It sure looks good, especially with a bit of Taburet base lighting underneath. It’s like a whole new sim at night.
Category: Add Ons
ORBX Open Lanclass North America
My hiatus continues. I’ll be back in the sim next week, and the first thing I will do is download the new North America land class from ORBX. I know it will be a fantastic addition to the sim, and here are a few of the screen caps they’ve issued just to whet the appetite.
ForeFlight 8 Set For August
One of the best real world tools that I’ve used for my simulation work and my real world flight training has been ForeFlight, which is an electronic flight bag app that I run on my iPad. I use it to plan routes in PilotEdge, for VFR navigation and charts while flying the sim, and as a backup to my paper logbook for training. I also take it along when I travel for business, pulling the commercial route I’m flying off FlightAware and loading them into ForeFlight on the iPad so I can track the route and read and follow the IFR procedures for arrival and approach. It’s truly great software.
And now the next generation is coming, with ForeFlight 8 set for August release. And it looks fantastic:
I’ve been using and playing with the settings and combinations across the new HiFi ActiveSky16, Active Sky Cloud Art, and REX Texture Direct and Soft Clouds. To give a feel of how it all looks from an immersion standpoint, here’s a quick video. And to make it fast (and fun) we take a different ride than our standard Cessna 182 … 😉
Thanks for watching.
AS16+ASCA Pics: I’m (Pleasantly) Surprised
There’s been a lot of discussion in the sim forums about the new HiFi products, ActiveSky16 and Active Sky Cloud Art, and I noted this commentary earlier. Today I put commentary aside, though, and took some time to fly through convective real-time weather near KMSP and shoot screen shots along the way. (Given the need to have power and altitude, the F-22 was the ride of choice).
Primarily I took multiple screen shots of the same scene with a variety of settings, from 100% AS16+ASCA, to AS16+ASCA sky textures and cloud structures + REX cloud textures, to AS16+just REX. I will post those comparisons later. But overall, I was REALLY impressed with with AS16+ASCA can do. Yes, I thought some of the cloud textures looked cartoonish. But the cloud structures are remarkable, and were nearly unbelievable to fly through in a desktop simulator – especially considering that I had absolutely zero negative performance compared to Active Sky Next. I mean, look at these shots, all of which are unedited …
Those were both with High Dynamic Range OFF. In some of the tests I felt that the clouds were blown out and overexposed. When I realized HDR was off and turned it on, the image changed to this, which look great for bad weather …
And then I got these …
This was out the right-hand window …
And some more …
These shots are all with a particular ASCA theme, “Armageddon,” which is meant to represent turbulent, convective weather. One of the selling points is that AS16+ASCA will update cloud textures on the fly, and one would hope then with a METAR like the one at KMSP it will pull textures like these. It did not in this instance, picking a different set of textures that did not look as good (at least, not originally and not with HDR off). But if it does pick solid textures more often than not, it’s going to be a remarkable product to use.
ActiveSky16 + ASCA + REX Soft Clouds
The big news in the sim world yesterday was the release by HiFi SimTech of ActiveSky16 and Active Sky Cloud Art. The release met mixed reactions by the community, with some simmers thinking the weather engine (AS16) may not have been enough of an upgrade over ActiveSkyNext to be worth the cost, and others thinking ASCA cloud textures were unrealistic or unattractive.
Having seen many of the screen shots and videos online, and having downloaded AS16 yesterday, I would disagree with the former statement but be inclined to agree with the latter. The AS16 weather engine seems much more realistic that ASN, especially around convective conditions, which in the sim yesterday tossed my little Piper Cherokee around like Dorothy’s house in the Wizard of Oz. Before you could really just fly through a lot of that stuff. Not anymore.
As for the textures, I’m a big fan of REX and not eager to change. So I was excited today to see that someone (OMGEDSON over at The Sky Lounge) has found a very straightforward way to combine all three. The solution is simple: run AS16, then run ASCA,] and configure ASCA for sky textures only (or sky textures and cloud structure if you like), then run REX and install a theme LAST. Now AS16 works dynamically with the weather transitions and sky textures, but uses the REX textures in the process. I think it looks great, as you will see via the link above, and some of these shots by OGMEDSON:
I took a night flight to try to compare the ORBX Global, UTX, and Taburet night lighting environments. Scenery layering can be a challenge with this, but I believe I successfully started with ORBX, then went to UTX, then went to UTX and Taburet together. Overall I think the best solution of these would be ORBX and Taburet, which I’ll try tonight, and Chris Bell’s Night Environment (which has its own video in my channel) is, to me, the best of them all. I eagerly await his “Black Marble” package. Thanks for watching.
New ActiveSky 16 & Cloud Art Video & Pricing
The folks at HiFi Simulation Technologies have updated their website with pricing for the forthcoming ActiveSky 16 and Cloud Art packages, and have produced a new teaser video as well:
With REX also producing new cloud texture and weather management systems, it’s looking to be a great year in the weather department for simulation enthusiasts. I’m a big fan of both firms, and use Active Sky Next to render REX cloud textures on every flight. It will be interesting to see how these packages shake out. Either way, it’s a great time for flight sim.
Speaking Of ORBX …
AirDailyX.net also links to a solid development status update on all things ORBX from John Venema. Items that caught my eye …
Open land class North America appears right around the corner. I can’t wait for this, as it will bring the same quality of land class textures to the US as I currently enjoy when flying in Europe. UTX has a great package which I’ve been using, and I’m eager to compare them. ORBX has a forum thread here with info, screen caps, and more. Here are some samples, and they look just fantastic:
Also, KBSA Santa Barbara is coming, and with all the flying I do on PilotEdge any ORBX airport in that region is a great thing to see.
Orbx FTX Buildings HD
D’Andre Newman at AirDailyX.net has posted a very well done interview with Orbx announcing a forthcoming Buildings HD package that will replace the default building textures in FSX and Prepar3d. This is a huge deal, as the current textures are probably circa 2002.
This package follows in the tradition of the Orbx HD Trees package, which I consider a no-brainer simulator add on.
Here’s he video, and I’m really looking forward to the release later this year. With the quality of everything else they’ve done, I’m quickly becoming the biggest Orbx fanboy on the planet.