HiFi Simulation Technologies have published an article stating that they will be releasing Active Sky (ASFS) for Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Microsoft has kept their weather system tightly wrapped meaning weather addon developers have to 'hack in' to the software to produce their software's generated weather.
Active Sky is probably the best weather addon that has been available for many years to sim pilots in FSX, P3D and X-Plane. Not many, me included, expected it to one day be made available for MSFS
ASFS is due to be released in the next few days.
From HiFi Simulation Technologies - Active Sky FS | HiFi Simulation Technologies - https://hifisimtech.com/asfs/
Active Sky FS (ASFS) brings direct MSFS 2020 integration. Brand new features and functionality are made specifically for MSFS and designed to improve your weather simulation experience.
Focused on comprehensive weather realism simulation, ASFS includes high-fidelity weather data, planning, briefing, mapping, live weather, optional historical weather with playback, custom weather, scenarios, API, multiple depiction options, air effects, and much, much more.
Features
Microsoft has kept their weather system tightly wrapped meaning weather addon developers have to 'hack in' to the software to produce their software's generated weather.
Active Sky is probably the best weather addon that has been available for many years to sim pilots in FSX, P3D and X-Plane. Not many, me included, expected it to one day be made available for MSFS
ASFS is due to be released in the next few days.
From HiFi Simulation Technologies - Active Sky FS | HiFi Simulation Technologies - https://hifisimtech.com/asfs/
Active Sky FS (ASFS) brings direct MSFS 2020 integration. Brand new features and functionality are made specifically for MSFS and designed to improve your weather simulation experience.
Focused on comprehensive weather realism simulation, ASFS includes high-fidelity weather data, planning, briefing, mapping, live weather, optional historical weather with playback, custom weather, scenarios, API, multiple depiction options, air effects, and much, much more.
Features
- Direct MSFS Integration
- Using a combination of techniques for weather lookup and control, ASFS integrates directly with MSFS 2020 (v1.35 and later). MSFS2024 support is planned. See the FAQ section below for more information on potential MSFS2024 support.
- ASFS Preset weather and Passive weather depiction modes
- Using Preset weather depiction from ASFS or Passive weather depiction (from MSFS live weather), a variety of weather visuals and depiction methods, offering various levels of realism, control and visual quality are available depending on your needs. Transition control and configurable smoothing is also provided in ASFS Preset mode.
- Active Air Effects
- Customizable clear air turbulence, thermals, drafts and wake turbulence effects work in tandem with existing MSFS effects to provide and enhance realism. Air effects are provided in any depiction mode.
- Advanced Historical Weather
- In addition to including Live and Custom weather modes, we also offer Historical mode with comprehensive global weather data in hourly archives. Dynamic historical playback provides realistic changing weather as per the archived historical timeline. Optionally lock the historical time to your configured simulator time for easy date/time synchronization and control through MSFS.
- Enhanced Cloudscape and Thunderstorm Depiction
- Using ASFS Preset weather depiction, sky conditions control enables cloud types including multiple stratus, cumulus, towering cumulus, cumulonimbus, stratocumulus and cirrus variations. Thunderstorm scene handling also works to increase the visual realism, height and overall visual cloudscape of multiple cumulonimbus variations.
- Active Sky Weather Engine
- 24 years of active development of weather simulation for MSFS and other platforms culminates in a mature and refined weather engine system that natively includes advanced weather data analysis, lookup, mapping, planning, briefing and more.
- Advanced Data Collection, Synthesis, Modeling and Interpretation
- Active Sky constantly downloads and analyzes conditions, providing world-wide high-fidelity weather conditions and effects, utilizing surface airport conditions (METARs), Forecasts (TAFs), Upper air data (GRIB), Significant Weather information (Sigmets/Airmets), Tropical storm data and more. Weather data is offered in live real-time or historical modes, with a dynamic historical weather playback feature.
- Ground Snow Simulation
- Using actual global ground snow depth data, ground snow cover is controlled and smoothed at all times in AS Preset depiction mode.
- Comprehensive Custom Weather
- Easily create multiple custom weather areas using the map screen, customizing by METAR text or through our weather setting wizard. Custom weather is supplemented by the previously loaded weather, enabling precise, variable and realistic saved weather scenarios that can be recalled at any time.
- Scenarios
- Fly different weather-based scenarios, or create your own.
- Voice Features
- Get Voice weather briefings and in-flight weather updates on your radio via our simulated ATIS/ASOS and Flight Watch simulation.
- 3rd-Party Integration Features
- SimBrief flight plan integration, PMDG wind data export and our universal common data export features provides integration with multiple popular 3rd-party add-ons.
- Active Sky API
- Advanced API features are available to everyone to integrate directly with AS features including weather lookup, effects, mode control and weather conditions control.