Active Sky has been the best purchase I made this year. For the first time after 20 years of sim flying, there is engaging weather with variety in areas of the world not covered by metars with historical weather. It is an awesome product.
4:50 We takeoff and land into the wind primarily to reduce ground-roll speeds, shorten takeoff and landing distances, reach taxi speeds sooner, and reduce wear-and-tear on the brakes. Not so much for turbulence. ;-)
Not sure what you were trying to say with the unrealistic cloud types when you selected the different default presets. They are just that: default presets with default cloud sizes that can be tweaked to one's liking and that don't really have anything to do with how Live Weather depicts a certain weather situation. You see the graphical depiction on the left in the Preset menu? You can use that to tweak the visuals of the clouds with no limit: the number of cloud layers, the thickess of cloud layers, the coverage of cloud layers and the density of cloud layers. The same goes for wind, gusts, precipitation, temperatures and humidity. Active Sky uses exactly those tools to create custom presets that extend uniformly all the way to the horizon in each direction, blending to new presets as you fly along. You can't see different weather closing in in the distance when using the Active Sky weather depiction. That's only possible with default Live Weather. Almost anything that Active Sky does you can do manually with those Preset tools, except some of the turbulence effects. Active Sky is no magical thing that creates clouds that MSFS can't, it only manipulates presets and injects some extra aircraft movements (like FSRealistic or RealTurb) to do its thing, because there is no weather API. I've seen plenty of overcasts just like you showed at the end with MSFS Live Weather. By the way: I'm not trying to put Active Sky down. I didn't use anything else but Active Sky in the FSX/P3D era and I purchased Active Sky for MSFS myself and use if for cases when Live Weather generates snow covers in the mountains in scorching summer heat or when thunderstorms should happen, which are entirely absent in MSFS Live Weather. Otherwise Live Weather in conjunction with RealTurb for turbulence still can't be beat right now. Let's see what the future of Active Sky brings.
Visually what MSFS is showing is a cumulus cloud in the developing stage of a thunderstorm, or towering cumulus. The general rule is to avoid thunderstorms by 20 miles. Entering that cloud in any aircraft, particularly a light aircraft could result in structural failure/loss of control.
So I knew the dangers.. but dang 20miles... that's pretty far. My dad used to fly and he said the same about them when I said they look cool.. he told me yes.. and that's where the fun in those clouds stop
@@OverkillSimulations Just last night we flew over the top of a fairly small intensity storm (only showing yellow on the radar return) and we got hit so hard in an A320 that the auto pilot kicked off, and warning lights/audio went off.
@@OverkillSimulations also meant to say I really appreciate your reviews. Just bought the head tracker from RJ Simtech and mentioned to him it was based off your review.
Mfs dont have any weather Api for developers. The only thing Activesky can do is to inject metar based weather presets. And everytime the metar updates the clouds and winds will have a very abrupt change in the sim. No smooth weather transitions, and you cant see distance change in the weather like rain clouds etc. As long as mfs dont support weather api, all this weather addons are a vaste of time and money.
Man, your review is spot on!! I loaded a T storm and it was exactly what I hoped for. The clouds were different variations of MSFS and then some. Took off and flew through the storm and came out on the other side then back to land where the realism of these turbulence came in and boy did it feel realistic!! Thanks Overkill because I was really on the fence, besides you can always use the that suits you. I have Rex also.
MSFS default weather + RealTurb is all you need, Active Sky is an insult. You dont need weather simulation software in MSFS, and 2024 is gonna be even better.
So it depends on the plane if you fly the 737 you wanna make the first 3 settings like 125. FBW I used 75 then make sure you SAVE AIRCRAFT PROFILE then restart it@@piloto2412
Active Sky is just a METAR loader. It blankets the entire world in what ever METAR your flying over. It's not a weather engine when it comes to the MSFS version. Only real weather engine is the default one built into MSFS
Very informative as ever. However, having done lots of approaches (with FSIPanel as so easy to repeat), the most challenging handling is still with passive. Don’t understand why but active seems to smooth conditions. I prefer the challenge more than seeing thunder or slightly more visually realistic clouds. Of course, as not a real pilot I can tell if more difficult is more realistic. I do LOVE the search feature where I can go to wet, windy conditions.
Using active sky with simfx would be awesome. So I might get active sky. The clouds look more realistic to me. Been in many of aircraft flying through and above the clouds and they dont look like they do in msfs all the time so active sky might end up in my sim and using it with the new simfx I have.
