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I thought I wanted Active Sky 16 for FSX, I bought it and like it, but......


Georgesim

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ok firstly I havn't posted this in the fsx section because I think what I am talking about applies across the platforms.

 

oh and I am not trying to provoke a discussion on the pros and cons of various freeware and payware weather add ons.

 

I used to use the fsx real world weather for almost every flight, I enjoyed the way it changed the weather every 15 minutes or so, and so now that that service no longer exists I was looking for an add on that does something like that.

 

From doing some research, searching the internet, searching forums, watching some youtube, I just about understood that Active Sky 16 was probably what I was looking for.

 

So I went to the website and find the product I was looking for and click learn more.

 

I was confronted with jargon and so much information that I did not understand that it made my head hurt just to get through it all. More to the point I had no idea if this is the add on I wanted. As I read again and again I just about got the hang of what it is all about, but still no idea if it does what I want it to do.

 

Ah well, I'll look at the store pages as HiFi doesn't sell on their own page. They are worse. Paragraphs of words that I understand individually but not when they are put together in this way. Again i had no idea if I wanted this product.

 

So I bought it anyways, from Just Flight, and indeed it does what I wanted it to do, and very good it seems to be too at automatically giving me a variety of weather on my flights.

 

What I have just described could apply to so much that is flight simulation related. Any information relating to this add on or that add on is complex. No one leads with or indeed has the TLDR bit. In most other situations if i was interested in purchasing something and I was confronted with long lists of features that I did not understand I would assume they were lists of weasel words. The only reason I know they are not is because I have been flying on the computer since flightsim 98 and have bought and used many add ons and have got used to the lottery of whether the thing was useful.

 

Now the next thing I want is a traffic add on that will populate my skies with reasonably accurate liveries and aeroplanes. Something that can be turned down to one or two planes at any one time so I dont take a frame rate hit. Something that will keep the odd cessna, baron or learjet here and there just for fun

 

I'm not looking forward to the research.

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Reading the specs won't give you the full picture, not without checking reviews and online posts. For example, Ultimate Traffic Live is a good AI package but support has been spotty due to the primary developer having a "personal crisis". So, if you have problems, help not always available from the program vendor. And you're exactly right - when developers and programmers are the main source of marketing materials, it can make for godawful reading.
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In this case I found forum posts to be the most useful, but only up to a point. They had given me the impression that I would have to add cloud textures too and inevitably the forum threads would start comparing this texture to that texture. All good info for many and for me at some other time, but I really did have to hazard an educated guess that I probably didn't need to almost double the cost and buy the cloud textures too.

 

Youtube videos were less useful. Finding specifically what you are looking for is very frustrating sometimes and finding a content creator that doesn't have a thousand and one other add ons running while talking about the one I was interested in was even more of an issue. In any case, in almost all of the videos I watched, the features of AS16 were quickly glossed over and its ability to integrate with these or those cloud textures was what the creators wanted to talk about at length. Leaving me with even more of an impression that I would have to purchase the cloud art in order to get live weather updates.

 

I am not in any way trying to say bad things about the community here. Communities discuss what is important to them, and it seems to me that I was trying to gather a piece of information that was so very obvious that no one needed to say it.

 

But I do feel that the folks selling me the software ought to have said it.

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I just purchased AS16 and installed it 6/19/19. It seems to work OK. But I start FSX. It works OK. But I can't get the two of them together to work at the same time. I tried to connect to HiFiTechinc.com and join a Forum to find aswers. I registered, posted a message, and came back a few hours later to see if there were any replies. When I tried to log on, it told me the password was wrong. I tried over and over until it wouldn't let me try again. Waited a day, went through lots of "bull" but finally got a temporary password. Tried it. It said it didn't exist. now I'm down to one more attempt to log in. I'm frustrated like you wouldn't believe. All I want to know is "How Do I Get AS16 and FSX to Work Together?" Maybe someone reading this message might offer some suggestions.
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