People need to reframe how they are talking about active sky. I don’t think active sky is bad, I just think people take for granted how good MSFS actually is. In past sims active sky made a huge difference because the base sim sky boxes were donkey lol! It’s an option for people and options are always good.

I've only run two flights with it so far, but I can say I was really impressed by the historical weather function. I work at a small FBO in the US and when I came into work there was no one flying on a nice few cloud day (the winds were 18, variable, and gusting!). I loaded up the airport in sim when I got home, set it for 11 which was right after I had gotten to work that day, and was pleasantly surprised to see the winds were high, the sky looked almost exactly as it did at that time, and the variability was there. As for the live weather function, it does look much better than default, the turbulence is more realistic as well, and while it doesn't do a whole lot, it does look and feel better. If you're pinching pennies then it's not worth it, but it is an enhancement to the experience.

Totally worth it IMO. Love the effects as well!

I like MSFS live weather with RealTurb installed, it works much better imo.

Used this product since fsx days, the biggest issue l have is weather popping in and out. I fly mostly longer sectors and this becomes noticeable especially if the stations are far apart. Otherwise I’m happy with my purchase. Great video thank you.

30 Euros for slightly different cloud composition is not worth it in my opinion. Both live weather and Active Sky can be a hit or miss, it really depends on the situation. The added functionality is cool, however I don't think many simmers would use historical weather that much, and custom weather can also be set up in the default simulator. This is just one of those "enhancement" mods that are mostly good for using even more system resources and messing up the sim or its updates, for diminishing returns.

@JoseAlbertoFR

2 ай бұрын

I use P3D/MSFS with Historical Weather only.

@renefeijen5916

2 ай бұрын

I use it to recreate weather i had in real life flights

@daronnecalvin2917

2 ай бұрын

I use both and the turbulence is way better with both going

@TheDelfin25

2 ай бұрын

I'm always amazed at how some of our planet's inhabitants think they know so well about the needs of their fellow species.

@batsbattlefield

2 ай бұрын

@@TheDelfin25is he not allowed to express his opinion? Lol

you a real one!

Thanks for the review.. and yes.. the ERJ was broken! ...

Ok, so I picked this up, I thought I would try it just to see. I have to say, I like it. I will admit the differences are subtle, but it is noticeable. I think it adds just that bit of extra realism to the sky boxes. I thought I would post this for those on the fence. I like it, but you can also do without if you don’t want to drop the extra dime on it.

My main reason for purchasing is the ability to get and load historic weather. I fly past airline routes.

@EurocontrolLines

2 ай бұрын

I also did this on FSX and I had Acrive Sky. Now only VATSIM and live weather from MSFS is far better then AS.

Did any of the Aircraft Developers (Fenix, PMDG, FlyByWire) already talk about the API and if it is good for a proper weather radar? As that would be the only reason for me to buy that Addon😅😂

@Manuel-9-

2 ай бұрын

It has no weather radar capabilities in the API

@igornebov

2 ай бұрын

WXR API is still a lie, Asobo and Meteoblue give nothing to depict precips volumetric and accurate, ASFS cant do anything about it. I'm outta here, even LaminarResearch anounced to do that in X-Plane 12, at least.

@marcodes77

2 ай бұрын

It's not possible because it can only set a single weather preset for the entire world. That's it. It can't do anything else than that.

@A330Driver could you do a comparison between ActiveSky and MSFS+RealTurb? I'm more interested in the effects of the wind around the terrain, windshear, up and downdrafts, and cloud effects. I was about to purchase RealTurb when they launched the new version, and then AS was announced. Up till now haven't seen anyone do a comparison between these two options I mentioned. Thanks, and safe flights!

@justinavila1320

Ай бұрын

I saw a review somewhere that showed the differences visually but also in handling btw ActiveSky, RexWeather and MSFS default. The conclusion was for weather effecting flight MSFS was pretty bad and ActiveSky was far far better. When it comes to "visuals" and how the weather depicted real world visuals in comparison to webcam live shots it seems MSFS was most accurate and had the best visual appearance. However ActiveSky allows you to inject the weather and use MSFS for the visual portion - this seemed to be the best.

