ActiveSky?

[Will]

Is anyone using ActiveSky? I've been trying it out for the last few days and it seems to be an improvement over the MSFS default weather depiction. I set all the wind and turbulence settings to zero, since those are handled within PSX.

One additional step for PSX users is to import your flight plan into ActiveSky, which supposedly gives you more stable terminal weather pictures. To do this, you need a flight plan in MSFS format, which you can do pretty easily if you have PFPX or Navigraph; just save the flight plan as a .pln file, and then load it into ActiveSky. You don't actually need to load the flight plan into MSFS.

I did notice some performance issues with the stable release build of ActiveSky that seem to be better on their latest beta (8881), but I can't tell for sure what was happening. The entire computer slowed down (frames dropped on PSX, and PFPX was computing more slowly) while on the ground in low visibility. Things now seem better but it could be random chance and maybe it has nothing to do with the beta.

I'm curious to hear if any other PSX users have had performance issues with it, especially if you are running it along with MSFS and PSX on the same computer.

The developer is pretty responsive, so if anything specific came up regarding PSX/MSFS and ActiveSky, I'd guess we would at least get a response from him.

[macroflight]

I haven't tested it, but it seems Active Sky has a weather API. Maybe we could now get...

- MSFS cells (and maybe other precipitation) injected into PSX's weather radar?
- Active Sky historic weather in both MSFS and PSX
- MSFS and PSX weather matching up better in areas without METAR stations

[QuadFan]

Will, does AS for MFS have the VATSIM weather option?

Would be great if AS could inject the weather into both MFS and PSX while using VATSIM weather. That would ensure synchronous weather all over

I've been using AS with XP11 and P3D, great addon overall.

[Will]

ActiveSky doesn't inject weather into MSFS like it did in previous iterations. My understanding is that the weather engine of MSFS doesn't allow this.

Instead, the weather reports come from MSFS's live online weather feature, but then ActiveSky manages the depiction of the weather by setting and transforming cloud, visibility, and turbulence presets in the sim. So ActiveSky paints a nice picture, but MSFS is always telling it what to paint.

I have no idea how this would play out over VATSIM, since I'm not active there.

[Edit: I may be totally wrong about this. Definitive information at https://forums.hifisimtech.com/ ]

[FlyItLikeYouStoleIt]

ActiveSky doesn't inject weather into MSFS like it did in previous iterations. My understanding is that the weather engine of MSFS doesn't allow this.

Instead, the weather reports come from MSFS's live online weather feature, but then ActiveSky manages the depiction of the weather by setting and transforming cloud, visibility, and turbulence presets in the sim. So ActiveSky paints a nice picture, but MSFS is always telling it what to paint.

I have no idea how this would play out over VATSIM, since I'm not active there.

ActiveSky manages to do historic weather though, which seems at odds with what you have written.

[Will]

I totally agree, that is at odds with what I have written. Shows the trouble I can get myself into when I try to answer questions about someone else's product. Fortunately, the developer team over at the ActiveSky forum (https://forums.hifisimtech.com/) is very responsive; they can clear up any confusion about how things work.

[Dirk Schepmann]

I think what Active Sky does is to tweak the weather depiction by overwriting variables of the MSFS weather engine. So technically MSFS still generates the weather, but uses the variables set by Active Sky.