Damian Clark

It's very popular to hate me and Active Sky, and by extension, those who support me, our development team or the product. I've mentioned (harped on) this before but that's also generated criticism so I try to leave it alone. I've just learned to live with it and not let it discourage me any further.... the harder I work, the more we all do to satisfy the criticism or demands, the more HiFi accomplishes as a team, the more hate. I guess that means we're doing something right. I think it's also worth it (for me anyway) to consider that much of the apparent criticism is competitive in nature, real or perceived.

In Europe we are finding many such stations which cap at 5K ft, and then use NCD or NSC to specify no clouds above that threshold. We don't see this in the USA where it's typical to see clouds up to and beyond 20K ft (although some equipment does filter, some above 18K, some above 24K, etc). It's basically different everywhere you go. We're working on improving the interpretation and combination of GFS+Surface data to bring mid + upper level clouds to NSC/NCD METARs.

Regarding cloud turb with Passive Mode. It's a work in progress. There are some things activated, but it's not quite ready yet, thus why we are not listing that part as a feature yet. You may notice some additional undocumented improvements/changes here as we build this up. We hope to have this completed and working properly as intended very soon.

We are using more than METAR data (much more actually), but at the actual METAR stations and in direct vicinity (2 miles), we're currently hard weighting METAR NO CLOUD specs over the other data. You have to fly a bit away from the station to get the upper air model and other data influence in this case. This is by design. For example, when a METAR sky condition element says "NSC" or "NCD", it's saying that it sees NO clouds up to 5000ft, or up to its entire range (depending on process/equipment). Our users have demanded we respect that until now. What we are seeing now, with MSFS live weather, is a blind ignore of certain METAR elements like this, and blending of the grib clouds with the empty METAR clouds. And many like this. And as we've seen, this can be realistic, sometimes (but not always). Observations are based on a narrow view of the sky above the station so it's definitely possible that this measures no clouds but there are clouds just off to the side, or all over the sky, with perhaps a hole above the airport. And with 5000ft limit for sky condition specs (every area/station is seemingly different), there could definitely be clouds over 5k. Currently we add "additional" cloud layers based on the model data and synthesis, when the METAR DOES NOT explicitly specify no clouds. For example, if no clouds at all are specified, we weight the other data fairly significantly and add clouds accordingly (of general CAVOK specification). Anyhow, what we're planning on doing to improve this is not taking the no cloud designation so seriously, by user configuration, so there can be clouds even when the METAR says no. And we're also looking at heavier weighting more model data in general. I'm pretty excited about this. We tried doing this a long time ago and it was shot down very quickly by nearly everyone. METAR or bust. But with MSFS, not only are users more open to this, they are demanding it. For those METAR purists, however, don't worry, you'll always be able to get that same experience if you want.

Thanks everyone for your support, feedback, encouragement and constructive criticism. From my side, I've found that the vast majority of those who've actually tried ASFS are very favorable and positive (with some exceptions of course), while the vast majority of negative feedback is seemingly from those who haven't and won't, and it just looks like they are trying to influence others to stay away. I'm personally focused on the feedback from those who've actually tried it and actually want further ASFS development, and there's a ton of great feedback there. There's definitely some issues and adjustments we need to take care of, and we're working hard on that. We're also working on lots of new features. We have a big list of items we were hoping we'd get a chance to work on, and thanks to you, we've been given that chance. It's clear that AS has successfully provided many with the features and solutions they've been looking for, and I wanted to thank everyone who's given it a try and given us an opportunity, once again, to continue further development. Without your support, we simply could not continue. Thank you so much for giving me and the HiFi team the opportunity to keep doing what we love. Remember that you can give us direct feedback, suggestions and bug reports at our forums (http://forums.hifisimtech.com) and our support helpdesk (http://hifisimtech.zendesk.com). Thanks all!

Then that's a brand new issue we haven't seen. Sorry about that. Please visit our support forums or open a ticket, we'd be happy to figure this out and get you running ASAP.

It should sync pretty well based on the RNG seed control being raw conditions and positional based in these newer AS versions, and same cloud specs result in same visuals in MSFS, but multi computer sync has not been specifically tuned nor tested by us.

If you have another wx add-on, it must be deactivated or will conflict. If you are using notoolbarhandle or nohandlebar mods they will conflict and must be disabled (we're working on a fix right now for that). If you're using an older version of Flow that can also conflict (just update flow to resolve this). Hope that helps.

Really, I am not aware of any of this. I'll have to investigate. I haven't seen anyone get banned in a long time and that was for very gross violations of our TOS (or the typical spammers we see every day). Please open a support ticket at http//hifisimtech.zendesk.com and ask to speak to me directly linking this post, and I'll assist directly. Thank you.

We should have compatibility with all toolbar mods very soon. Stay tuned for an update.

There have also been reports of other wx-addons being installed causing this issue of no wx depiction (in addition to the toolbar mod incompatibilities, which should be resolved very soon). Please make sure that you disable any other wx-adons.

It does sound like a wake effect event, for sure, that's the only thing that we have in air effects that gives a significant rolling motion (when you're in those relevant portions of the simulated vortices). Not sure what triggered it. And it seems excessive to do that much damage in the aircraft you were flying. But it may have been correct. I have multiplayer traffic on and sometimes will see aircraft move/slew right in front of me, giving me the wake, and some times I don't see them (but then see them and their wake trail in the map). It's possible a heavy did leave a wake trail for you. I'd suggest flying with wake off to see if this goes away. If you find any specific issues please let us know.

ASFS is permitted for use, non-simultaneously, on any number of systems, by the licensed user. It's essentially the "steam" system. Logon from anywhere yourself, but don't share with a friend.

I was referring to the issue with ASutils not running preventing a sim connection. Different thing. If you're not getting wx injected, that's covered here: https://forums.hifisimtech.com/threads/toolbar-mods.14820/ Hope that helps.

There's some false positive AV blocking on this location that we've seen that causes this, with some. Bitdefender has been named. Excluding/allowing the location resolves the issue (you'll need to install AS_FSConnectorInstall.exe again).