I always wonder about the control check without the indicators...is it really sufficient to just move them throughout the rom and rely on feel alone ? not seeing them move ?

I spawned the 172, at DFW last weekend, into clouds and rain. I figured I would pop out above the clouds and continue my test. I wasn't able to get 10' AGL without being slammed down to the ground. I spawned one of the twins with similar results. So I spawned the F-22 and was at FL600 before I got to the tops of some of the clouds. I don't really remember anything unusual about the vertical climb in the F-22, other than the cloud tops, but there is no way I could have flown a light plane. It was just stock MSFS real weather but the radar showed a big system rolling through with a lot of energy. I like the idea of a more accurate "real world" weather, as I am a purest I suppose and only fly in real weather. Very interesting video and a lot of food for thought!

Hi Emi, thanks for this review. Is there a way to make those terrible weather transitions in AS more realistic? this sudden change in the weather is an inmersion killer for me definetly...

I don't care if the clouds don't look any/much better. What I care about is do we get realistic turbulence, up/down drafts, etc. That is where MSFS fails miserably IMO. Flying though TCUs in a Cessna and being as smooth as silk, no turbulence at all of up/down drafts at all, is just awful. So, how does AS work with bad weather conditions?

@Harry_Ng

2 ай бұрын

The live weather is laughable in msfs. If you want pretty clouds for screenshots then by all means use it, but active sky is much better from a technical standpoint.

@BC21084

2 ай бұрын

@@Harry_Ng go watch the easyjeysimpilot comparison, seems to not be laughable AS bs MS vs real life ✌️

@TheElfishGene

2 ай бұрын

"What I care about is do we get realistic turbulence." A2A Commanche says hello!

@Harry_Ng

2 ай бұрын

@@BC21084 live weather clouds are missing far too many types and can’t do overcast skies

@Harry_Ng

2 ай бұрын

@@BC21084 My take away is that he is far too concerned about the "looks" of the clouds. Active sky might look flat, but hey thats how it looks in real life too.

I bought it I like it, live weather only.

The first flight I took from Atlanta to Midway I could tell a significant difference in the wind modeling. Better than Rex and 10x better than the standard sim winds. I also flew in the storms in Texas a couple days ago. Wicked clouds and wind.

Hi there! Just one question. How do you set start trim automatically? Any key assigned for that? Thanks in advance

Do you think AS makes any difference in terms of turbulence for light aircrafts? The default weather feels reasonable only if not flying with real weather, and as soon as real weather is on it feels overly violent.

Does the Fenix weather radar actually work? I have never seen anything showing on the screen from it. Btw, weather goes well beyond what the eyes can see so well depicted clouds are not an indicator or realistic conditions.

I love activesky it reminds me of P3D days.. I love how the wind is now it feels smoother all the way resulting in better landings in my case!

Hi Emanuel, I too am not so interested in the look, but how a real pilot says it visually feels. So I look forward to your challenging tests. You didn't show "Passive vs AS Preset control" as I find the latter (that you used i assume)) very benign. I am finding landings with wind much harder with "Passive" which uses MSFS graphics with AS wind effects (and Newsky scores reflecting this!). Doing the same with "Preset" feels almost smoothed in same condition. These are the effects you say MSFS have dumbed down natively. For me the "Search" function is also most useful to find airports with particular (challenging) conditions. It is excellent. Look forward to your next videos as will be more useful indicator for my flying experience. Hoping will be a series of 5-6 circuits somewhere good, like you did in previous video, testing "Passive/Preset/MSFS native". Thx Alistair

Ive watched few videos on AS from different YT and just don’t see it’s worth the cost. Also will it get made redundant by 2024 ? I give it sometime see what they add and how others use it. Thx for the video. Living in the UK you get used to random weather every 30mins 😅. No one knows what’s happening even looking out window so how AS can represent it any better accurately than msfs who knows. Thought I saw 737 🤔

❤❤❤

@A330Driver

2 ай бұрын

Looking forward to your feedback!

Hi Emi, Good comparison in the video. I'm still on the fence with making a purchase

Would you recommend this over Realturb Cat V2?

