As if the Prepar3D v2 beta testing wasn’t enough for me, and while some were asking why there aren’t more screenshots showing more features, details etc, well, it is maybe because at the same time I was flying FSX (well, not at the *same* time, but you get my drift!) and beta-testing the new Activesky Next weather engine.
What I really like about ASN is the promptly fast loading of the engine. It’s the one most needed feature when it comes to the weather engine. Furthermore, the depiction has been completely revamped, so what you have seen from Opus or FSGRW, ASN now has and in my opinion way better. Actually, Activesky is the oldest player in the house. With the longest experience on the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. The screenshots I am about to show are just some random screenshots from my flights I did with ASN testing it.
Some neat things I like about ASN:
– in program update notifications
– way more simpler and more clean menu (with still all the features AS always provided easily accessible!)
– removed texturing, making the program way lighter and faster loading
– the configuration for the flight couldn’t be simpler (which under ASX wasn’t bad, but now there is a bonus I really like and often use -> the average route winds calculation, you don’t have to search for it in the briefing lists, but it’s displayed on top of the Briefing)
– Depiction! Wow… I really didn’t expect this when I entered the beta.
– the Wx Configuration window – it has historical time, yeah old known thing, but there is also “Force Historical Time to Sim Time” -> I absolutely love the feature. Imagine having some old flight saved on the disk, and then you had to set historical time according to the sim. Now just check the checkbox. Maybe ASX had it, don’t know, but this is the first time I noticed it!
There are countless other features, which I am sure are going to be presented to you when the program comes out, but for now, enjoy some shots.
Kosta's Flight Simulation World 
Being a member of the ASN beta team I can only echo what you’re saying here, I’m really impressed from what I’ve seen so far using ASN and I do have all other wx engines but ASN will for sure be the wx engine of my choice once it’s released!
Another thing I find very cool is now you really get to feel the turbulence and when flying through real bad wx you will hear how the rain hit the windshield in a very realistic way really adding to the feeling of actually being in those dark clouds!
Hi Richard,
Indeed, mine too.
About the turbulence – I completely forgot, I was doing a flight to Nice, and the turbulence I experienced on the landing was really great. It was reported that the winds become weaker as I would fly lower and that it really did. The turbulence was suppressed and the crabbing was reduced. It was a really cool landing-feeling! Very real I’d say!
Yeah, the turbulence in ASN is the most realistic I’ve experienced in FSX and very impressive how it’s based on several things like what type of terrain your flying over 🙂
Looks fantastic, can’t wait! Just wondering how turbulence in ASN affects the NGX or 777? i.e; does time accel produce any strange behaviour, and are you using any settings within FSUIPC to control the weather?
Cheers
I never use accelerated time so can’t answer that question but when it comes to the notorious “S-turns” in advanced a/c such as the NGX etc I’m happy to say I haven’t seen any of these while using ASN and that is with no special settings in FSUIPC…no need to suppress turbulence, wind shifts etc since ASN seem to handle all these issues perfectly internally but at the same time giving you great turbulence effects where the actual a/c is affected and not only your view.
I can confirm that. On the flights I did, some with the 737 and some with the 777, I have not seen any S-turns! Also nothing special set in the FSUIPC.
Hi Kosta,
your comment on ASN, no need to suppress turbulence, wind shifts etc .. I get the same on FS Global.
Jerry
Ok, then you’ve been lucky because I’ve been using FSGRW quite a lot myself and I’ve experienced “S-turns” several times if I don’t have ‘Suppress turbulence’ checked in FSUIPC.
I do like FSGRW though and think it’s a great wx engine!
I never saw s-turns on fsgrw, but turbulence is certainly better and more real with ASN.
Great, thanks for the replies guys!
Hey Srdan, how are you mate? I am grinding along, working hard and playing hard 🙂
ASN looks exciting, almost too good to be true.
I hope they are able to do something to counter the repetitive pattern of clouds when viewing Sirrus from the top, without camouflaging it by mixing in other cloud types.
FSGRW:
AS2012:
Take care mate,
Regards, Morten Steen
This message was sent from a mobile device
Den 17. nov. 2013 kl. 22:32 skrev “Kosta’s Flight Simulation World” :
> >
Yeah, same here, stress at work, and stress here, doing two betas, not an easy task 😉 But, for the well-being of us simmers, hehe.
Yes, ASN is really something. The repetitive patterns have been minimized, that much I noticed. Been flying with NGX and T7, and I saw some real nice clouds from above. Both cirrus and stratus below.
I can relieve some of that stress for you if you want by taking P3D off your hands. haha.
Nice try 😉
All of your pictures show average nice days, but how does on coming storm fronts look? Does ASN depict threatening storm fronts?
That may be an unfair question because I have never seen a weather engine that could depict the realism and anxiety in FSX, of seeing a wall cloud from a powerful storm, rising up to 30,000 ft.
It does that great, Bob! It really depicts T-Cells up to 30,000ft. I will maybe post some when I get around it, right now getting ready for work.
That would be to do with your setup. This looks really good and i cannot wait to try it.
I have been using CumulusX! for accurate depiction of thermal/ridge lift and sink for soaring, and kept all thermals off in Active Sky. Any changes in this area in ASN?
Hi Kosta,
I found FS Global weather a couple weeks ago. It is way better than REX OD plus, I don’t know about Active Sky. I am from the real world, so I know how it should look. FS Global does a very good job.
Jerry
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Jerry, always very interesting to hear these kind of things from a true real world perspective.