If its the truth then show me a scene were the clouds don't extend to the horizon and you can see individual weather across the sky. Show me the vertical cloud buildups that MSFS has when there are CBs or a frontal line. The only thing AS can do is depicted flat cloud bases and try to simulate a better depictions of the METAR at a station. Other than that, it doesn't come close to the default weather in MSFS.
and you get this insight how? AS certainly does show vertical buildup when necessary. I suggest you actually buy it and see for yourself OR read the comments from peple who have actually used it. You may still not like it as that's personal preference.
Cloud coverage with METAR's is reported in eights, Sky Clear zero clouds, Few 0-2 eights (octas) coverage, Scattered 3-4 octas coverage, Broken is 5-7 octas coverage, and Overcast is 8 octas. One hundred percent of the sky is covered in clouds. Basic cloud structure is cumulus and stratus. Building cumulus are something to watch, just how unstable is the air and how fast is the air rising. What time of the day is it? You can have slow vertical building or rapidly building. Anyway I don't want to bore you, just wanted to mention some basics.
I have to agree with OneCharlieMike who stated that he’s not sold with MSFS 2024 just around the corner. I can’t imagine spending ANY money on an app when the new version could render it obsolete. There are simply too many variables at play. I’ll stick with the current stock system and wait until we know how weather works in 2024 before I make a decision. Same for the two ATC apps out there. Who knows what 2024 will offer?
4:20 what? Of course msfs weather does turbulence from winds deflecting off terrain. Just fly the approach to 20 at Shoreham with winds coming over the hills and you'll see for yourselves. Or fly anywhere in the mountains on the downwind/leeward side. Not only does msfs default weather engine simulate it, it overdoes the effect which results in some crazy behavior. The best fix for this is to get RealTurb though. Yes, it can run alongside AS and they work together nicely. I've tested it and with RT on the plane reacts way more realistically. Also, AS settings for turbulence don't have a huge effect on how it feels in flight. MSFS turbulence setting does. Keep it at "realistic" and you'll be thrown around like a kite. It needs to be at medium, from my experience. Try adjusting your AS/RT settings then, once you have your MSFS turbulence at medium. The trick is to have msfs turbulence at medium + higher settings in RT and AS. 14:20 umm, Realism mode actually INCREASES the default effects strength, not "dumbs it down". Where did that come from? Just check what the default values are and what they're changed to when going REALISM mode in AS. After 3 weeks of testing, have you really not noticed the constant stuttering that happens with AS in active mode, mainly when the updates happen but not only? Lots of people have complained about it. Another one would be the abrupt weather changes that still happen, regardless of the transition settings. These are the things the devs need to work out. For me it's AS in passive mode until these issues are resolved.
@@mdhazeldine I'm not sure to be honest, but I flew with AS on but RT off, and then with both of these addons on. The difference was noticeable. RT definitely helps with the overdone effect of terrain deflected wind/turbulence.
Active Shy was ALL HYPE.... The way MSFS/Asobo locks live weather generation NO THIRD PARTY Software will be able to do what the live weather does even though default live weather has it's own issue.... DO NOT BUY and waste your money.... If you are thrilled about historical data and have also the same basically limited Rex Weatherforce, download their BETA.... Very very hard to dial the setting in Active Sky to work decent at best thus more troubleshooting which MSFS 4 year beta has worn peeps out. ZERO DISTANCE Cloud Generation and that is it's most terrible inability because ASOBO has LOCKED THAT DOWN 100%
What is the data consumption of Active Sky? Since I started using the program I went well over my 1 tb limit for the month and think Active Sky was the reason. Had a few long flights with the Fenix but never went over my limit before.
well.. i didn't know about turning the live weather off in msfs LOL.. so thanks for that!!! Might explain some really weird things that were happening like i was having those sudden baro changes again where you drop a thousand feet and/or the wind suddenly changes.. oh and my fenix trying to do barrel rolls.. will have to try it again. I do however tend to agree with @brucenicholson5421, the weather that msfs makes does seem to be more dynamic at least visually where as AS just seems to change the global weather.
A test like this say nothing. Beeing a RL retired glider pilot I would like to test it on my aitport that have particulsr wheather conditions imposdible to recreate on sims. I have big doubt about such programs. We cannot riproduce ewerything the nature do. Trees in MSFS reproduce turbolences? No. In my airport with very strong phöen wind the trees procuce turbolence with sand al least 100 mt high with huge downdraft. Every treeline is dangerous when you fly over it on take off, nothing that a simmer could imagine. In fact only gliders fly in those windy days, GA pilots remain home. The strong turbolence are "only" in the first 800 mt then there is a regular fantastic orographic wind thst allow uou yo fo hubdreds and hundreds km above the whole Alps. At evenjng, when landing huge turbolences aplear again under 1000 mt until you land. Once I did a tonneaux due to a push of side wind ! What a fear! Reality flying can be very imprevedible .... MSFS or XP turbolences are nothing. 😥😥😥
