randomly generated” - even with “weather presets”, as stored in the “flight” - so you probably wouldn’t quite exaclty have the same clouds patterns (if this was important). And even today you could easily reproduce this by loading the corresponding weather preset yourself, before replaying a flight. At least until a “save/load initial flight” option might be available in Sky Dolly.
However “live weather” will always be what it is: “live weather” - and change is good, no?
(*) In fact, I just checked: the current API documentation does not even list the deprecated weather API anymore - it’s seems to be completely gone. It might still work for existing apps, for API backwards compatibility (but probably never had any effect in MSFS anyway), but the removal of the documentation underlines: “do not use it!”.
My experience has shown that using flight save/load (accessed by [ESC] in the flight) saves the location, weather settings, date, time, and aircraft. I use this to record/start from the same place and time while making videos. You can even save after take-off or wherever. But Asobo in their wisdom has decided that you can’t access the weather menu in the toolbar if you have done a “load”. So for example, you can’t load a “snapshot” of a flight that you’ve previously saved, and then change the time-of-day, or bring on rain.
P.S. If having the exact same visuals, including weather, is important to you in studying your landings then you probably just need to do a screen record, instead of a “replay” record.
No, I don’t believe we’re thinking about this the same way at all. The weather system has to be deterministic no? It’s not being fed real-time data constantly it updates with real-time data every few minutes or as you fly over distance but in between those updates it is moving forward in time based on the initial data that it received from the update. So, if you save the current parameters for the weather at the start of the recording and during the updates (not a lot of datal), you should be able to re-load that weather and play it out the same as before.
I think the main problem is that the weather API is not available to 3rd party, which is why I was hoping to hear the built-in tool could do this as I never experimented with it myself. Oh well
I already do a screen record. But I’m not going to setup the cinematic camera for photos while I’m actually performing the landing, which is the main purpose of the replay for me
Actually I think we do. But I agree that my “humongous” quantitative assessment might have been a little bit of an overestimate
But for sure I wasn’t talking about storing each “cloud voxel” or each rain drop either
Yes. However keep in mind that most random number generator implementations are deterministic.
My point being: even if you set the same weather preset like “overcast” you get a different cloud pattern each time you select it (try it: select “overcast”, switch to “clear weather” and back to “overcast”: the clouds are now different). That is because the “randomness” is initialised with a different “seed” (in the simplest case with the current time etc.).
If this is according what you would expect, then that’s fine. But my point here is really that even with the same “starting conditions” you would get a different cloud setup, and also different “local rain shower spots” etc.
That would be fully satisfactory if all you wanted was to replay the flight in “the same weather conditions” (rainy, overcast, snowing, …), but might still not good enough if you are a video editor and want to “film” your landing from different angles, because each time you would “rewind” the recording the clouds would still “move on” and you would have a different cloud pattern in the sky (I am now very “picky” here, I know).
My point with “humongous amount of data” (for live weather) was that - while I don’t have any insight at all into the weather system, nor the amount of data it actually receives over the network, and how often etc. - I would expect that you have this data “per volumetric grid” (“spatial data”). I don’t know what the resolution would be, perhaps 100 metres, perhaps 1 kilometre. But if you assume that this data is available for the “visible range around the aircraft”, say, 50 kilometres in each direction (only). So with a resolution of 1 kilometre (width, height, depth) of each “cube” you would have 100 * 100 * 100 = 1’000’000 data sets (and each such data set would have temperature, wind direction, humidity, …).
UPDATE: Uh, the distance “up / down” would of course be way less than 50 kilometres So let’s assume a “height” of the entire “weather cube” to be 10 kilometres only. So we would have 100 * 100 * 10 = 10’000 data sets. And if we would reduce the “weather cube” to an ellipsoid we would have even less. But my point was rather to say that I think that MSFS must have some kind of “spatial resolution” for its “live weather”, to (more or less) correctly render “local rain showers” and all that.
Or it might be as you say and there is indeed just “one (rough) weather data set for a large(r) area”, and all MSFS e.g. would get is “it is rainy in this 10 by 10 km spot”, and MSFS then creates a (preset) “rain weather” in that region, based on its own built-in “it’s rainy with local rain showers” weather simulation.
