Active Sky FS Vs. MSFS Live Weather in 7 scenarios
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- čas přidán 24. 04. 2024
- Active Sky FS is one of the most anticipated releases for MSFS. But when the community found out it was preset based there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. Did HiFi crack the code or did they just make a half baked REX Weather Force? I show you 7 live weather scenarios and let you judge. There are other reasons to have this addon like Historical Weather, and enhanced effects but I don't touch on those. This is purely: Is this weather more accurate in MSFS Live Weather or Active Sky FS?
0:05 This is not a review
0:46 Wintery mess in Denver
4:08 Storms in Charlotte
5:22 Beautiful in Miami
5:52 Not as nice in Panama City, FL
6:43 Rain Showers in Quebec City
7:49 Unsettled in Munich
8:39 Snow in Zurich
9:36 Active Presets vs. Passive mode
11:16 Thunderstorms in Ocala Florida
11:50 Real-time transition from thunderstorms to low stratus
12:07 So which one was accurate in the thumbnail?
i7 13700k 4080 super 32 gb ram samsung 980 SSD 85 hz 2560X1080 monitor - Hry
1:28 “Which is Fun, and I love doing it” hahah too good
Can't believe the work you put into your videos. Thank you! I learnt a lot from your methodic approach and the resources you use, I really hope HiFi can use your input for getting 'back on track' as anyone can pull stuff out of the oven when still raw.
I feel bad for Damian Cook, some people are being really nasty to him and calling this a cash grab. He's been defending himself on FSElite and AVSIM and elsewhere. I believe HiFi put a lot of work into this, but the timing is suspect. I had a feeling I was losing 30 dollars when I bought it but HiFi has been great over the years so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Not the worse thing I bought, just disappointed because it's just soooo far off in most scenarios, presets are forgivable but if the weather depiction is flat out wrong there is no point to buying it. Thanks for the compliment. Thanks for watching!
You can use left alt + enter to make switch to fullscreen on startup
I'm absolutely thankful that you tested them side-by-side. I was looking for something like this yet almost every avsim thread reviewing Active Sky FS became irrelevant after few posts.
Avsim is a special place. Notice no one has made a video showing that the weather is accurate. These guys really liked rex weather force when it came out too.
I really hope they make a new type of clouds for 2024. These look like a volcano eruption 😅
yeah i really don't understand the dark clouds, they have been there since the begining. Voxels I suppose.
This is an incredible video, thank you so much for going into so much depth, with so many examples, with side-by-side comparisons. I've been intrigued by this, but it's safe to say I agree with your conclusion, and won't be wasting my money. Defeault weather is just better, and it's night and day. (Also, Alt+Enter is a shortcut for fullscreen mode!)
That's what I do. Comparisons. I bought it due to the HiFi name, which has always been synonymous with quality in the Flight Sim Community. but yeah, it's disappointing. I thought what it did was basically tweak the sliders like what you would do manually to create a weather scenario, but it doesn't do that it basically adds 3 layers of clouds and its either precipitating or it isn't, kinda sad.
I bought it and use it all the time. I guess you're right about the high level stuff. But i like that it takes into account my route from simbrief. And i also like how easy it is to have access to the weather data. For example when getting ready for the approach.
If the abrupt transitions don't bother you I guess different strokes for different folks, thanks for watching.
@@NightTrainIndustriesthere are transition settings, along with update frequency and others.
I thought I was the only having to resize every boot up!!!
Nope, everyone. It will be fixed in SU15.
Great and hones treview. Subbed :)
It’s sad it wasn’t better. Thanks for watching!
Man this was exactly what I needed to see, you saved me a solid 30USD. Could you do a similar comparison between MSFS and REX Weather Force?
I own it, but don't have it installed. It's exactly the same, that's why I'm disappointed in this addon, is because its the same thing REX weather force tried and failed at 3 years ago. Thanks for watching.
Thanks for the video..Have you ever tried REX Weather Force? Any thoughts?
Yes I have, I bought it when it first came out. It's okay for pattern flying but it has the same issue in that it is preset based. In other words it sets the weather in your area like if you were to make the weather yourself, it changes and transitions but you wouldnt see a line of storms 60 miles away then all of a sudden they abruptly appear in front of you. Sometimes the result is better than live weather. The only REX product I like is Accuseason. Weather Force may have gotten better though haven't launched it in a hot minute. Thanks for watching.
@@NightTrainIndustries 100% agreed. I bought REX AccuSeason and WeatherForce together. I use AS on every flight, and stopped using WF after a couple of flights. Those abrubt changes were too jarring. Thanks for this video. It solidifies my decision not to buy ActiveSky.
I bought Weather Rex Force and I stopped to use for the abrupt changes in long distance flights.
I didn’t try Active Sky because I feel is more of the same.
Default Weather and Real Cat Turb 2 is a solid option for me at this moment.
