HiFi Technologies - Active Sky FS

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 and synthesis, planning, briefing, mapping, live weather, optional historical weather with playback, custom weather, scenarios, API, multiple depiction options, active air effects, snow depth data control, voice features, Navigraph and SimBrief integration, 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). 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
  Navigraph data integration, 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.
  
  

ASFS WEATHER & CLOUD DEPICTION SPECIFICATIONS

ASFS Preset Weather Depiction Mode
ASFS Preset weather depiction mode features advanced weather preset conditions control for the best accuracy within the preset depiction capabilities, and full use of the Active Sky weather data and synthesis system including historical and custom weather options. This is recommend for those desiring the highest levels of conditions realism and challenge, especially for IFR ceilings and visibility, as well as long distance route planning, wind and fuel calculations:

• Available with LIVE weather, HISTORICAL weather, and custom weather
• Wind, gusts and variability control (surface and aloft, up to 60,000ft)
• Cloud layer control
• Precipitation control
• Ground snow cover control
• Temperature and humidity control
• Barometric pressure control with advanced temperature-adjusted pressure effects (appropriate corrections required for safe and/or expected IFR terminal procedures in colder or hotter temperatures)
• Visibility simulation through advanced humidity control, fog layer generation and intelligent visibility graduation and smoothing
• Smooth cloud and conditions transitions with configurable smoothing rate
• Cloud scene scattering and variation control for variety within the preset depiction area
• Sky conditions control for multiple cloud type variations
• Thunderstorm scene handling for improved visual height and realism
• Weather-cell-based presentation with surface data prioritization based on flight plan
• Transitions handling (updates conditions smartly depending on flight plan and flight stage)

Passive Depiction Mode
Passive mode is used with live weather and allows MSFS’s internal live weather depiction to take full control of weather depiction in the simulator, while Active Sky FS provides Active Air Effects and all other non-depiction features (mapping, planning, voice features, conditions report, web companion app, etc.) This can provide better regional variation and cloud variations outside of Preset control, recommended for LIVE WEATHER VFR and casual flights where visuals and effects are more important than weather conditions accuracy.

Active Air Effects
Provided in either depiction mode, Active Air Effects enhance your flight with turbulence, drafts and more:

• Clear air turbulence
• Internal MSFS turbulence compatibility (for combined ASFS-applied and internal MSFS-applied turbulence effects)
• Updrafts
• Downdrafts
• Microbursts
• Thunderstorm vicinity turbulence and draft effects
• Gusts, wind variation and gust-related turbulence

• Microsoft Flight Simulator (Version 2020)
• Windows 10 / 11 (64 bit)
• 4 GB RAM or greater
• 2 GHz x64 processor or greater
• 1 GB+ free storage space
• Minimum processor and memory requirements per MSFS 2020 product information is recommended
• 1024×768 minimum screen resolution
• Stable internet connection (broadband recommended)
• Online activation and login system requires online connection – this product cannot be used offline*

*Active Sky FS is an online product that will require the creation of a new user account. You must be logged in to use the software. One login per user account is permitted. You can install the software on multiple machines and/or move the software to other machines, but may be logged in only once at a time.

Update 042724 – B8883 (1.0.8883.1882):

• Added new option “Periodic theme reload interval”, now set to your desired interval (default 15) or disable and use download interval only for theme reloads. See user’s guide for further information
• Added instant weather reset when meters/ft units changed to prevent slow smoothing of clouds associated with different altitude values
• Added automatic start of ActiveSkyUtils.exe if it’s not already running, and the simulator is, to prevent connection issues in case there is a problem auto-starting ActiveSkyUtils.exe from the simulator exe.xml directly
• Added automatic re-hide of ASFS toolbar button in sim (this is not used currently and should not be visible, even if you re-enabled it by disabling and re-enabling the ASFS toolbar item)
• Moved Navigraph data from [AS install folder]\NavigraphData to C:\users[username]\appdata\roaming\HiFi\AS_FS\NavigraphData for compatibility with latest Navigraph data management and updater tools for MSFS
• Vis/humidity adjustments per feedback
• Re-enabled dewpoint setting in custom wx setting wizard (dewpoint setting may not be readable in MSFS and is occasionally altered by ASFS for humidity/visibility control)
• Fixed new issue with Russian and potentially other MSFS language settings causing units conversion problems (baro, alt, wind speed errors) in some unit modes
• Fixed issue where changing units mode could cause baro pressure to take a long time to smooth to new value (now instantly switches baro after detected units change)
• Attempted fix for startup form not showing up in some cases requiring a force close/restart to get form to show
• Removed option “Use period theme reloads”
• Updated documentation and readme

Update 041824 – B8874 (8874.32803):

• Fixed temperature issue at higher-elevation airport areas (temps were too low in these areas)
• Fixed issue with fog layer generation not working when too many other cloud layers were generated/specified in METAR (now removes top layers as required to always depict fog layer)
• Fixed thunderstorm/CB coverage issue where coverage could be depicted too high (e.g. at BKN coverage instead of intended FEW/SCT coverage)
• Fixed missing scenarios
• Fixed a vertical velocity bug that could cause off-scale draft effects (and aircraft uncontrollability) especially in tstorm conditions
• Sped up effective temperature transition rate 50% (prevents slowly smoothing yielding unexpected temperatures for a long time when slewing/teleporting)
• Slowed effective cloud transition rate 50% (per user feedback requesting slower transitions overall)
• Reduced depicted visibility approximately 10% at 3-10SM ranges