Yes, perhaps. Again, I have absolutely no idea how much that data is, and no, I don’t think it is updated each minute either (maybe every 30 minutes or on the hour perhaps). And mind you, the actual “weather” (especially winds) etc. are actually calculated on Azure, and the resulting parameters only (which may indeed be only a few, but I still think they must be “spatial”, with whatever spatial resolution) are sent to MSFS.
But all this discussion is currently purely of academic nature, as there is currently no way to record/set any such data via SimConnect.
The in-game recording actually also simply records “simuation variables” (the same which are accessible via SimConnect to external applications, but also a couple of “private” ones such as the actual camera position, which is not exposed via SimConnect).
The good news is that Asobo actually announced a “weather API” (already for SU10?), didn’t they? We will see what will be available, and whether that API will also be exposed via SimConnect (or only to “in-process” WASM modules).
Also, the terrain API is going to be interesting… the only question will be (for external applications): will all this be available via SimConnect (as well)? Or will this be an “internal API” (e.g. only available via WASM, in-process in MSFS) only? Or a completely new API (replacing SimConnect in the future perhaps altogether)? I guess we will have to wait and see…
Will Sky Dolly enable me to “take over” the controls part way through a replay? I’m thinking here about practicing landings - so, fly a SID and land and then later replay and then resume “live” control somewhere on SID and try the landing again.
I really appreciate your study and analysis about flight recorders. I have been using Flight Recorder for some time. I will look into Sky Dolly, excellent video the one you pointed .
@rgp1942 Thank you very much for putting the time and energy into your write up.
I came to the Forums just now to do a search for exactly this kind of information. We’re very fortunate to have this resource available to us, and of course, community members like yourself that create quality content and make the community so valuable.
I’m the developer of FlightControlReplay. In order to confirm some informations that may remain under questioning in this thread, I can confirm here the following :
FlightControlReplay can either help you for a quick replay, without creating video. For example, you can just watch how you performed your landing or your TopGun mission challenge.
Or you can also decide to record an actual MP4 video straight out with only FCR.
About Replays, you can decide to resume the flight at anytime by using the time slider (if you have just missed your final approach, or you ended your flight on top of a cactus !)
And FCR also lets you decide to load your flights for Replay, with OR without, all situations data : weather, time of day, aircraft selection. You can replay the flight with the same aircraft and with the same weather conditions, or change them if you better want another experience.
It’s also appreciated for its ability to record separately the Camera movements and save it as a path than you can replay in other flight situations, to simulate Formation Flying, to record and follow AI aircraft operations, to change camera automatically during Replay, support of VR devices, with the ability to restore your flight in the last known position before a crash to desktop, apply an offset to your aircraft altitude (with also force gear position), etc.
When flying online, will this only record the user’s plane, or will it record/playback other aircraft (I fly VATSIM with AI Traffic Manager generating other online traffic).
Additionally, when playing back, do I need to disconnect from the network so that controllers and other pilots don’t see my plane moving around? I caused some issues with “another” of the playback tools when remaining connected to the network, since I wanted to see other traffic in my playback video.
Sky Dolly will only record your current user aircraft (you can add multiple aircraft to a „formation flight“, however recording is „sequential“ in this case).
While it would technically be possible to record other „AI objects“ (simulated traffic, injected real-world flights, and also ground vehicles) the underlying SimConnect API specifically does not give access to „multiplayer aircraft“ (that‘s why they also do not show up on e.g. Little Navmap). (*)
Yes. Sky Dolly „controls“ your aircraft during replay, just like you would control it with your input devices (keyboard. mouse, …) Every movement (or non-movement, when you pause the replay) hence shows up in online multiplayer and other ATC networks you are connected to at this point. Just like if you would use „slew mode“.
So better disconnect at least from ATC networks before replay.
(*) If you want to record a formation flight with other players: every player can record their own flight. Via export / import they can be exchanged among each other. During import you can then enable the „Add to flight“ option. The time offset can then manually be adjusted, to properly sync the flights.
I have to say that sky dolly surprised me very much, positively. This is currently the best replay app. Sorry to admit it, but the paid FCR add-on has been left behind. Dolly is better at even starting the engine or turning off the engine. Plus, you don’t have to run the thread on the plane to go back to the replay again. It always works and works properly. There is a super smooth replay.