Live weather gives you a real scenario. You can see the CBs on the horizon and make changes to your flight path to avoid them. Can't do that when you get abrupt changes from station to station. ActiveSky IS more of the same. Real Cat Turb 2 is an addon I have never heard of I'll check it out. Thanks for watching.
Good video. Clear and concise. But you need a 4K monitor. All that computer horsepower deserves a friend.
I don’t like 4:3 and 5k monitors are 1000 dollars. So ill be sticking with 3840x1620 dl dsr
Despite being a very different clouds compare with previous franchise this 2020 sim clouds have a distinguish touch to volcanic appearance, hard to associate with real life clouds. The ashy color on the shape of the clouds make you feel like you are fliying over the Etna or Vesuvio volcano
Yeah that would be nice to get rid of ash clouds.
ALT + ENTER. Shortcut for fullscreen. Saves some time.
Like a second but thanks for the advice.
Visually the sim has a nice artistic style. But, Active Sky has been far more accurate, especially the cloud heights. MSFS had a 19000 foot cloud height for a low coastal stratus layer. Active sky had the layer at 5000 feet height which was almost spot on. This is just one example of many where Active Sky has been absolutely on point while MSFS weather has been inaccurate compared to AS.
The wind model and turbulence are far better than the default with AS. I do think that MSFS weather is fine to be honest, but AS is better and the with the wind modeling is worth the purchase.
It’s quite possible that updates have already improved AS since this video was released. My results have been far better with AS, though MSFS does a decent job.
I'll revist this mod next month. There will also be a video about X-Plane live weather Vs. Active Sky XP.
Well, you didn't waste that money. You took one for the team and kept a lot of other people from spending theirs on something that it seems isn't worth it. I, for one, don't see anything wrong MSFS's weather. It does what I need it to do. Thanks for the video.
I waste a lot of money taking one for the team, thanks for the encouragement. MSFS Live Weather is just better because it's synoptic. It's by no means perfect but it will at least give you a realistic scenario.
Resizing the window is getting annoying every time I gotta start the game. Especially with all the other programs I run lol. I fix it after everything loaded
The have fixed it in Sim Update 15 thankfully. I'm watching the developer live stream right now.
Just hit alt+enter it’ll place the window into full screen mode without going into the settings.
@@TheFlyingDoktor yea that’s what I do. I just do it after everything loads. Usually can’t do it anyways till fps starts budging or the loading bar starts moving from half way mark lol.
@@TheFlyingDoktor Asobo is fixing it, regardless of how to do it best.
I think your reviews are one of the most honest and very close to my simming preferences.
Flight Sim community is toxic, gatekeepin fanboys, and ever more dominated by childish folks with access to social media. People have been very confusing and super defensive about their favourite choices, to the point that it is silly - they are not getting paid anything for their weird devotion.
For instance, FBWsim defenders are probably one of the worst - there is no need for fanboys to be overly protective of an excellent freeware group from criticism. One of the worst thing is that they misrepresent facts, outright lie, or gaslight - whether due to their ignorance, or deliberately misinform people. And this has been the very highlighting feature of this MSFS 2020 juvenile community - overly sensitive yet very opinionated egos.
ActiveSky is another famous name from back in our "hey day" of the 2000s. I bound to be quite protective and gatekeepey when it comes to familiar names from our era, especially in front of these "console simmers" of MSFS2020. But growing up means, I need to be honest with myself, and thus others... I seriously have to ask myself a question if this thing is really worth the EUR 23, given how MSFS weather engine differs from ESP MSFS and P3D.
There is absolutely no need for people to say nasty words to Damian and folks at HiFi, like how ThresholdX used to keep beating new editorial opinion article out of the dead horse that is CaptainSim. But there is also absolutely no need to lie about ActiveSky having features that it does not or overplays its turbulence simulation, which is pretty "meh" - not any less immersive than FSRealistic. I really enjoyed ActiveSky back then and how it transformed my simming days. Even though I dislike many anonymous folks from the childish community, I still can't trick them or say anything disingenuous to make them part with their hard-earned EUR 23.
Negativity sells, that's a video I have planned that basically shows the growth of my channel and why all my positive videos do poorly and all the controversial ones do well. Humans like conflict and feeling morally superior. I havent really seen a FBW vs. Fenix fight yet but I believe you. It's silly because FBW is fantastic, but it's not even the same product technically. Although I'd never berate Damian I do question "Why now?" and "why so inaccurate?" but there is no doubt a ton of time went into it. Sometimes mods have a ton of time invested but still aren't any good or plauged by issues. My problem is that it's REX weather force 6 months before the launch of FS2024. A little sus. If it was accurate, and had great effects like wing fade and reliable cloud turbulence I'd still say it would be worth buying, and maybe over the next couple of updates it will get better. Thanks for your comment and thanks for watching.
