Active Sky Cloud Art

[toprob]

I've recently posted some shots of Active Sky 2016, which I got with a Simmarket voucher from my son, for my birthday. At the time I didn't buy the companion Cloud Art, mainly because I, like a lot of people, didn't quite love the screenshots which they used to promote it. But this week it's been on special, so I spent the last of my Simmarket credit and gave it a go. Thanks, Jack, for the heads-up, and for convincing me to give it a go.
Initial impression is that this is brilliant. Sure, sometimes you see some pop-corny clouds, but it is great to fly with, it really gives an amazingly realistic depiction of the weather, so you can actually gauge the likelihood of surviving flight....
Here's a selection of shots using AS16 + ASCA in Prepar3d.

[Ian Warren]

This is one thing I still have to setup CLOUDS .. after the time with FS and still with default I will be getting a shock when putting REX back in .. still the old version tho but must be new to the eyes ... nice screens Rob Marty will love these

[Splitpin]

Love ya fluffys Rob

[Charl]

Purty pics... like Ektachrome with a Polaroid filter.
But realistic clouds? No.
My FS9 eye says these are realistic:



But then you realise how forgiving the eye is, when you've told your brain "These are realistic"

[Ian Warren]

Charl , I never got a true weather/cloud package for FS9 , but I have been looking at even the default FSX dose look fresh but really could do with the addons.

[Charl]

Active sky with HDE2 textures about as good as you'll get.
REX is also trying very hard at present.

[Ian Warren]

Course I'm still in the old days with computers now .. it use to be an upgrade every couple off years, I'll get back to that condition but in the mean time doddle and work on other areas.

[Charl]

How about this, runs FS9 just fine:
(one of these days I might drop 5 grand on a hot I7, what with all the boodle I saved over the years, not futilely trying to fix crap software with the blunt instrument of raw processing power)

System Summary
March 2007

> Manufacturer : PLAYTECH (Model ASUS P5N-E SLI)

> Mainboard : Asus P5N-E SLI

> Chipset : nVidia nForce 650i SLI SPP

> Processor : Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2400 MHz

> Physical Memory : 2048 MB (2 x 1024 DDR2-SDRAM )

> Video Card : Nvidia Corp NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250

> Hard Disk : ST350063 (500 GB)

> Hard Disk : ST350063 (500 GB)

> Hard Disk : WDC (1000 GB)

> DVD-Rom Drive : HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-H42L

> Monitor Type : Dell Computer DELL 1907FP - 19 inches

> Monitor Type : Dell Computer DELL U3014 - 30 inches

> Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition 5.01.2600 Service Pack 3

> DirectX : Version 9.0c (October 2007)

[cowpatz]

Yeah I'm not sold on the cloud art. I stare at real clouds for hours and the screens for this that I have seen around various forums just don't quite cut it.
I'm running a vanilla version of ASN and I'm happy with the results. I might dabble with some other textures at some point.
What I do like about AS2016 is the weather changing on the fly.

[Ian Warren]

I stare at real clouds for hours and the screens

This is one thing mentioned in the SAFE AIR video I got, about the crews flying the night freight runs which was said to be unpopular with them but the one bonus they had was the views they would get on moonlight nights and early morning , views people would die for.

[emfrat]

I am looking forward to the REX Weather Force payware, currently in development. At present I have FSRealWXLite as a weather engine and it does give a pretty close approximation of what I can see on MetServe, but it is no longer available as freeware - AFAIK.
My main concern is that clouds and AGN forests are real framerate killers, so I only use real-time weather for screenie comp shots
The current flying machine is an i5 Dell, and it is not really up to the job, and being a Dell, it just refuses to recognise 'non-Dell' stuff, so I can't upgrade the GPU to take some of the load off the CPU. As you know, all FSX does is figure out what the next frame should look like; that is why it is so CPU-intensive. Even a moderate graphics card can handle anything the CPU throws at it, but when the graphics are m'board mounted, the CPU has to do those sums as well, so you need a GPU to take some of the load, but because it is a Dell machine, I can't install a super-duper GPU because the BIOS will not see it

[toprob]

The point I was trying to make is more to do with the way in which it tries to reproduce the actual cloud shapes -- rather than just sticking pretty clouds in the view. So you can see where the bad weather is, it is quite intuitive, so that anyone can 'read' the weather better.

Here's the current Dunedin weather, multi-layered, and the visibility is handled really well -- it turns off the normal P3D mist, and builds its own, so it's a lot more likely to be what's really there.

[NZ255]

That looks pretty good Rob, I think I'll wait to see what Rex do before purchasing. I don't fly much in the sim much lately.

[Intrance]

I purchased AS2016 and ASCA myself as well and for me it's been providing the most realistic weather I've seen in a (MS/P3D) flightsim, by far. And I also look at clouds for a living, from above, inside and below . I used to use FSGRW for its simplicity and for doing a better job than Opus did at the time. Before that, there was the REX WX Engine, which was unpredictable at best. I'm really loving the AS2016/ASCA combo.

In my opinion, their cloud textures are really suitable for realistic, larger swathes of cloud cover. When you get the small puffs you will start to see the limitations. But they are generally better than the razor sharp REX photo textures, more like the REX Soft Clouds which I also really enjoyed.

[Ian Warren]

I'll stick with REX at the mo .. till I get a real job maybe as a judder bar on the street and get council pay

[Ian Warren]

I think with the REX and adding the just as old active sky and create layers, one can pretty much create this affect tho it not have cloud shadow , funny you find it hard enough to tell people to look at the clouds, many simply don't see what I'm going on about ..