At what altitude are/were you normally IRL, a low or high flyer?
All altitudes, take-off, and landings, very close to real world. Also, gives the weather of the nearest station that you are flying over. Also, forecasted winds aloft.
Best,
Jerry
Thanks for your input Jerry,
In my eyes the week spot of most wx engines in FS is when you’re flying high (FL300+) when compared to real life where that “carpet” of clouds isn’t really there in the same way in FS as you often see IRL.
Can get slightly better though if you increase the cloud draw distance and cloud cover density manually in fsx.cfg
Thanks jerry, I flew couple of times, and yes, fsgrw does a good depiction, but wait till you get a hold of asn 😉
Hi Kosta, I currently use OPUS in FSX
Would you say that this is better and also will it work in P3D V2?
Phil took out same questions from my mouth. Can you comment about these Kosta?
Let’s just say something is in the works 🙂
Yes and most likely. More info soon.
How about some pix with fog?
Kosta, you have made a great contribution to the ASN.
Tell me honestly one thing: can i try with P3D 1.4 the version for FSX or I would have problems?
Thanks
Based on what I know about 1.4, it should work. Didn’t test it however.
It does not work with 1.4. After the first injection of the weather, it gives error and shuts down.
I would not move to the next version of the major competitor…………..
Same thing that was happening with the FSX version when used on P3Dv2 while I was testing. I think they might be doing it deliberately to prevent, but not a license thing, but merely because of performance and usage. P3Dv2 works differently than FSX does.
Kosta, I understand for P3D v2, but the 1.4 is the same as FSX.
Why HiFi does not want to make an installer of ASN for him?
I contacted Damian just to ask.
THANKS KOSTA!!! 🙂
Thanks for finally talking about >ActiveSky Next on its way!
| Kosta’s Flight Simulation World <Liked it!
Howdy! I realize this is kind of off-topic however I had
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Please let me know if you have any kind of suggestions or tips for brand new aspiring blog owners.
Thankyou!
Sharon,
Fairly. The important thing about any content on the internet is to have an interesting site. I don’t have and do not intend to have a journal or something like that. The site is meant to help FSX users have their simulator set up, and basically, if it helps, fine, if it doesn’t, too bad. Very simple.
You can always start a blog and see if it attracts people. The important thing is, as I said, having the material other people want to read about.
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Eugenia,
Thanks a lot, a kind comment always makes me remember why I do this 🙂
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in support of new visitors.
Ciao Kosta,
first of all, even if completely off topic, thank you for your encouragement to use FSinn …I am now a very happy VATSIM user..:-) !
Now let’s talk about ASN: I have been using it since its release and I find it by far the best WX engine currently available. The only annoying thing I can’t get rid of is the huge (and unrealistic) effects of turbulence on the NGX flight dynamics (I mention NGX as I only use NGX…so I don’t know if it affects also other addon aircraft). Flying in turbulence causes large IAS oscillations around a IAS value that always tends to increase if A/T is ON. I know that in severe turbulent flight A/T should be disconnected, but the problem here is that A/T cannot cope with a target IAS even in light and moderate turbulence.
I think you were a Beta tester for ASN and you fly the NGX, so I would like a comment on the above scenario and suggestions on how to solve it (just for completeness of information, I use FSUIPC latest version with all weather settings disabled and ASN settings are at default).
Thanks
Ciao
Ezio
Ezio,
Great!
Hmm, I use ASN too, also since the beginning, and I have 0 problems. No IAS oscillations, and even my FSUIPC weather is completely off (the wind management). The only (realistic) thing I experience with ASN is when I get lower, close to mountains, for instance at one landing in LFMN, I had really nice winds and turbulences, as far as I could say.
I can really never remember I had any problems with ASN and NGX combo. Didn’t do many flights recently, so maybe something changed (you will notice I stepped back from simming due to RL obligations).
I have no suggestions at solving it for two reasons: I am not Hifisim, and I have no problems 🙂
Sorry, buddy.
Do you, guys, use Enhanced turbulence in Settings/User Presets? For me I unticked that checkbox.
In FS2012 there was a very handy option to disable “Show Surface Wind Information for Dep, Dest and Alt (vs. Aloft)” which produced average winds and temperatures at cruise level. These numbers are required for all types of FMS. Unfortunately to some reason there’s no such an option in ASN anymore, so you can get only averaged wind and temperature along your route taken at different altitudes. So, for example, from a flight plan with FL390 cruise altitude ASN extracts averages and shows them as follows: 282/16 (-20.52) headwind -11.79. Note the temperature -20.52, definitely I can’t use it for entering in fmc. So I have to go to the Briefing and pick any waypoint that lies at crz level and use the numbers from there, which is: 1) not very handy and 2) not very correct compared to how it was done in AS2012. Any comments?
Thanks,
Sabre.
Kosta, how do you go about picking the Cruise wind and temperature in ASN? Where or how exactly do you get it from? Thanks.
Sabre,
I wasn’t doing it much differently in AS2012 as I am doing it in ASN. As you pointed out, I am simply using averages from ASN. That’s about it.
I’m aware that it’s not really very realistic, but taken into account that in real world there are more than 1 person planing stuff for the flight, and much more than just one software, having way more time, experience and knowledge than I or we have, I am of an opinion, that this is as realistic as it should be for me. I am contemplating of buying PFPX, as I heard it takes it to another step, but still automated, I guess it would be a nice thing, but yet again, it’s just another software, nothing else.