@@NightTrainIndustries Wing fade is what I really look for. Keep going! I really like the discussion you bring and I am kinda biased because there are a lot of similarities in our simming taste.
honestly because weather data is so tight kept by the devs i see no reason why any third party devs try at all. Let's just hope they find a solution for 3D weather radar simulation
My thing is REX Weather Force came out in 2020 and now HiFi has basically made a worse version of that almost 4 years later. Microsoft is to blame, the be sure. Not sure why they are so tight about weather, there is usually a legal reason. I'm guessing the Meteoblue partnership is the reason they won't open it up. I'm guessing the 3D weather radar simulation is probably going to come from plane developers. I know FlyByWire is working on it.
@NightTrainIndustries from what PMDG and Fenix said they can't make 3D weather radars without accessing more data which asobo doesn't allow cause of meteoblue. If that's the case the Microsoft devs need to create the SDK for the 3D weather radar but they're too busy atm wrapping up 2020 so that they can focus on 2024. I just hope they remember this is flight simulation and not an Xbox game
MSFS WX engine is awesome, no way I am going to use Active Sky or anything else over that. I already made a mistake on buying REX Wx force and instantly regretted it.
Yeah, it has its flaws but the way weather is depicted is so much more natural. When i saw how close MSFS really was to the Hawaii visible satellite it was difficult to understand why anyone would want metar only presets. Another video i will be doing is how accurate is a metar? How is it actually observed? And why real weather can look very different from the image the metar puts in your head.
Couldn’t, help noticing that those clouds also look very Prepar3d… all in all I agree very disappointing.
They are pretty lifeless, In the second video the Tucson Scenario they just look like little thin white blobs. All the clouds look thin, but MSFS has a hard time making correctly sized clouds. Thanks for watching.
Not really an accurate comparison - switching back and forth in sim will screw up AS depiction.
Oh good now vg Barron from avism is here to define this lack luster addon. You avsim boys will make every excuse. In denver i did not mess with depiction but still got not one cloud above 12k. I even loaded a sim brief flight plan. In panama city not one thunderstorm depicted. In zurich there was snow. In oeringhausen the satellite showed no clouds the webcam showed no clouds. But if you are happy tootling around at 3000 feet with clouds that dont exist around your airport of choice thats fine. But be objective. I believe damian will work on it, but as of now I can’t recommend this add on. Maybe if damian can get his hand on sigmet-g cloud data it would be worth while but not now. Switching back and forth is probably an issue with sim connect. But the weather wasn’t accurate so that was the least of the problems.
Also, pretty hard to be objective when you are a beta tester.
@@NightTrainIndustries So asking that you use the product correctly in order to make comparisons is not objective? Your intended bias shows. I have several posts BY YOU commenting on others being able to see clouds above 12K and that you are unable to get them. So in your infinite wisdom, you are unable to do something and you blame the product. Even I wouldn't like the product if I believed your twisted comparison. Can you say Hidden agenda? Do an honest and fair review and if you still do not like it, that's your opinion.
@@VictorGBaron I am using it correctly, as a matter of fact in the next video I leave MSFS and restart the computer between each scenario. My comparisons are exactly what i see withing 1-5 minutes. Yes, because I have noticed the product is extremely inconsistent as a matter of fact that weather scenario I commented on did not deserve a comment of praise because it was completely wrong any way. That is a problem. I don't have a hidden agenda quite the opposite, I wanted this to be good. but it just isn't. This basically REX weather force 4 years too late. Now, I thought Hi Fi Cracked the code on this weather engine but they haven't. It's not a twisted comparison. What to compare the stock live weather vs. Active sky? What agenda would I possibly have against Active Sky? I have been a member of the Flight Sim community for over 30 years and have always enjoyed active sky, but like a lot of developers they have been left in the FSX days. I have done 2 honest and fair reviews. Maybe HiFi will make a better product in the future but this is not any better than Live weather. I just made a video about beta 8883. It does not perform any better. you guys as beta testers should be doing objective tests on complex weather scenarios. Most the stuff I see praising the addon show few clouds at 2300 broken at 5000. Start showing some real comparisons, Thunderstorms. Snowstorms, soggy European weather. And I haven't even touched on how much worse active sky is in Asia and outside of the US and Europe compared to live weather. For the record I think VisualXP for X-Plane is great and a vast improvement on default weather. But this addon is not.
Worst addon that I ever threw money at. I should have waited until the reviews came out, but I was so sure they had done it right. Not.
Now I'll just have to hope that it improves with updates.
I don't think it will, it's preset based and reads metars. There is no synoptic or macro view weather being injected. Worse still is it looks to me like when a station does not report a METAR like Oerlinghausen it may revert to TAF, hence the clouds that don't exist. I'm on HiFi forum and am starting to see the cracks in the foundation.
You are pretty clueless as to what real weather looks like, that's for sure.
So with massive thunderstorms all around I should get some thin layers of clouds out to the horizon. No cloud decks above? I fly every week. I know what real weather looks like and this ain’t. But I’m glad damian has his booster boys over on avsim.
I think your the Clueless one here Bob the Tomato!! i think He knows he weather better than You!!!