Does this product really fix the winds in the sim? I know a couple of the streamers I watch say that MS winds while landing are not accurate. For example when flying the airbus and landing with a 5 knot crosswind shouldn't really move the plane but with MS winds it moves the plane way too much. If active sky corrects this I think it would be worth the purchase. I also wonder is it worth the purchase when 2024 is releasing this year. If 2024 if going to correct the winds then maybe this product isn't worth the purchase. I'm not really too sure.

It was worth the purchase for me. It gives more realistic and accurate clouds, better turbulence, better TS, and more accurate winds. Also, I'm not sure if this is just a placebo, but I swear when I use active sky preset mode, I get better FPS. Given what some community members have been saying, I was surprised by how much I liked it. It's up to others what they might think. Moreover, in the forums, it seems like the developer is working hard to push updates constantly, so it is continually improving. I respect that you didn't go with the crowd on this one.

I have Active sky and imo, it takes time like when typing a certain ICAO code of an airport in the airport side of the active sky app, it just states calculating at runway in use and when landing in a misty fog/hazy weather, msfs weather engine shows the fog but active sky takes time😅

I love Active Sky.. and it will become much better in FS. So much I can do with it. Passive if I want to us MSFS. I feel certain that it's only a matter of time befor weather radar uses AS. I'm very happy anyway. That's what it's about for me. Barty

The fast transition to OCST kills the immersion

Honestly I like active sky feel it’s more realistic than the default. There are its occasional times it’s a lil off but not as much as the default is.

I used ASN in FSX and was top coz you could integrate in your pmdg products (waether radar). In p3dv5 it was too too. When I switched over, I have had connection issue. It couldn't connect to msfs 2020. So MS FS will NOT work on MSFS 2024! So does it really make sense to purchase 1 product you can't use it later? I went back to Rex Weather Force and be fine. As far AS FS can't be used as weather radar I wont buy

Theres a new beta update to try now, has some more fixes etc, beta came out last night.

@john-bc6px

2 ай бұрын

what has it fixed specially?

@ckukmale898

2 ай бұрын

@@john-bc6px quite a few things, if you can access their community discussion area on their site it will tell you what was changed, fixed and also a link to the latest version

Not enough of a difference for me. I think that I'm going to hold off any decision until I see what 2024 offers.

The weather transitions is EXACTLY why I will not switch... Does ActiveSky give more "accurate" weather? Maybe. But I've seen other videos where MSFS was slightly more "realistic." In the end, realism is how weather feels in the sim. Weather transitions that haven't changed since P3D 4.5, is a realism killer in my opinion. We still get turbulence in MSFS default weather... It's not perfect, but it's still there. I've been wanting historical weather for ever, but not at the cost of weather transitions like we've seen.

Very complete report from the ground to cruise with real cam comparison. I think people can make their own decision based on your video. It seems you had no impact on the Frame Rate. May be test it in a very busy online big custom airport.... waiting for your new video ;)

It seems like the Motion blur or something like that is messing up the video on the view change… You might consider turning it off. And the easiest way to switch between AS and MSFS native weather for me is just to switch to passive depiction within AS itself.

If Active Sky can really simulate turbulences that emanate from a tiny wood in the approach path according to your altitude, it's a spectacular enhancement to the sim.

@HarryFortyTwo

2 ай бұрын

i doubt that a bit - i think that was a coincidence

@larsw8776

2 ай бұрын

@@HarryFortyTwo I also do - it's definitely worth investigating further and testing whether this applies to other woods / geographical features in other airports as well.

the hidden toga button strikes again ;P

Nicely done Emmanuel - a fair review as usual. One suggestion, as an AS beta tester - switching back and forth between AS and MS weather in the sim can throw AS completely off cycle. I didn't see anything unusual in your video but it CAN cause problems. Makes it difficult for you to do comparisons but it is something to be aware of. The proper way to switch is in AS, switch from Preset to Passive or you risk borking the whole AS process.

if this gonna have some api for the plane devs to make proper weather radar i might buy it but at this point its pretty okey to keep standart weather. Its free, it isnt going to get fucked with updates and i assume is less resource intesive anyway.

i cant get it to inject weather...

I think the real added value is in the historical weather and the different scenarios. Just replacing the sim's weather for live flights doesn't make much sense, in my opinion.

Can you disable surface winds as in previous sim versions?

@A330Driver

2 ай бұрын

You can limit the maximum surface wind strength, all the way down to zero if you want to.

@joseignacio673

2 ай бұрын

@@A330Driver thank you !

@LaoxJet

Ай бұрын

@@A330Driver What are you using in depiction mode? Preset weather or passive weather? Thanks

Did you use FS Traffic for this?

Honestly I did not think AS will be miles better than default MSFS weather. Yet at this early point of several flights I’m being a bit disappointed. The visual presentation is far from the MSFS level. Did not experience any significant turbulence to comment on this. Anyhow I’ve paid for it. Hopefully they will improve. And then I’ll be in MSFS 2024 LoL…

The cloud cover at your destination looked a lot like X-Plane to me.

weather force is also like this but its crap lol. also transitions from areas is well not nice i like msfs weather way more.

Active sky won’t inject weather

@vkobi8208

2 ай бұрын

i have to manually launch the connector to work

Judging by what I saw in your video, this addon is practically no different from the default weather. where is the wind, where is the turbulence, where is the thunderstorm? It seems to me that "Active sky", "Xenvira", "Rex" are simply useless for this Sim. The only time they can come in handy is if the default weather breaks down. in mfs2020 the developers were too clever with the weather.😢

The massive rish on that product and the discussions already do something potentially positive: there us hope Asobo realizes they have for too long not focused on weather (which is a bit crazy in a flightsim platform). dramatic kitch clouds alone with no believeable turbulence and no access to the data to allow for weather radar implementations is simply not state of the art in a flightsimulator. Hifi could fix this - and Asobo should maybe work more closely with them instead of staying autistic.

ASV cloud looks bad and cartoonish and 2D, no matter how you spin it. It needs significant updates!

@ls-it2ml

Ай бұрын

I agree those clouds do suck.Old folks in the avsim nursing home jump all over themselves to sing praises to active sky !

@trombonedude5312

Ай бұрын

Clouds aren't usually puffy looking cumulus. I agree that the default looks better and more cinematic but it's not how clouds really look most of the time

nobody's says it's bad .... mfs2020 does already a good job with live weather why pay for it?"

Hello, I usually love your videos, but I must disagree on this one :) How can you say it's more accurate? Weather injection in MSFS is global, which means that AS can only average the closest METAR and perhaps some surrounding ones into a single weather setting, and when you fly, change it under the covers (the "smooth weather transitions"). So you don't see incoming weather, as opposite to MSFS which is positional. This is pretty evident in your video at 21:00 when you compare local overcast conditions, which AS can only render as far as the eye can see, whereas MSFS localises it over the area you are flying. Still on that, if you look at the Lelystad webcam in the bottom right corner of your screen 22:55 (which is simply angled elsewhere), the sky is all but overcast. But no trace in the AS depiction - again, not because the tool is bugged, but simply because they cannot do it in MSFS. There might be some value in the more realistic turbulence effects, but in my experience what you get from RealTurb Cat Area is also really good, and for a fraction of the cost.

@noanykey

2 ай бұрын

Maybe theoretically, but the way AS handles transitions is really clever given the limitations. I'm unsure how it does it, but it doesn't display as simply as you say.

@GarrisIiari

2 ай бұрын

I don't believe RealTurb does cloud turbulence, correct?

@marcodes77

2 ай бұрын

@@GarrisIiari it does

@noanykey

2 ай бұрын

@@GarrisIiari Yep it does and it works well actually.

active sky is not bad but the default weather is way better just saying.. wont be buying this

They already admitted it was create a project or go broke. A no from me.

@A330Driver

2 ай бұрын

Didn't they actually say it was a "release it in the current state or go broke" (and continue developmen thtereafter) rather than "create the project or go broke"? That's not so uncommon in flight simulation, just think of Fenix, who need to make money with the A319/A321 in order to be able to complete the development of the already sold and promised sharklets of the A320. There have been quite a few other examples along those lines over the recent years as well. TFDI is another with their MD-11. How many presales did they need to fund the development?

The perfect waste of money thing